September 6th, 2008

A good idea that’s oddly executed, the $299.99 (list) PC Edge is a small handheld device for on-the-go Web browsing, and it pulls up full, desktop-style Web pages quickly and clearly. Unfortunately, its many eccentricities make it difficult to recommend.

A wide, slim (6 by 4 by 0.6 inches HWD, 6.1 ounces) palmtop that browses the Web over a proprietary thin client system, the PC Edge uses T-Mobile’s GPRS (not even EDGE!) network to connect to the Internet. It’s not a phone; it doesn’t have a user-accessible SIM card; and there’s no onboard storage. When you press a key on the keyboard, the device links up with Datawind’s servers in Canada, which push down highly compressed images of Web pages that are updated several times a second. The device is basically a remote-desktop client for Datawind’s browsing servers.

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