Working with a Sony device can be like dealing with a government employee. It’s inflexible, autocratic and you have to follow the Sony proscribed procedure or you get nowhere.

So it is with the Sony Clié PEG-NX70V, one of Sony's most expensive and feature-packed handheld computers. Of course Sony products have one thing government employees don’t have and that’s charm, which is its ultimate savior.

The 8 oz Clié is handsomely slim, storing your schedule, contact list and personal notes without endowing you with unsightly bulges. Even better, it can play music and video files and has an integrated digital camera (geek alert: 640x480 resolution) and a keyboard under its flip-open hood.

All this is enabled with the latest PalmOS operating system, like you’d find on a Palm-brand or Handspring device but you wouldn’t know this without some digging. It may be PalmOS 5 behind the scenes, but Sony has engineered the device into its own proprietary look and feel. If you like the way Palm devices work, the PEG-NX70V will not be a natural progression. It’s like raising pigs and then switching to ocelots. This is classic Sony – it’s either “the Sony way” or the “stick it in your eye” way.

Hardware-wise it has a 200 MHz Intel ARM processor onboard with 16 MB of memory. The Clié responds quickly when you snap a picture or run a program. The bright colour screen is simply gorgeous and is better than any other handheld computer screen on the market today.

The US$500 / CA$800 gadget comes with a remarkable suite of programs for both the Clié and your computer so you can prep data on your computer to work on the Clié. Unfortunately, the process is all a bit onerous because to get anything on to the Clié it has to be converted to a data format that is unique to the device.

The other stinky problem is that the programs don’t allow you to send the data via the USB connection on your computer to the Clié. Instead, you have to transfer data via a MemoryStick data card--which start at US$60 or CA$80 for a skimpy 64MB unit--, forcing you to consume more of Sony’s technically hobbled digital media and some way to hook it up to your computer.

Since the Clié is such an island, it makes it difficult to extract pictures from its built-in camera. Your choices are: beam it via infrared which is fine if you want to send it to another Palm device. Or save it to MemoryStick and use sneaker technology to march it to your computer (assuming your computer has a MemoryStick reader). You can also e-mail it as an attachment, but only if you buy the US$150 or CA$200 Sony proprietary wireless LAN card that goes in the Clié’s proprietary wireless LAN slot.

Frankly this product looks great, feels great and shows well in product catalogs. However, it stinks. Avoid it at all costs, unless you love Sony, eat Sony food, drink Sony beverages, shop in Sony stores and own everything with a Sony label on it.