I Want it All, NOW!!!
by Gary Woods

The comment I hear more than any other is, I want my phone to be my PDA to be my MP3 player to be..... They want it ALL.

Well guess what, the Sony Ericsson W880i combines a phone, digicam, audio player, and radio in one unit. The W800i's two-tone orange Creamsicle design won't make you swoon with ecstasy, but its friendly simplicity is refreshing in a world of taco-shaped handsets and complicated keypads.

The W800i's keypad is straightforward and square, a 12-button affair with standard controls and a joystick above. The only extra button is marked with a Walkman logo; pressing it takes you into the audio player.

The interface is not as simple as the iPod's or Rio Carbon's, but it's pretty easy to get up to speed quickly. You can create play lists on the fly and even watch videos with the media player, but for some reason you can't view pictures with it. The radio function isn't integrated into the player, but you can get to it easily from the main menu.

Sony Ericsson includes an easy-to-use unobtrusive desktop application for transferring music to the player. Once all your drivers are installed the 512 MB Memory Stick Duo that comes with the W800i shows up as a hard drive on your system, and the three-window Disc2Phone program lets you quickly sort, select and transfer tunes to the handset.

And the best thing is, for $499 you can have it all NOW!!

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910