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Two Electronic Organizers I have been using lately

I have been using Electronic Organizers for some time now. The thing is, these organizers are pretty good at keeping track of your schedule, calendar, memos and phone numbers.

As I mentioned before, what I like the most is that they are small, reliable and fast. But of course, like with everything, some models might be more desirable than others.

The most known brands of Electronic Organizers in Japan are Casio and Sharp, but I always found difficult to decide for a main device for my day to day activities.

The Sharp that I like the most is the PA-6300.

The PA-6300, compact and lightweight, but feature-rich (15.4Kb, PNG, 500x507)

It is really small, lightweight and has all the features needed for serious usage. The keys are made of rubber but they have an good feeling to them and typing memos or text is very easy.

Also, navigation is very well planned.

Unfortunately, visualizing the daily schedules is a bit lacking. You can only see one single appointment at a time due to the large size font, so sometimes it might be a bit difficult to understand the whole daily scheduling situation, specially when you have 10 or more tasks to do.

In the other hand, I have some love for the Casio SF-6000 and DK-1000, both very similar, but slight different layout and set of features.

The Casio SF-4000, overseas version of the Japanese SF-6000 (10.9Kb, PNG, 500x482)

The Casio DK-1000. Probably my favourite. (7.86Kb, PNG, 433x486)

In both cases, I love the screen. It is large, with letters big enough to read well, but small enough to fit multiple lines. And this is something that I am really thankful. Your daily schedule can be visualized with as much as 5 lines of text, so if you write one line per appointment, you can see up to 5 of them.

Unfortunately, the keyboard is a simple membrane style, so it is far from being easy to type in (although not so terrible).

The directional arrows are separated in the SF-6000. The Up/Down arrows are in a different location than the Left/Right. In the DK-1000 they are grouped-up, similar to a normal modern keyboard, but since it is a membrake keyboard, it is easy to press the wrong arrow and changing the screen rather than moving the text cursor (Up/Down only changes or displaces the screen, cancelling your text or edits, if you didn't save them).

Also, navigation of menus feels a bit overcomplicated. For example, to delete an entry, with the Sharp you navigate to the entry, press "Delete" and then "Y" to confirm.

With the Casio SF and DK models (others as well), first you navigate to the entry, then you change to "Input" mode, then you press "Shift" then "Edit", then press the "Clear" button, and finally, the "Set" button.

It is difficult to decide, but considering everything, I think I will be using the Casio for the time being, either the SF-6000 or the DK-1000. Being able to visualize up to 5 consecutive appointments in the scheduling book is a killer feature that makes things so easy. One can become accustomed to the overcomplicated navigation and the membrame keyboard after some time.