DMT wrote:But I realized I'm getting up in the price class where I might just be better off buying something like a Palm Z22 with HIARCS on it.
So, aside form the obvious extra features I get with a PDA, if we pretend I will ONLY use it for chess, what are the pros/cons for one vs. the other?
For example, I haven't seen a Z22 up close and personal ... how would the graphics on the Z22 compare to the excalibur deluxe? What would be one model up from the Z22 in terms of graphics, but still not too big a price jump?
What about features?
And also important would be battery life and how fast it plays?
Anyone have good tips and advice for me?
Thanks!
Hi David,
Well I own quite a few late model dedicated machines and I also own a Palm Z22 with HIARCS loaded onto it. So I am probably in a good position to answer some questions.
As for the display quality of the Z22 chessboard and pieces, in my opinion it is vastly superior to that of any dedicated LCD type of chess computer. Many would find the simplistic display of the Ruby, for example to be very poor by comparison. Even though the Z22 has only half the resolution of the better Palm products (it's only 160 pixels wide), I've never had any problem at all as regards readability.
Having said that, I guess I would consider the display on the Excalibur Deluxe Talking Touch Chess (DTTC) to be next best, since the pieces are much better than the very simple symbols used in the Ruby. They are dot matrix representations and rather more "shapely". The new model with the backlight should be a considerable improvement, however the only advantage I could see it having over a Z22 is in terms of size - the Z22 display is of course relatively small compared to the Excalibur.
As for battery life, this is where the dedicated computers have it all over the little Z22. Infact battery life is it's biggest bugbear. The problem of course is that PDAs in general are designed with day to day computing tasks in mind - not chess where the CPU can be flat out for more or less 100% of the time. I find that if I have pondering turned on and the display backlight turned down to low, I might get about 6 - 8 hours battery life between recharges. I find this to be barely acceptable.
On the other hand, unless you are using the Z22 for analysis, you would not really need to have the pondering turned on. Therefore, if you were to play time handicap games against it (the human moving slowly, HIARCS moving very quickly), then the battery might perhaps last perhaps 9 - 10 hours that way. At least the device is quickly and easily recharged though.
The dedicated machines are much better, although the stronger ones chew through batteries much faster than something like an Excalibur machine. My Excalibur DTTC is very economical even on rechargeable AAA batteries. However the new model will have a backlight and that will certainly change things unless the total milliamp hours of the batteries is vastly improved.
As for strength and features, there is simply no contest. HIARCS on a Palm Z22 will blow away any dedicated chess computer ever marketed in terms of strength and features, with the exception of the Ressurection machines (which are extremely limited production and if you have to ask the cost you can't afford it type of scenario...). I have also found that HIARCS is one of the very few chess programs that still plays decent chess when it is handicapped. Infact I think it's handicapping features are probably the best of any chess program I have come across. In my experience, when you set it to play at a given ELO level, it really does seem to play around that strength...unlike most chess engines that are very inconsistent in this regard.
One bad point as regards the Z22 is that the rechargeable battery is not user replaceable. This means that once the battery reaches the end of it's service life, that is pretty much the end for the unit, as the cost of having it replaced would be more than what the unit is worth.
That said, I still think the Z22 and HIARCS is the best way to go, since it has good handicapping features, can play around 2500 ELO fully unleashed, has a huge openings book relatively speaking and has a much clearer display than any dedicated machine.
Jonathan
