electronic pocket dictionary

Thanks AuntySue! Great info....I will check out the threads on the forum.

Calkins, if your computer is a Macintosh, it's guaranteed to get garbled. You have to use an alternative sync program, sorry I can't remember its name but you might find the same Q/A via Google.

I keep all my .txt files on the SDCard, and backup the whole card to the PC using a simple copy via usb card reader. Before doing that, I use the excellent freeware program NVBackup to back up absolutely everything from memory (more than sync will preserve) onto the card. NVBackup only works for TX, LifeDrive, and some other very modern Palms, by the way. For earlier models you need something like RFBackup.

To edit .txt files, I use the Chinese-aware text editor called... ummm... look, go to the Forum and look at the two very long threads there on the use of Palm PDAs, PlecoDict, and everything else, it's all there.

I think it's still one of the highest used threads, so on the forum hit Statistics at the top and you should see it listed there. It's a must-read for cpod students with Palm PDAs.

Anyone with a Palm TX know how to sync .txt files that have hanzi and pinyin? I've tried but it's all garbled.

Bazza, you have a TX so I'm putting my money on you!

I had a business trip to Florida this past week, and finally had some time to play with my TX and Pleco. All I can say is WOW!!!!!

Each product alone is worth its weight in gold, but the combination of the two is phenomenal....being able to rotate the dictionary to landscape mode, being able to write anywhere on the screen, etc. etc. etc.

I don't even know half of Pleco's features yet, but I'm loving it already. Thanks again for everyone's suggestions!

Hi Christine, I sent an e-maile to Michael about a week ago, to see the status of the upgrade. He quickly responded and said it looks more like June now. So only a couple more months. The new stroke order feature is what I'm really looking forward to.

Hi there. Thanks for all the info everybody. Especially Bazza - I had just been dreaming of wirelessly getting podcasts and it's great to know it's possible. I've had no probs with my T/X getting documents/pdf files but they're nowhere near as big....

re entering phrases on vocab...

you can enter new words into the dictionary, i frequently enter food dishes or slang i encounter.

although it seems a bit glitchy... i need to spend some time with it to sort out what's going on, probably something i'm doing wrong.

and i have successfully put these 'new words' into my flashcard piles, so I would think no problem to enter phrases... the only problem would be that the phrase would appear in the actual dicitonary. would this clutter up your dictionary if you wanted to enter a lot? hmm.

re flashcards/games

the thing that i found helpful was 'programming' the ranking/intelligent flashcard programme, so that you see the ones you get wrong more often etc. you have a lot of different options, including whether you see the 'question' as hanzi/pinyin/english

it's a bit complicated though as you have to design your own ranking system.. although this does give a lot of flexibility.

BUT the upgrade should be available soon (free to existing owners when i last read) and flashcard function was something that was to be finetuned. it looked like there was to be a lot of improvements...

check out www.pleco.com, i've not been there for a while. in fact, it may not be too late to contribute to the discussion regarding what you dream of in the upgrade? although i suspect it is now, they've been talking of releasing it for a long time.

they have a very active forum with their CEO ?michael Love very active on it.

if your questions are not answered in the archive, i'm sure he'd reply. my friend had a very good response from him.

sorry i'm not more informed, i've not been on the website for quite a while! i'm new here too, so think i should surf a bit through the archive both here and at pleco to get more study hints and tips and tools... hi everybody. Good luck with your T/X Calkins!

I'll be asking you for help soon, I'm such a technological dinosaur......... aunty sue, i'm in awe....

Excellent topic and discussion, I have been considering aids such as this for times when I don't readily have access to the internet and hate carrying around all my other hard copy resources all the time. AuntieSue, Bazza, and Xiaohu, your experienced input in this area is greatly appreciated as always. Now I only wish I could see them firsthand and get demonstrations to do comparisons for myself

Thanks Bazza. It must just be me who's finding it slow and unreliable. I was wondering about that.

Bazza, I just checked out WiFile Pro. It looks awesome. To be able to access files on my network will be incredible...thanks for the tip. Technology!

Wifi works perfectly fine on my TX. Just tried a 15mb test file and transferred it via WiFile Pro and it took 1m 25s.

Argh, don't muck around with all that stuff. Get a little USB SDCard-reader for your PC, and each morning pop your card in and just copy the files over, pop it back into your PDA and you're away.

And for heavens sake, never try to "sync" podcasts, or anything else that's larger than a flea.

The idea of downloading is great for little palm programs, which are around 10kb to 30kb in size, but these days they're most likely zipped anyway for your own safety which probably means your palm won't let you save them.

Sorry mate, basically forget downloading anything at all if your experience is going to be the same as mine (?). Ordinary everyday Copy between PC and card is brilliant, so get that USB reader without delay.

Where it does excel is in playing movies, if you get an older version of the program TCPMP to play them. Convert whole movies on your PC (to avi or whatever), and download mp4 format when that option is given. And of course, as before, the plain old copy to card is your friend.

Good to know AuntySue. How about transferring podcast mp3's via bluetooth, from iTunes?

I guess I can wait until tomorrow...but I just can't wait!

(Wow, my life has become so enthralling that it's Friday night and the thing I'm most excited about is receiving a Palm Pilot in the morning ;-).

If you're in China, try getting a BESTA. They have lots of models and are relatively cheaper than their western counterparts. My girlfriend bought one and it's been really useful -it's colored, you can write characters on it, and the saleslady included additional CDs with korean, japanese, spanish, etc.

Calkins, I've found the wifi on the TX to be a bit touch and go. I'd never attempt to download a large file like a podcast. If you do and it works, please let us know (if you're not too old to type by the time you get the file).

The only decent way I've found of using whole phrases as flashcards is with Vocabulary Cards, a brilliant little freeware program for PalmOS by Guenther Erhard. It doesn't interface with Pleco at all, but there's various ways to get the data in.

I've just lost everything on my computer's hard disk, but the URL that comes up on my old Palm here says http://dolphin-world.de/vc.html -- I hope that's still current. There's also a Yahoo Group for support/suggestions/etc.

Oh, by the way, always use the latest Beta. Unlike most other developers, what this guy calls beta is always rock stable and contains a better feature set, it just tends to change a bit more often. There's a Yahoo Group for users of the beta too.

You can use this program to learn anything, in full sentence lengths and with examples and hints if you want to put them in too. Oops, almost forgot, to do Chinese you need to have CJKOS installed on your PDA, and it costs money, just a little.

I just bought a Palm TX, after having a Vx since 1999 (where does the time go?). I bought it solely for the Pleco software and it's scheduled to be here tomorrow. Needless to say, I am very excited after reading these threads and Pleco's website.

Thanks to everyone in this thread (and others) for your suggestions. I have a feeling these tools will greatly improve my Mandarin.

Christine, I'm also interested to see how remotely downloading podcasts on the TX will be. Have you tried it? I assume the 2 GB expansion card would be necessary.

Thanks Christine. I'm still toying around with all the different functions... is there a way to copy whole phrases into the flashcard list? Do you know of other ways to make learning games with vocabulary aside from the flashcards?

hey there Mandomikey,

just followed you here from the other dictionary thread you just commented on...

personally, i am relieved you went for pleco... was hanging on my seat for you for a while there!

i found it a little tricky to start with, and it is really useful to hook up with someone who knows it well, as you can customise a lot of the settings on the bar at the top for optimum use, but after that....

ahhhhh.

the world is your oyster.

i also needed a palm for other work related reference books, and due to that, was strongly advised to get a more powerful palm

the T/X. (even despite using memory cards, i needed extra internal memory to handle the data on the memory cards!)

For most users it's not necessary. But it does also come with wireless/bluetooth and you can surf the web and download mp3 etc.

i have to say i love it.

now, i wonder what podcasts you could then listen to on the move??

Personally, I really trust the pleco company and know of many many satisfied users who would not use anything else, myself included.

Good luck everybody.

I figured I'd share my follow-up thoughts after having crossed the threshold from shopper to user about 2 weeks back. I went ahead and splurged for a Tungsten Palm Pilot and the Plecodict software downoload. All told, it set me back about $265 ($165 for the Palm, $99 for the download)... and it cost me a full weekend of time to properly load the software and make sense of the program and its features. Initially I was very frustrated by its apparent user-unfriendliness for a technological hack like myself, but now that I've toyed around with all the bells and whistles I see its convenience is starting to pay for itself. I had a bit of a scare a few days ago when my battery began to run low and the Palm could no longer detect the dictionary. Since I had already spent signifant time creating a personal 500+ character flashcard database, my knees went weak at the prospect that they would be gone forever and that I'd have to start from scratch creating a new list. Fortunately, the dictionary (and the flashcards) returned once more juice flowed into the Palm during a recharge. Phew!!

Overall, I'd say it was a very good purchase. I'd reccomend it to others as a good learning tool to carry on the go, to squeeze in a little studying while waiting in line at the bank, etc. I'm hopeful that it will be most beneficial during my summer travels, being able to lookup words/characters on the fly, and being able to store new vocabulary safely in my pocket (rather than trusting my own short-term memory). Thanks for all the above posters for input on this topic.

You know what?

I just looked on their website and you can order many of the models online, if you don't want to spend as much money, I recommend the "Yishen 888", it doesn't have a backlit color screen, but I've used it before and the functionality is GREAT! The touchscreen technology is actually more accurate than my model, and it's REALLY built with foreigners in mind (more so than any of their other models) so it has all the info a foreigner learning Chinese would need. IE: Pinyin, Zhuyin, English translations all right there.

The only drawback is that (at least the model I used which was the first Yishen 888 not the "SUPER" Yishen 888 doesn't have rechargable batteries, you just have to buy 4 AAA batteries to run it).

The Truevoice technology is not bad at all on that model, very clear and sounds humanlike.

Also the MD-8880 is a good model, the full sentence translator is much more precise and will get you let's say...around 85% accuracy. Simple sentences will be almost 100% accurate! So just enter in what you want to say and spit out what it gives you and you'll be FINE!

The only thing is that model will set you back $399!

Anyway, don't be afraid that the translator isn't 100% because you need one of these to help you on your road to fluency and if you're always cheating by using the translator then you won't learn the parts of speech you need to create your own sentences anyway!

DEFINATELY take the plunge!

At the stores in my neighborhood you can also buy the older models used for less than half the money, some even have the full sentence translator built in or (like my previous model) have it on a memory card.

The thing is that the full sentence translator isn't the main reason to buy it, each dictionary has more than 30,000 words, plus a Chenyu (idiom) dictionary, lot's of specialty dictionaries and more that you can download for free from their website.

The model I had before was the MD-8300, (which is good) the MD-8350 is VERY good, with all the same functionality as mine except it doesn't have their new "10 Language dictionary" which has the worlds 10 most important languages in one with TRUE VOICE (which is REAL, TRUE voice from MP3 recordings, not computer simulation so it's really, really accurate), but can save a hundred or two hundred if you buy them used.

You can also get one of the lesser models (it doesn't have touch screen though, which is a MUST for ease in looking up characters without having to go through radical and stroke count to find it), and no voice, with a black and white screen, BUT can still help tremendously.

Trust me, mine is ABSOLUTELY indespensible I use it constantly, I carry it with me wherever I go. If you forget a word or want to know how something is said, your dictionary is always there to help you. You can put your Chinesepod lessons on your memory card and plug it into the dictionary and play them so it's a total learning center!

You might want to call them and ask if you can order one over the phone and have it shipped to you.

Goldic Technology Inc.

626-292-1972

626-285-8688

Toll Free 800-608-8088

Website: www.goldic.com

MD9288 is only 70% accurate? Hmmm, that's not a big vote of confidence there. Are there retail stores that sell any of these models mentioned so I can get my hands on one and test the funcionality for myself? Could they be found at BestBuy or Circuit City in the U.S. or some other specialty shop? I've come to like the idea of having one, but as I'm trying to put away as much $$$ as possible right now for travels, I wonder if this would be the best use of $400. Galois... did you end up taking the plunge and buying one?

I discovered PlecoDict just as my Mandarin level 1 class was coming to an end. If I had had PlecoDict while I was actually taking my Mandarin level 1 class, I have no doubt that my grade would have been a lot better especially for my dictation quizzes (using PlecoDict's flashcard feature would have made studying for my quizzes a piece of cake). ;-)

(both Plecodict and AuntySue are the best :-)

get Plecodict as AuntySue suggested! the best

mandomikey,

All the models I mentioned have full sentence translation (English to Chinese and Chinese to English), built in standard. As well as MP3, Video Players, Organizers, and many many professional and technical dictionaries for more specialized language study.

The main two drawbacks of the CD-628 is the interface between the translator and the rest of the dictionaries is very slow, basically the way it works is that the full sentence translator serves as your main dictionary and it can look up any single word through the other dictionaries and bring up the word in a list from all the different dictionaries, of which you can pick which one you want to look up the definition through, the problem is that is "thinks" too slow and it gets annoying waiting 15-30 seconds for it to run the search.

Secondly it's built for Chinese speakers to learn English so most of the dictionaries don't contain Pinyin, only Characters and don't have the definition in English only CHINESE so you have to constantly flip through the different dictionaries until you find the one that contains the information you are looking for, in other words no one dictionary is complete with the English, Pinyin pronunciation, alternate Zhuyin pronunciation and the Chinese definition, you have to flip to one to find the pronunciation, flip to another to find the definition, flip to another that contains examples in sentence form so you can see which word is actually correct within the context of what you're trying to say. IT'S A HUGE HASSLE!

So again, go with the MD9288, it's got all you need in one and full sentence translation is right there, just be aware that it's only about 70% accurate, but it's as good as using Google translator.

Xiaohu... are your dictionaries (MD9288, MD8390) already loaded with the Mandarin translation software at time of purchase? I'm shooting for simplicity. At the risk of coming off sounding like a technological rube, I don't even know what a PDA is!

The dictionaries I was referring to are also both very portable, can play Mp3's and has an organizer as well as many other handy gadgets thrown in, so it ounds like the determining factor here is just the price point. The two dictionaries I reviewed here are both around 400 dollars so if a PDA and the plecodict software is less than that, go with Plecodict.

The dictionaries I was referring to are also both very portable, can play Mp3's and has an organizer as well as many other handy gadgets thrown in, so it ounds like the determining factor here is just the price point. The two dictionaries I reviewed here are both around 400 dollars so if a PDA and the plecodict software is less than that, go with Plecodict.

Haha, somebody really loves PlecoDict!

http://www.plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1171

Someone else will have to compare, because we two don't know anything about each other's devices.

PlecoDict is a program you buy to run on a PDA. You can pick up an excellent second hand Palm PDA for under $100, or a little less than the price of the full kitchen sink version of PlecoDict. PlecoDict comes with several core C-E and E-C dictionaries (e.g. the ABC Dictionary as used by Wenlin etc) plus additional ones you can purchase if needed (like a huge Chinese-Chinese dictionary, specialist subject areas, etc.) The new version (in beta) has sound, document reader, flashcards, exercises, stroke order, radicals, etc.

My very cheap Zire72 PDA fits into every kind of pocket, and it is also my lesson podcast mp3 player, diary/todo/alarm, database, notepad, camera and voice recorder, so my full Chinese learning kit is always within reach.

Xiaohu & AuntySue... as far as your suggestions go (MD9288, MD8390, PlecoDict), which of these is most portable in a pocket?

I've never used Plecodict before, actually i've never heard of Plecodict before, so I can't give you an accurate evaluation.

How do these compare with PlecoDict?

Oh I forgot to tell you... unless you're REALLY deeply developed in you're language skills, including recognition of Characters and Pinyin I don't recommend the CD-628, the MD 9288 and the other model are made with foreigners in mind. Trust me using the CD-628 is VERY CUMBERSOME and I've been studying for 5 years now. The CD-628 has some great features but it's not very intuitive and VERY SLOW when trying to search from one dictionary to the other.

I bought the CD-628 and several weeks later bought the MD 9288 because I was so fed up with the problems with the CD-628.

Neither model is perfect but if you had to make a choice...and actually the MD 9288 is really good.

DEFINATELY WORTH EVERY PENNY!

The model that is the most beneficial to those trying to learn Chinese is the (Kuai Ti Tong) Instant Dict, MD 9288

http://us.yesasia.com/en/prdGrpDept.aspx/section-electronics/code-c/version-all/pid-1004119616/

Although I'll tell you you can find them MUCH CHEAPER if you have a Chinese community in your area, you will be able to get it for less than $400. Look around a little online and you might be able to find it cheaper.

Instant Dict just came out with another model that's similar but with less Multimedia power (for example, mine can play movies from a memory card) but has all the same dictionary power. I THINK it's the MD 8390...but I'm not sure. Again the functions are virtually the same but will save you some money.