Recommendations for Pocket Dictionaries

[sirslope]

Hello, everyone. I am a recent college grad and am just coming off 4 semesters worth of Chinese classes. Up until now, I have been able to get by with basic software, manual dictionaries, and online translators for most of my studies. This is becoming too slow and unwieldy, and I am looking to purchase a handy pocket tool. Price isn't important if it delivers strong functionality, and I'm leaning toward some kind of PDA -- but keep in mind I don't need any of the general features that come along with PDAs (e-mail, video recording, games -- none of that). Though I'm willing to put up with that if, as I said, the device itself functions strongly.

The most important feature I am looking for is rapid stroke-to-pinyin translation. I am not very familiar with the technology that's out there -- are we at the point now where a stylus can be used to detect strokes? In any case, I'm just looking for something that can extract the pinyin (not even necessarily the meaning) of a character as fast as possible. Speech recognition is a plus, but not a requirement for me.

I look forward to hearing your responses, and I certainly appreciate any advice.

[ipsi()]

Grab a PDA. If you don't need lots of cool features, probably grab an E2 or a TX, and not worry about a Treo. Then install PlecoDict on it.

It's quite quick, but you do have to write the whole character out. No way around that really. Or use radicals if you're good enough. I also don't think you'll find speech-to-text on a PDA of any form, anywhere. It's pretty restricted to desktops, but I haven't looked lately so I could be wrong.

[sirslope]

Thanks. I have become quite adept with using radicals, so I might find over time that this is faster. But at the moment I have no problem with writing out complete characters. PlecoDict seems like a good fit.

I do have one more question though: any substantial differences between the basic and professional versions? My best assessment is that the professional version contains more content, but the basic version retains the same functionality. Is that about right?

[OneEye]

Definitely PlecoDict on a Palm. You can pick up an older-model Palm and it doesn't have all the extra features. I use the m130 and I'm sure you can find a new one pretty cheap online.

[ipsi()]

Do be careful though. The new version of Pleco won't necessarily work with the older models. I think it needs at least 5.X, which my Tungsten E had. Not sure how far back you have to go before it becomes version 4.X.

[OneEye]

Crap. Didn't know that. Mine is a 4.1 and the current version of Pleco works fine, but it looks like I'll have to upgrade in order to use Pleco 2.

[ipsi()]

I'm not certain of that. You'd better contact Pleco just to make sure. But yeah. I think you may also have issues playing the voice files. Give Beta 2 a shot, and see if that works, maybe?

[mikelove]

Yeah, unfortunately you do need Palm OS 5 to run Pleco 2.0 - it's just gotten too complicated to run at a usable speed on a pre-OS5 Palm, takes 2-3 minutes just to start a flashcard session. And there's not really any way to get sampled audio working in even a very simple program on Palm OS 4. So Beta 2 won't even start up on an OS 4 device, just gives you an error message and then exists.

Still, the current version works fine on OS4, and we plan to continue supporting that on Palm at least for a while after 2.0 is released, so if you find a good deal on an OS 4 system and don't really feel like you need any of the new stuff in 2.0 too desperately you could certainly use Pleco on that.