Besta 637 or Pleco??

[Sp0cK]

anyone has experience using the Besta 637? Since I dont have a posh phone to run pleco software on - Would this be a good alternative? I've looked and played around with it in the shop here and it looked quite promising to me! altho I dont have any experience using such software I cant really make a choice. It's priced Y1900 in the shop which is good compared to US prices.

Link: http://www.besta.com/cd-637/cd-637e.htm

[gato]

HTC Touch, which runs Windows Mobile, seems to be available for under RMB 1900. It'll run Pleco. There might be other models of HTC available for around that price, too.

http://search1.taobao.com/browse/0/n-g,nb2ggidun52wg2a----------------40--commend-0-all-0.htm?ssid=e-s5&at_topsearch=1

HTC Touch

[imron]

Plus another $US100 for Pleco with a decent set of dictionaries. I'd still go for Pleco though.

[Sp0cK]

You know anything about the besta device tho? I know pleco is good - tho I'd like to hear it's better by experience

[crjcrj]

Check out this store (real physical in Beijing or Taobao) for Palm devices (WM and Palm OS) http://okpda.cn/

My entire phone decisions revolve around Pleco, I couldn't study without it. The flexibility of adding dictionaries you want, the ease of finding flashcards on the pleco forums, or exporting them from a variety of other flashcard programmes, the reader for any txt document... it just can't be beat. It is so much more than a dictionary. Also, great customer service, upgrade policies, and the ability to move to another device in future for free (ie, if you change phones).

[Sp0cK]

Ah yep I see the PDA's are affordable - Although I just went into town (Nanning) and seems like they don't have any of that for sale. I have asked for HTC phones and the guy goes like "not in nanning." Which I find quite unlikely for a city of millions... I've noticed there's heaps of chinese brands around as well but no idea how trustworthy they are for pleco software

[gato]

. I have asked for HTC phones and the guy goes like "not in nanning."

HTC is sold under the Dopod (多普达) name in mainland China. Maybe you can ask again for that?

[imron]

But they are designed to conform with local market regulations, meaning the Dopod equivalents don't have Wifi - which may or may not be an issue for you, but it's something to be aware of. Any HTC will be a grey-market import (水货) so you'll need to go to the markets that sell these types of phones. No phone shop with legitimate distribution channels will be stocking them, either in Nanning or elsewhere.

[Sp0cK]

Went to have a look at a few dopod models - They look pretty sweet and seem to have a wifi. One of the cheapest they had was the touch - still a Y3700 (online i see them for $200!). I simply have no idea which one to buy, but pleco says windows mobile is a better platform to use for speed and stability. I want to spend about 1500 yuan and be able to run pleco 2.0 as well (if possible with a keyboard). As long as its readible for pleco and good stability which one would my best bet be?

[adrianlondon]

I have Pleco running on a Palm TX. The TX has a great screen, and as I've had mine for over 3 years, they should be cheap to buy now.

But don't underestimate the hassle of it not being a phone. I rarely carried my Palm with me when I lived in China and virtually never do now I'm in London.

[gato]

One of the cheapest they had was the touch - still a Y3700 (online i see them for $200!).

Do you which model of Dopod Touch it is? The first edition of Touch came out more than a year ago (maybe two) and should be around RMB 2000 now, if they are still available. They are sold as Dopod S1.

See here for some price quotes:

http://detail.zol.com.cn/price_search.php?subcatid=57&manuid=1041&param=s528&ref0=http://mobile.zol.com.cn/manu_1041.shtml

多普达智能手机报价

[hanxue]

I'm using Besta CD-859 (I guess the one you're asking about is the American version of Taiwanese Besta CD-869), which I bought in Taiwan a good year and a half ago, and I've been pretty content with it. It seems to have a vast array of character definitions (even those very rare ones - though those will usually only have an explanation in Chinese). It has a Chinese-English, English-Chinese, Chinese-Chinese, Terminological, Idioms, Slang etc. dictionaries included. You can also add new entries to the dictionary.

What I find somewhat inconvenient is that usually when you look up a Chinese word, the English definition will list the most frequent translations of the word - but not ALL possible ones. Usually you would then have to look the same word up in Chinese-Chinese dictionary as well, in order to get those other, lesser known definitions of the word. It's not much of a hassle to do so, though, since cross-browsing through dictionaries is really smooth and easy; it's just that sometimes one would wish to have ALL the definitions listed in English as well. Also, Besta is in large meant for Taiwanese students learning English. Hence there are countless Vocabulary, Conversation and whatnot practices for English learning, which I personally find redundant and would rather trade it for a Classical Chinese dictionary or something (for me) more useful that is still missing as of now.

Another thing I've disliked about Besta and found less convenient than Pleco is that you can only input one word in Pinyin at a time; you can't just type beijing and it will come up with characters combination like 北京 背景 背静. Instead you'd first have to input bei, then select which bei you're looking for, and only then it will list most common combinations with that character.

I remember when I studied in Taiwan, a classmate of mine had Pleco and it seemed quite neat and convenient for use. You could just type the entire word in Pinyin and it would prepare the characters that match that input. I'm sure Pleco is on par if not even better than Besta in terms of Chinese vocabulary - especially multy-syllabic Chinese words - but I have a feeling that Besta perhaps still beats Pleco in terms of single character definitions - i.e. those rare/uncommon characters like 掱 or 豅 or 襺 or 屭 which is what still makes Besta invaluable in my eyes. I would myself be interested in comparison of the two as well (maybe someone with Pleco could try and look these characters up in Pleco for fun to see if there is a definition for any of them).

When I was deciding between Besta and Pleco I eventually went for Besta because with Pleco I would've had to buy a Palm as well. Nowadays though, you can just buy a blackberry/HTC phone and have it installed on it, which makes it a lot more convenient since you have a phone and a dictionary all in one; so no longer you'd have to carry phone AND a dictionary. I hope there is an iPhone version of Pleco a year from now when I'll be purchasing iPhone. If there is, I'll seriously consider getting Pleco.

Edited September 4, 2009 at 08:36 AM by jon09

[gato]

I have a feeling that Besta perhaps still beats Pleco in terms of single character definitions - i.e. those rare/uncommon characters like 掱 or 豅 or 襺 or 屭 which is what still makes Besta invaluable in my eyes.

Pleco 2.0 has the Unihan dictionary built-in, so many rare characters now also have English definitions.

See here for the Unihan dictionary. Pleco will give you whatever definition is in the Unihan dictionary.

http://unicode.org/charts/unihan.html

掱 = (shou3) pickpocket

屭 = (xi4) strength

豅 = (long2) no definition

襺 = (jian3) no definition

[imron]

Yep, those rare ones are in Pleco and even have stroke order animations.

[hanxue]

Yeah, well but Besta has definitions + stroke order animations for all 4 characters I listed above. The definitions are only in Chinese though, but that's good enough for me, as you can always cross-lookup everything in Besta...