What with Casio winning the palmsize PC race to market with the Cassiopeia E-10 last spring, and Philips wooing everyone with the long delayed but beautiful Nino, the Everex Freestyle has been all but ignored by most reviewers. This is too bad since you just may reconsider your first choice for a palmsize PC once you learn about the great features of the clever Freestyle. In the 50s, kids would put big engines and other racing gear into old clunkers, then go looking for unsuspecting pray in their “sleepers,” easily beating them at stoplight drag races. Everex, although unintentionally, has done just that with the Freestyle. At first glance, the device looks like a rather plain palmsize PC. But anyone who spends more than a few minutes with the Freestyle quickly realizes there’s some pretty powerful stuff under the hood. Take, for example, the vibrating notification, one of the Freestyle’s coolest and most underreported features. Like Motorola cellular phones that vibrate instead of ring, the Freestyle can silently alert you of alarms and appointments. Second on the cool factor list is Everex’s “all in one” accessory. It is a fold-out stand with a powerful 33.6Kbps modem/ 14.4Kbps fax that comes bundled with the high-end “Executive” version. While the speed of the modem alone is noteworthy, Everex gets huge bonus points for also including an on/off power switch to turn off the modem when docked with the Freestyle, and an auxiliary battery pack that uses AA batteries. This makes the stand considerably more bulky, but the gain in battery life is absolutely worthwhile. In addition, Everex has burned an auxiliary power notification into ROM to notify you when power gets low on the base module and monitor AC/DC charging. The Freestyle “Manager,” Everex’s next-in-line to the Executive, sports a MobileCradle that offers all of the same features except for the fax modem. After this introduction, let’s talk basics. The Freestyle is exactly the same size as the Casio E-10. The front sports four application buttons, while the exit, toggle/action and power buttons are on the right side, and controls for the voice recorder, backlight, and contrast are on the left. Pressing the contrast button continuously cycles through all contrast settings. While this is an unusual method, once you have found your preferred screen setting, you won’t have to worry about screwing up your settings by accidentally bumping a contrast wheel. While the device has three more buttons than the E-10, they are not as easy to discern with their cryptic labels, and awkward to use due to an odd layout structure. The case has a drop-in CompactFlash card slot on the top and a 2.5mm dual audio jack that allows you to use Everex’s custom headphone/microphone headset to record and privately listen to .wav recordings. Backup batteries and the system ROM (which, on the 4MB Associate, can be upgraded to 8MB) reside behind a pop open panel on the back of the device. While the Freestyle doesn’t ship with any third party software, registering it on the Everex web site reveals an electronic pot of gold. Compete versions of bFAX Express, bMobile News, bTask, and Quicken ExpensAble, along with trial versions of Illiumsoft’s eWallet and CalliGrapher are available for download. The Freestyle is available in three models: Associate (4MB), Manager (8MB and basic MobileCradle), and Executive (8MB with fax modem MobileCradle). Every model of Freestyle comes with rechargable Nickel metal hydride batteries. - Dan Hanttula