LOL - Sorry about that empty thread...hehee - Jumpy fingers this a.m....too much coffee.

Let's try again:

1) Gotta love the hard buttons, especially the "joy stick" control. This allows most users to eliminate the on screen joystick for most equipment, which allows much more screen room for buttons, etc. Certainly much better for wife acceptance.

2) I am only so-so about the screen and back lite brightness. I guess I was expecting more. It is ok and an improvement over the 1000. However, I guess not what I was expecting. My wife and I compared them side-by-side the other day with similar buttons on both and at times she commented the old 1000 was more visible. The 3k seems to have a bit more screen glare in daylight. However, in a darkish room, the backlighting on the 3k was better. I use a Compaq Ipaq everyday and unfortunately, that screen has set the bar for me.

3) Installed PENG on an XP box and have not had any problems so far. Once the simulator crashed but other than that, everything worked as expected. No issues with usb, no issues with 3-4 files open at the same time. No issues converting my old ccf as far as I know. I am ripping it apart and redesigning for the 3k, but AFSIK, all of the codes seems to be ok.

4) Saving a file seems to take a long time and downloading to the 3k via usb takes a long time. I am surprised by this. My pc has usb 1.0 not the newer 2.0 but I cannot understand why such a small file (<500k) takes 3-4 minutes to download. Possibly PENG is doing a lot of work with the file, compressing or whatever, but it seems very slow.

5) I had installed the upgrade that Phillips put out to apparently improve IR speeds but my converted ccf takes 2x as long to fire off a All-Power On sequence, with 5-6 quick pauses. I will look at this further to see if all of the pauses are necessary.

6) Screen changes are a little bit slower than the 1k, but probably not enough to really be an issue.

7) My unit is not turning on when it is picked up. Possibly I have a menu set wrong. I thought I read the 3k did this. More to experiment with...

8) Keep in mind that I was just about ready to buy a 6000 for the brighter, color screen, etc. When I saw the 3k now available, the hardbutton concept really got my attention. So, my comments about the 3k screen may be a bit biased.

9) One thing for sure. Phillips did a great job with the 3k, especially to price the unit where is is in the marketplace. Under $300 is excellent. Now if they could just figure out how to make it look like the Compaq Ipaq, with that really awesome screen, then they would have a real winner. I would think they could make a unit to sell for around $500 that uses the Ipaq screen.

Hope this is useful - Regards...Dave