I bought the casio SF-4900ER (similar to Casio SF 4980ER except the capacity) digital diary in 2000 for around 1600Rs from duty paid shop (nice name for a grey market shop) after much research. Actually the decision was influenced by one of my friend’s opinion about the product. This is the 128kb model with expense mode. I bought the metallic grey one which was a nice decision, since the white one tends to get dirty. As with all Casio products, the quality is just remarkable. The tactile feel of the keys, the display, ruggedness are just great. The usability is the best part with the well spaced QWERTY key layout and the separate 0-9 keys for calculator.
I’ve been using the diary for 6 years now, not a single hiccups/data loss/crashes so far (touch wood). Call me a heavy user, I have changed the battery 4 times (costs 45Rs for 3 CR2032 cells) in this period. The memory was close to 55%, with all the expense details accumulated over the years. The expense mode began to slow down, probably due to the large database. I haven’t used the other features like To-do, memo much. And after the mobile phones invaded us, forgot the Tel-directory too. But the tele data is worth mentioning, it can hold a great deal of info including the e-mail ids of people. One thing which is lacking is the underscore character, which is inevitable mostly in e-mail ids. This is a big negative if you want to store addresses.
Its a complete package for wide user base. But nowadays, most of these features are available in mobile phones, but phones can beat its usability. And I haven’t seen any expense logging application in mobiles. I still hold on to my diary due to this single great feature. I use the expense mode heavily and it helps me in being very systematic. I have some 4 year expense data and its quite huge with more than 1000 entries.
Being able to connect the diary to the PC was another motivation to buy this. It helps to backup the data and protect from data corruption (although it hasn’t happened to me yet). Casio original cable is costly ( as much as the diary itself) and hard to procure. I decided to make it myself from the information available on the internet. Made it for some <100Rs and used the software CASIF/Win by IMSL Software to backup and update the data in diary. Great piece of software.
Overall, I am a most satisfied user of this diary, and would recommend for anyone for its ease of use and portability.