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+--- Thread: Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary (/thread-1072.html)
Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary - rich_f - 2008-01-07
I figured I'd post a brief review of this electronic dictionary, since I picked one up in October while I was in Japan, and I really felt like sharing how much I like it. I bought it at the Bic Camera in Nagoya for about 29,800 yen (~$260 US at the time), but I think you can probably find it for less now. (When I left Japan in mid-November, I saw it at Bic for ~26,000 yen.)
http://www.sharp.co.jp/products/pc_mobile/edictionary/prod04/pwat760b/index.html
It comes in other colors, but I went with black.
The Sharp is one of the new models of Japanese electronic dictionaries that come with a small touchpad at the base of the unit that allows you to draw the kanji you want to look up, just like the electronic dictionary you can buy for the Nintendo DS. (Kanji sonomama rakubiki jiten, I think it's called...) Sharp isn't the only company doing this-- I think I saw a line of e-dictionaries by Casio as well that had touchpad kanji entry.
Why did I want to replace my DS that with this? Well, in my case, I wanted something that booted up faster for quicker lookups, that also had a bigger screen. The screen on the DS is murder on my eyes for trying to read kanji. Also, the DS is painfully slow to boot up in comparison, just to look up a word or two. The Sharp also has a better selection of other dictionaries to use when looking up tricky words.
Once I started looking up kanji by drawing them, I was hooked on that particular process. I have an older Sharp edict, and while I like it a lot, looking up kanji by stroke counts and radicals is never as easy or straightforward as it sounds. The nice thing about the kanji recognition is that it will guess your character, then show 10 or so possible matches it thinks you're trying to make along the top of the touchpad, while filling in the blank up top with guess #1. So you can tell it what you meant, not necessarily what you drew. I'd say it's about 70% accurate at guessing, so long as you get the stroke order right, you'll be in the ballpark.
Yes, it boots up almost instantaneously. (Maybe a 1-2 second pause.) There are dedicated buttons on the top row that will turn it on instantly at the specified dictionary's lookup page, although I wind up using the Eng/JP JP/Eng lookup page almost exclusively. (Although sometimes I'm forced to use the JP/JP dict.) The Eng/JP dictionary is Genius 2, the same one they've used for the last 4 years or so, and it's the same one in Kanji sonomama rakubiki jiten, but there are other dictionaries in it you can use. There's a kanji dictionary, a few japanese dictionaries, and others as well. With its Super-jump feature, you can look up a word in a number of dictionaries by selecting it in the text you see on-screen. Very handy.
There is an SD card slot for adding other dictionaries, but I have no idea how it works. It would be nice to be able to add a better dictionary, but that will have to come later.
If you go to the main menu, you will see an insane number of dictionaries built in to the unit, most of which you will never use. It also has a speaker for pronunciation of English words. I couldn't find any Japanese entries that used it, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. There are some recorded voices for English, others use a TTS program.
If you're familiar with previous Sharp models, then you won't have much trouble with this one. The keyboard layout is a little different, but the menu layout is roughly the same... except... they removed one feature I loved in my old Sharp, and that was the ability to look up kanji compounds by any character in the compound. Now you can only do it by the first character in the compound, or so it seems. I suppose I need to spend some more time with it to see if I can find a separate dictionary for looking up compounds.
Size-wise, it's a little big. It's a lot slimmer than the DS, but it's wider. It's about the size of a skinny paperback. It's pocketable, but only just. It runs on 2 AAA batteries. It also comes with headphones (don't bother), and a stylus. The stylus isn't great, but it does its job.
Getting one if you don't live in or travel to Japan might be tricky. You'll probably need to find an importer, or contact a friend over there. Just remind them that they'll get points if they buy it at one of the big chain stores, so they'll get a little something, too. (I got about 3000 yen worth of points when I bought mine, enough for a really ugly bright orange shockproof case.)
EDIT: Ah, one other very important thing-- everything is in Japanese. I don't think there's a function to turn menus to English, and anyway, the manual and everything else is in Japanese. So this would NOT be something for beginners.
Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary - urshurak - 2008-02-02
Hi,
my english isn't very good, but I'll try; I bought one of those Papyrus too and I'm very happy with it; I'm working my way through the japanese manual and detected many features I wouldn't have found otherwise; like the medical section - very handy for my work in the hospital; or the nature sounds; or the games for the brain ;-))
I'm still beginner, but this dictionary is very useful.
Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary - wrightak - 2008-02-02
Is it possible to save things onto the SD card to transfer to your PC?
Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary - rich_f - 2008-02-02
urshurak Wrote:Hi, my english isn't very good, but I'll try; I bought one of those Papyrus too and I'm very happy with it; I'm working my way through the japanese manual and detected many features I wouldn't have found otherwise; like the medical section - very handy for my work in the hospital; or the nature sounds; or the games for the brain ;-))How do you get the nature sounds to work? That sounds interesting. I haven't really had the chance to go through the fine manual yet.
I'm still beginner, but this dictionary is very useful.
wrightak Wrote:Is it possible to save things onto the SD card to transfer to your PC?I'm not too sure I follow-- what things would you save from the dictionary onto an SD card? I don't think there's anything in particular you can save from it--I think the SD card reader is more for loading extra dictionaries than for saving anything, but I could be wrong.
Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary - Henke - 2008-02-02
rich_f Wrote:How do you get the nature sounds to work? That sounds interesting. I haven't really had the chance to go through the fine manual yet.I bought exactly the same dictionary. choose the スーパー大辞林3.0 (or fast button 2), and then 音を聞く and let the animals make their sounds or listen to some classical music.
and remember the volume...
One nice feature I like is the button （しおり） that takes you to a history list of all the entries you have looked up (up to like 30-50 or something). I use It for reviewing words I had to look up and enter them in anki when I get home.
I'm not that good a Japanese yet, so I'm a bit lost in it. But I noticed the English section has guides for writing mails, some grammar explanations and conversation examples. Of course it's aimed at Japanese not knowing English, but it could help if you happen to find yourself in a situation covered in it.
Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary - wrightak - 2008-02-03
rich_f Wrote:I'm not too sure I follow-- what things would you save from the dictionary onto an SD card? I don't think there's anything in particular you can save from it--I think the SD card reader is more for loading extra dictionaries than for saving anything, but I could be wrong.On my old machine, I can save to memory the words that I look up. I was wondering if you could export this list (via the SD card) to your PC. It would be useful for making flash cards of words you encounter during the day. Doesn't look like it though.
Sharp Papyrus PW-AT760 E-dictionary - Jarvik7 - 2008-02-03
When I was checking out denshijisho to replace my old compact Seiko one, I found Sharp to be easily the worst of the major brands. The interface was awful and extremely slow and the included references weren't that great. If you really want oneseg or a color screen I guess it's your only choice though.
Seiko are great but afaik have no pen input system yet. They do have the best keyboards though.
I found the best brand to be Casio. They have the best all around features & interface, and they have many more models to choose from. The one I bought was a 日本語系 one which they do not have an equivalent of yet in the 2008 hardware refresh. It has tons and tons of speciality J-J references, as well as the normal 和英 & 英和 stuff that's on the other models (although fewer, one of each instead of two of each). The one weak point is that the e-e dictionary is awful. Cambridge Learner's Dictionary. It hasn't been a problem for me though, as I rarely want to look up English words in English. If your Japanese ability is at a level where you can read dictionary definitions in Japanese (so you can make use of the extra references), it is easily THE model to get.