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My Palm History 15th February 2005 I've been using a Palm PDA for the last five years. I've had four Palms. Zire 71 m515 IIIc III Palm Zire 71 I'm currently using the Palm Zire 71. I am extremely happy with it. There are many things to like. Graphics. Superb graphics. 320x320 graphics and decent colour. The m515 had a washed out, dim colour screen. The Zire 71 has brillaint, vibrant colour, and much better definition. Some of my games and applications suddenly showed beautiful icons and noticeably better graphics. Others needed an upgrade to show the enhanced graphic versions. This is the single biggest improvement from the m515 to the Zire 71. The quality of the graphics screen is wonderful. It's a lot speedier than the m515. Most operations are noticeably faster, even long Handbase loads and calculations. It's fast enough to decode mp3s on the fly. It's got a soft, slick feel to it. The m515 had an edgy, metal feel to it. The Zire 51 is all plastic, but it feels warm and slick and sensual to the touch. Yeah, that's a bit sick, but when you handle a Zire, you'll know what I mean. It fits my Palm Ultra-Thin Keyboard easily. I abandoned the keyboard with the m515 because I could never get it seated properly. The Zire 71 seems to seat very easily. It works and I'm happy. Except when I installed the keyboard drivers, I seem to have lost the ability to beam. Must research that some more. Battery usage seems better than the m515. The screen is so good that I can keep it dimmer and still see perfectly so it uses less battery. Some neutral thoughts. Same amount of memory - 16 meg. Ho hum. I can fit the same applications as with the m515, but the new versions with the extra graphics are all larger, so I'm feeling squeezed for memory again. Sure, I can stick a SD memory card in and transfer stuff to that, but then I have to switch between the Encyclopedia and the memory card and that's a source of irritation. It comes with a built-in digital camera. I didn't know this when I bought the Zire, and found it by accident, so that was pretty cool. However, it involves sliding the Palm in half, so there's a source of mechanical failure waiting to happen. The resolution of the photos is low, and I'd rather use my 5 megapixel digital camera. However, on those rare occasions in a business meeting when your female boss suddenly goes topless and your camera is not in sight but your Palm is, you can capture the event and improve your job prospects. Some bad points. No flip-top at all. No protection for the screen. I can't just put it in my pocket and carry it round. So I've got it in this faux-leather case that bulks the Zire out. I don't like it. I've been looking for some sort of case that protects the screen but takes less than a second to flip open ready for use. But there isn't anything. I might end up settling for one of those neoprene zip-up cases. I really liked the hard flip-tops of the Palm III series. I wish we could go back to that. The stylus has sharp edges that fit right in the soft part of my hand between the thumb and forefinger and irritates me. THe m515 did this a little bit, but the Zire stylus really sucks. I'm actively searching for a replacement stylus with smooth edges. Palm m515 I used the Palm m515 for about a year. It was okay, but there were a few things I didn't like. It changed from Graffiti to Graffiti2. Ts and Is are very different and irritate me no end. Also Es and Qs. And I can't do an O or 0 at all. They changed Graffiti for legal reasons, so I was told. No hard case flip-top. It's got this leather side-flip job that's loose and floppy and gets in the way. I really liked the hard flip-tops of the Palm III series. It's not contoured like the original Palm III. I read that the shape of those original ones came after the inventor carved a block of wood and carried it around and kept whittling and smoothing until he had a shape that felt good. The m515 is a shape made by a marketing department. Hard to hold and no contours. The colour screen is dull and seems to be lacking in the green department. I use CityTime and on the IIIc, the map colours were vivid and vibrant. On the m515, they're washed out and dull. The green background in card games is really washed out. New interface on the m515 so I can't use my old keyboard. Had to buy a new keyboard. I read that Palm have standardised on the new interface, so if I upgrade to a Tungsten or something newer, the theory is that I can still use my new keyboard. Battery usage sucks. You need the backlight on to see the screen. Even though I keep it turned way down, it sucks the life out of the batteries quickly. The IIIc could go two weeks without needing a charge. The m515 needs a charge every two days. Of course, there's a lot more to like about the new m515. Faster processor. Not sure what the difference is, but it's made most operations a little speedier. HandBase is still a little slow doing display on large databases, but it's a lot faster than it was on the IIIc. More memory. 16 meg of RAM. Woohoo. I can jam in some more apps, just in case. Space for a memory card. I bought a 32 meg memory card to fit in there, but can't do a thing with it. Out of desperation, I bought the Encyclopedia Britannica (miniature version) on a memory card, and keep that in the Palm at all times just so I can say I use the memory slot. The encyclopedia hasn't helped me any, but it sometimes helps to pass the time by browsing for simplistic facts. Faster syncing with the USB interface. This is offset by the extra trouble getting the m515 to sync with Linux using USB. I ended up buying a Belkin cable to carry round with the laptop and this has both USB and serial. I use either. The USB interface lets you recharge the built-in batteries. Palm IIIc I used the Palm IIIc for about one year. It fell out of my pocket one evening and landed on the ground. I didn't think much of it at the time, but next day I tried to use it and the screen was dead. I hadn't done a sync or a backup for a while, so I was pretty upset. When I fiddled with it a bit, it made a few beep-boop noises, so I though that maybe the screen was dead but everything else was okay. I stuck it in the cradle, fired up pilot-xfer and started a backup. It worked. I sucked all my data off the Palm and preserved it to cdrom. Then I went out and bought the Palm m515 and transferred everything to it and life carried on as usual. The Palm IIIc had some good features. Colour. Beautiful, bright, vivid colours. I loved it. So easy to see, even in daytime. More memory than the Palm III. More applicatiosn to jam in. But there's always things to dislike. It was longer than the Palm III. Considerably longer. It would poke out the top of my shirt pocket. Didn't fit in the hand as comfortably as the III. And it was a lot heavier. All the weight seemed to be in the rechargeable batteries at the base. Rechargeable batteries. Most people like this. Stick it in the cradle and recharge the batteries. Not so easy if you're travelling the wilds of Turkey or Tibet to find a power source that works and will fit your cradle, let alone making room for the cradle in the backback. The old Palm III used two AAA batteries, and even in the wilds of Borneo you can come into any little village and buy a couple of Duracell AAA replacements. Or carry a bag of them yourself, and they last a month per pair. The cradle. You get the cradle and then you get the power supply and you plug the power supply into the cradle, and the cradle attaches to both computer and Palm. I read reports that the power supply and the cradle could burn out your motherboard, but I never experienced anything like that. I just didn't like the clumsiness of it. Palm III My first Palm. Hand-contoured. Light. A delight to handle and use. For me, it was a new, exciting gadget and I loved it. Sure it had limitations, but I quickly became attached to it. I used it all the time. As always, there were small niggling problems. Not much memory. I was always running up against lack of memory problems. Always had to jiggle data and apps and switch apps in and out. The screen was glass and I scratched it from constant use. Too late, I bought those protective sheets and covered it up. It made it easier to use after the screen was scratched, but I wish I had covered up before. [Palm Home] [Linux Home]