Palm Zire 71 Handheld here
Palm Zire 71 Handheld hereI am a PDA fanatic. Actually, it’s a illness. I’ve owned ten PDAs and I must say that I love my Zire 71 best out of all of them–Pocket PC or Palm.Let me state this now–you will NOT find a PDA that sports a built-in digital camera at this price. Granted, it’s not a megapixel camera, but it’s good enough for websites and to take pics of possible gift items and bring home to your spouse for review. It’s not a necessity in a PDA, but it’s a very nice convenience, and it actually does come in handy for those times when you wouldn’t have a camera on you.As for more realistic uses, I didn’t have any problems inputting phone numbers, memos, creating Word and Excel files (I bought Docs to Go separately), or listening to MP3s. Everything went smoothly and without pauses or glitches.Here are some of the minor qualms I first had with my Zire 71, but quickly got over. Learning Graffiti 2 stinks once you’ve gotten used to the original Graffiti, but for new Palm owners, it won’t be a problem. The Real audio player works fine, but without any equalizer settings, you would probably opt for a 3rd party MP3 player (like I did), and the bundled Kinoma Producer for the PC lacks quality settings that you would need to play high-res movies (so you’ll have to buy it separately, if you want better quality). Again, all small problems. I’m just picky.What I like about it:-Beautiful, crisp color display (even better than my Clies)-Built-in MP3 playback (Can also play video with Kinoma Player)-Zippy TI OMAP processor (Makes my Clie SJ30 seem like a snail)-Built-in digital camera-Cool slide open design-Takes SD cards to store pictures, MP3s, video clips, etc.What I don’t like:-Back housing is a fingerprint magnet! (I hate fingerprints!)-Isn’t able to download pics from my Casio wrist camera or my Nokia 3650 phone. (IR problem or OS 5.1? I think it’s OS 5.1)-Huge, brick-like cradle/AC adapterOkay, my only serious complaint was the compatibility issues with my phone and watch. Other than that, this is an awesome PDA that will fit the needs of any working professional, student, or techno-geek.So I give it a 4-star rating, only because it’s not compatible with my phone and watch, even though all my other Palm OS 4 devices and Pocket PC devices had no problems with either. As a side note, I own a Japanese Sony Clie PEG-TJ25, which uses Palm OS 5.2, and it works with my watch and phone, so it might be an OS 5.1 issue (or is it just because I bought it in Japan?), which is why I’ll keep my 4-star rating.
