Brighthand reviews the Palm Zire

[Steve]

Full review at http://www.brighthand.com/article/Palm_Zire_Review

[palmguru]

I just don't understand what they are trying to gain on this entry level. With the $199 Dell Pocket PC which will have a 300 MHZ Xscale processor and interchangeable battery, I would never jump into this de-Zire-ing Palm.

I'll just wait for this Dell's Cartera or Clemente. It is not very bad at all for $199.00!!! Just $100 over Zire!

[alexp]

Originally posted by PDAski
I just don't understand what they are trying to gain on this entry level. With the $199 Dell Pocket PC which will have a 300 MHZ Xscale processor and interchangeable battery, I would never jump into this de-Zire-ing Palm.

I'll just wait for this Dell's Cartera or Clemente. It is not very bad at all for $199.00!!! Just $100 over Zire!

If your sole concern is price vs. performance, then the Dell is great. But there are other factors to consider---

BATTERY: Just how long will the Dell's last, even if you can replace it? If the supplied battery is weak, and stronger ones are high-cost, then your $200 price tag jumps significantly.
SIZE: The Zire is roughly the size of a Palm Vx. The Dell, based on early specs, does nothing to make PPC any sleeker.
AVAILABILITY: Palm is gearing this model toward the Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreen's, Eckerd crowd. Ever seen a Dell available at Target?

Naturally, you wouldn't go for the Zire. Neither would I, which is why I'm not going to buy it. But we're not the target market. What surprises me is that people like PDAski are too myopic to see this. The target market for this device won't likely care about a PPC available only through Dell's website. They won't care if a Palm Vx is available for less than $100 on eBay. The main concern for Palm at this point is the Casio, Royal, and assorted other ultra-low-end PDAs that are cheaper than the Zire yet may seem like they "do as much." If the Zire flops, those models will be the culprits, not a bulky new PDA from Dell.

BTW, kudos to Ed on a fair review that focused on "what it is," instead of "what I want my next dream PDA to be." Here's hoping the comments we see are this rational.

[imported_argent]

Originally posted by PDAski
I just don't understand what they are trying to gain on this entry level.

I assume they're trying to gain new customers. It's a third the price of the cheapest currently available Pocket PC, and half the price of the rumored Dell. "only $100 more" is a huge difference when that doubles the price of the unit!

And 20+ hours runtime? My Jornada's pretty abstemious, but I wouldn't try and go a long weekend without a charge even with a spare battery pack on hand.

This is aimed at ordinary people, not geeks like us.

[imported_felixdd]

There IS a device from long ago -- called the DaVinci (made by a company called "Royal").

99 bucks, around the same stats -- small program base, but even it had a backlight.

Although it DID use 2 AAA's and was kind of bulky...but that's beside the point.

The lack of backlight turned me away from this device immediately.

[imported_argent]

Originally posted by felixdd
There IS a device from long ago -- called the DaVinci (made by a company called "Royal").

Someone gave me one of those. I threw it out rather than risk someone actually trying to use it. Not only was the HWR awful, the apps clumsy, but it had a habit of resetting and losing all its data without any provocation. THAT is simply unacceptable.

They also had at least two completely different versions (different CPUs even) that were only compatible insofar as the desktop software could talk to both, and they never bothered providing an SDK for the second. The only way to tell them apart was the serial number.

So, basically, there's pretty much nothing useful you can learn frim the daVinci that's applicable to any other handheld.

[Ed Hardy]

I had an interesting experience with the Zire this weekend. A friend of mine has been looking for the right handheld for over a year. While she plays the occasional game, what she has really been looking for was an electronic address book.

Her company bought her an iPAQ (I can't remember which one) but she
stopped using it because it had the bad habit of totally draining its batteries and losing the contents of its RAM. This isn't because she used it so much; it's because she used it so little. She only needed to look up an address or phone number every few days so she didn't ever think to plug it in.

A few months ago she bought herself a NR70V and had the same thing happen. She enjoyed playing with a cool features but she didn't need most of them and eventually the short battery life caused her problems.

I happened to talk to her about the Zire and she bought one the first day it was available. She loves it. She's had it two weeks now and has only had to charge it once (the day she bought it) and the battery isn't anywhere near drained. She's really happy to know that she has her addresses and phone numbers with her all the time and they won't suddenly disappear because she forgot to charge the battery for a few weeks. She loves the way it looks (and she's very fashion conscious) and how small and light it is.

I would never be happy with a Zire (or m150 if you want to be precise) but I wanted to let people know that there are people who are very satisfied by it.

[baedr]

I bought my Zire about 2 weeks ago due to the crash of the SHARP YO-series organizer I had used for the last 6 years. In that Sharp I had almost 800 entries in the address book alone, along with 6 years of schedules, memos and come-up reminders. I had the Sharp backed up on my PC, but transferring the data to my new device was a time-intensive effort. I must say that the manual backup was the only painful issue to date with my ZIRE. The USB port backup on the ZIRE takes seconds rather than many minutes compared to the Sharp, it clearly can hold many more records of all types, and is smaller and easier to use. I have remove the games from my ZIRE, since to me it is a work-related address/date book. If I wanted a gameboy, I would have bought one. I got a $25 rebate with my purchase, but even at $100 I would consider it a great investment in efficiency for anyone needing quick access to previously archived information.

My only gripe is the cover flap. It seems floppy, flimsy and I wonder how long the hinge will last before tearing. I'm considering the optional case.

Overall, it is a wonderfully functional work-related tool.

[imported_Ben S]

I have a story similar to Ed's. A co-worker of mine went from a Jornada (which he never thought to charge, and had to re-load about once a month) to an m125 (on which he never thought to change the batteries, and had to re-load every couple of months (it didn't help that he never HotSyncs :-)), to a Zire. And now he's *quite* happy. I introduced him to ReDo, so now he has a biweekly recurring ToDo to plug his unit in. So far he hasn't lost anything and *loves* the compact size.

One size definitely does *not* fit all, but it's good when one size fits one.

[Ralf]

Hi everybody,

since I am working on introducing the Palm to the companies I have worked for so far one of the barriers to get Palms was the high price compared to a standard paper timer (1 to 4;-(().

With the new ZIRE that has changed completely and it gives everything a normal paper timer offers and quite a bit more (really, you should think about spending all this time searching for names in your timer before the time you owned a Palm).

When the first time user gets to like the device ZIRE and wants to do more with it, why not exchange it for a better model like a m500, TUNGSTEN?

To let the Palm-community grow this was the BEST Palm could have done:

introducing the ZIRE for a reasonable price:-)))

Ralf, a very satisfied m500-user