Palm Zire 72

After deciding to retire my old HP Jornada I wanted to venture into the world of Palm OS and see what it was all about. I picked up a Palm Zire 72 handheld which is a major improvement from the last palm device that I had played with (the palm V). As far as the hardware goes, I’m very pleased with the design. The two main features of this device that set it apart are its built-in Bluetooth and the 1.2 MegaPixal camera.

Since this is the only Bluetooth device I own, I have not yet had a chance to test out that functionality but the camera has been useful to me thus far. I have found it useful as a poor-mans scanner and for those frequent moments when you wish you had a camera on you. However, it is certainly not a replacement for a decent digital camera. It has two flaws that prevent it from replacing my Canon Digital Elf. The sensor requires plenty of light. Even a moderately lit room will turn out almost completely black. Also, because of its relatively high resolution, you must hold the camera still for about 2 seconds while taking the picture. This is fine for snapping documents and whatnot, but is very annoying when trying to capture anything that moves.

Onto the software…. as I said, this is my first experience with Palm OS. Coming from Windows CE I have found Palm to be much easier to navigate and find the data I’m looking for. The only thing I don’t like so far, is the way software is removed. Installing software is no big deal but to delete it, you can only find it by the internal names. WTF is SndEnPhr? or SS_P2P? or PMHDB? Why can’t they just show you the same list that you see in the main menu? Anyway, that’s my only rant with it. Overall I would recommend this device to those of you looking for a new PDA in the mid price range.

Update 6/27/04
My first real complaint with the Zire…. After a couple months of normal handling, the blue paint is starting to flake off.