Palm PDA Roundup

Melvin writes "Hardware Extreme has a roundup featuring some of the top PalmOS based PDAs in the market (and a few coming out in the 2nd and 3rd Quarter). Being a geek's gadget, :) I would recommend you guys to check out this roundup if you are planning to get a new Palm PDA."

Comments

Palm Tungsten

[adoll]

Check out my journal entry on my Tungsten. Love the little guy, but not for doing addresses and timekeeping. I read newspapers, listen to OGG files and flip through databases at work.

-AD

Review? Round-up? Where?

[tghost]

Apparently, nowadays printing the back of the box where the specs are gleefully bullet pointed counts as a review.

Re:Review? Round-up? Where?

[wavedeform]

And they didn't even do a good job of that. In the Treo "review" they say:

"The Treo 180 have all the Treo 270 features except without a color screen. The black and white screen will greatly increase your battery's life if you frequently use your phone."

Even ignoring typos, this is just plain wrong. The color 270 gets significantly better battery life than the B&W 180.

Sigh.

Re:Review? Round-up? Where?

[Yo Grark]

Couldn't agree more.

I am in the market to buy a new Palm/PocketPC and was looking forward to this article.

Not one pro/con, not one REAL THOUGHT.

That ranks right up there with the recent journalism though, so all in all I'm not surprised.

Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering

Palm is a sinking ship

[evil-empir3]

Honestly, I don't understand that Palm is still newsworthy. They created some innovative PDAs, but they are about to be gobbled up by all of the PocketPC vendors. The inertia is going to be too much to overcome, especially with Dell now offering a very affordable ($199) PDA that runs circles around anything similarly priced by Palm.

Re:Palm is a sinking ship

[iCEBaLM]

Slashdot readers like myself may not like Palm PDA's because they don't cram a whole lot of whiz-bang features into the PDA's, they aren't laptop replacements in your hand, but that's NOT what Palm is gunning for. They're electronic organizers made for business professionals, and at this they excel. They are better at this job than PocketPCs. They are simple, elegant and trustworthy. You normally do not have to reset a Palm handheld 5 times a day like you do with a PocketPC unless something is horribly wrong with it or an application you have on it was coded by a 3 year old monkey.

Palm is not a sinking ship, they just don't target you as a user.

-- iCEBaLM

Re:Palm is a sinking ship

[frdmfghtr]

Amen to that!

I have had several Palm units: PalmPilot Pro, IIIe, VIIx and i705. When Palm.Net plan changes would have put my monthly bill over $80, I canceled the account on the spot, since wireless access wasn't worth that much every month to me.

I bought a Toshiba e335, and tried it out for about three weeks. In that time:

(1) The alarm light never worked properly,
(2) The battery indicator would jump around from time to time,
(3) ActiveSync would drop out spontaneously, sometimes during a sync operation,
(4) The Transcriber, while a great idea, was awkward when entering appointments and tasks. I used the Block Recognizer (virtual Grafitti pad) more often, simply because it was one of the few thigns that worked reliably.

The OS got in the way of the things I needed to do. Thus, I reverted back to my i705, but haven't reactivated the service (yet). Simply put, the Palm just works. Plain and simple. The lower end units weren't designed to be used regularly to edit Word docs or Excel spreadshets--use your laptop to do that. Viewing them, I can understand, but not editing or creating new docs.

Is sound and color and hi-res graphics important? To some, yes--in that case go for a Sony or one of the Palms that will do such things. I for one don't plan on making a full-color presentation using my PDA--again, that is is what the laptop is for.

All in all, it really does matter what your target customer is. For me, the PocketPC was way too buggy and clumsy. The Palm interface does what I need it to do, cleanly and simply.

Re:Palm is a sinking ship

[waytoomuchcoffee]

I own both a Handera (Palm OS) and an IPAQ 1910. I do not have to reset the Ipaq 5x a day. (I did have to reset the Handera, however, every week or so, but that was OS4).

My company made a business decision on what to upgrade to. We really wanted to keep with the Palm OS, but there was no lightweight, OS 5, full screen versions out there. The Clie's are NOT made for business and are bricks, while the Palm T|T is not full screen (and is expensive).

We settled on the 1910 because of the form factor and very low weight (it's smaller than a Palm V). This is important, as if people can't stick it in their pocket they will not use them as often. They are also cheap; $300 retail, much less than the competing OS 5 models (with our business discount we got them for $264 each). Contrary to what I always thought when I used my Palm, Palms are NOT better at being an electronic organizer for business professionals. There are lots of little tricks you can do with the PPC that you can't do with a Palm -- if you move the left/right directional buttons in the Contact list for example, you can switch between different phone/fax numbers without going into the record itself. Pretty neat, and elegant.

It's a shame because I really loved my full-screen Handera. It's incredibly ironic that Palm users, after years of complaining that PPCs were heavy and were not "simplistic", are now buying up multimedia bricks like the Clies.

Re:Palm is a sinking ship

[UnixRevolution]

I am forced to disagree. Palm's machines, either by OS or by the system itself, are little more than the cheap $30 databanks you see in the stationary section of a store compared to a modern pocket PC. Every time someone refers to my Zaurus SL-5500 as a "Palm Pilot" i cringe and tell them to renounce their blasphemy. The Zaurus's organizer's functions are excellent, and i cannot imagine them being any better. The input ease from the slide-away KB or onscreen KB is excellent, and i have no complaints. It's powerful, and flexible. I could code and compile C programs, write HTML pages, or do any number of things on it if i wanted to. I could even edit images! It's got internal storage to spare, and like Palm or Handspring, doesn't need sync software or proprietary memory to work. (indeed, i've had it for months and have never synched it with another system...i just transfer things via CF or the wireless eth card.) It may have been $400, but it's well worth it. It's a real computer, just like my compaq laptop, my dual Athlon 2100+ workstation, my suns, apples, SGI, and my other x86's. It runs real linux! This also helps it cope with the instability problem the previous author was talking about. I've never had to reset my zaurus, EVER. It's a delight, and superior in every way to any palm. Even its organizer functions are awesome, especially considering i never have to worry about synching it, and i can connect to the web with full color and view real web pages, chat on IRC, and even download files with Qtella. Zaurus, and other PocketPC's, particularly the Linux ones, are the best handhelds out there. Better than WinCE Ipaq/Journada/Axiom/Toshiba systems, better than Palm and Clie, just plain better. AND they fit nicely in your pocket, backpack, briefcase, or laptop tote.

Only info I could find...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything else is jut press releases...

The SL-5600, SL-B500, and SL-C700 will be avaiable Quarter 1 of 2003. Prices have not been set, but the SL-5600 is expected to retail in the $500-$600 range.

http://www.infosync.no/news/2002/n/2593.html

Gadget?

[cybermace5]

"Being a geek's gadget, :) I would recommend you guys to check out this roundup if you are planning to get a new Palm PDA."

This is a first ever: a Slashdot submission from the PDA itself! Now when did they become sentient....

Re:Gadget?

[fiftyfly]

"Being a geek's gadget, :) I would recommend you guys to check out this roundup if you are planning to get a new Palm PDA."

This is a first ever: a Slashdot submission from the PDA itself! Now when did they become sentient....

meh - who ever said you had to be sentient to post on /.?

C'mon Apple!

[Snagle]

I Want My iPDA !!!

Roundup?

[t0ny]

I wouldnt call it a roundup. Looks more like a review of all the available product liturature in one convenient place.

More of an advertising spot than a review; I was hoping for comparisons and criticisms on the different models.

Which one will play Quake 3?

Content Free Article?

[crawling_chaos]

Was it just me, or did this roundup look suspiciously like a "cut and paste the press releases and call it an article" job? There was no insight as to which device would be better for particular tasks, just breathless discussions of each device that read as if they'd come straight from the manufacturer's PR flacks.

Is this normal for this site? If so, I don't think that I'll be reading any more articles that they "write."

i705?

[lpret]

What the hell is the i705 doing on that list?
I treat it much lower than the Palm Vx which is the epitome of a sexy PDA. The i705 is perhaps the worst PDA ever put out by Palm in that it does nothing except extend the life of Palm.net or whatever they called it. Even the Palm VIIx was more groundbreaking than the i705.

I do have to say that after moving from Palm to Pocket PC, the thing I miss the most is a decent battery life. My Toshiba e740 gets about 3 hours, while my Vx got about 2 weeks.

Sharp Zaurus

[SHEENmaster]

Does all that, with a kickass k/b. I can't imagine using PalmOS with graffitti and all that bs.

For those that are wondering, yes the Zaurus runs real Linux. Yes, Debian has been ported. Yes, a better pda environment than sharp's is under development. Yes, having a wifi CF card and a 256mb SD card is the high life. Yes you can connect that that serial terminal or k/b up.

Re:Sharp Zaurus

[Hanno]

I own a PalmOS PDA and a Zaurus.

Yes, I'm a geek and I love techno toys. But I beg to differ: The Zaurus is not a good PDA.

In addition to my earlier rant:

My Palm PDA runs on one set of rechargeable batteries for two or three weeks. My Zaurus runs two or three days. Even if I'm away and can't recharge the Palm's batteries, I can get standard AAA batteries anywhere. The Zaurus battery is too small and it's a proprietary format, so I always have to bring the AC adapter.

Granted, there are Palm PDAs with proprietary batteries, as well. But I see the limited battery lifetime and the price tag of replacement batteries as two of the major minuses of the Zaurus.

I can't imagine using PalmOS with graffitti and all that bs

Yes, you obviously can't since you never did. The Palm's applications do their job and that's it - and that's all I want from a PDA.

Graffiti is a blessing. It works and I learned it within minutes, while the Zaurus' joke of a handwriting recognition software still doesn't recognize my handwriting, despite using about two hours of training on it, after which I gave up.

You're right, though, the Zaurus keyboard is great. But I would love to see Graffiti or something similar on it. Yes, you can teach the Zaurus different strokes and there is a software package with the Graffiti strokes, but it just plain and simply doesn't work as good as the PalmOS PDAs.

Considering the fact that the Zaurus CPU is more powerful than the one used in the older Palms, I'm sure that better recognition could be possible. But there just isn't anything in it now.

yes the Zaurus runs real Linux. Yes, Debian [debian.org] has been ported. Yes, a better pda environment [openzaurus.org] than sharp's is under development.

The Zaurus' Linux environment is neat, but in daily use, the PalmOS standard software is way more productive for me. The Qtopia apps aren't as well thought out. I personally don't mind, but the Palm PDAs are easy to understand and easy to use for everyone (including my Mom), while the Zaurus is a techno toy that also includes a mediocre calendar and addressbook software.

It's nice to write software for the Zaurus, though, much nicer than for PalmOS, since there are so many alternatives to choose from in the Linux world. Yet it's kind of sad that the Linux sync support of the Zaurus is so bad and kernel driver needed for the desktop side still crashes the PC every now and then.

Yes, having a wifi CF card and a 256mb SD card is the high life.

If you can afford them and can live with the limited battery lifetime of your PDA as a consequence.

Yes you can connect that that serial terminal or k/b up.

Show me a decent serial keyboard that's not sold for a ridiculously high price tag. Also, the cable needed to connect a serial keyboard is sold at 40$ and above.

So add the Zaurus, a CF wifi card, a 256 mb SD card, a serial keyboard and serial cable (or, alternatively, an IR keyboard) and you basically get an overpriced Microlaptop, but not a PDA.

I use the Palm for my daily calendar and address book. I use the Zaurus as a (great) techno toy and I sometimes wonder if I should have saved the money I spent on it.

Dont get a Palm

[m4g02]

Didnt you read the last Linux Uprising article?, Linux is getting hot in the handhelds world and i belive GPE Palmtop (GPL license) will become its best UI in a few years.

Dont get stuck with an useless and outdated OS, meet the future and get a Zaurus (or wait for the IBM Linux handhelds).

I must be one of the first to own an SJ33....

[Viceice]

Anyway, the SJ33 does live up to it's claims. I've been playing MP3s on this baby with the screen ON, and 3 hours later i've only used up 20+% of the battery life.

The only thing i dislike about it is the really expensive Memory Stick. But then, which other company makes a Palm OS based PDA with an audio system that can stand up to the Clie's? It's basicly a Mem Stick Walkman seamlessly married into a PDA + extra.

Samsung SPH-i330

[ahrenritter]

I just recently purchased the Samsung SPH-i330 smart phone, and I have been very happy with it. It runs PalmOS 3.5.3 with 16mb of RAM. It has a virtual silkscreen, so you can do fun stuff similar to what you can do with a HandERA such as having a full keyboard (SilkyBoard). The only draw back to it is that it doesn't have an expansion slot. I did purchase the data cable and hooked it up with my Delorme Earthmate GPS and XMap® Handheld Street Atlas USA® Edition. It works quite nicely like this.

Ignorance

[M3wThr33]

How could they leave out one of the most important devices of this coming year?
I see other unreleased Palms on there, but where is the Kyocera 7135? It's been a documented fact that Smartphone sales have been down since the announcement of it back on June 24th, 2002. USA Today had an ad in it mentioning 47,000 people on the waiting list for it(Me being one of them). It's finally available in limited markets, but I find it appaling that they could ignore the smartest smartphone of them all.
Here is an avid collection of people dedicated to this pda.
How can you ignore it?

It's not the PDA that sucks

[sjbe]

All these PDAs are cool but they all suck in one very important way. None of them work with any email/address/calendar clients besides Outlook, Notes or Eudora. And even there support is iffy. I'm still waiting for ANYTHING to fully sync with Mozilla. (Palm does a very half baked job and nothing else bothers)

I'd love to buy one of these but I need something that works with a genuinely cross platform email/address/calendar client. Evolution is great, Outlook is easy but none of these are on every platform I use. Without that, it's of no use to me.

Re:It's not the PDA that sucks

[krokodil]

All Plam devices sync with GNOME address book
and calendar. Just get yourself mail client
which can use these.

It is right way of doing this, because you could not
support all email cients on the market. So it is up to email client to integrate with gnome calendar and address book.

some thoughts

[pummer]

Why would anyone ever need anything more than what the current top-of-the-line Sony Clié has to offer?? Camera? Got it. Mp3 player? Got it. Plenty of memory? Got it.

Help me here.

I love my Kyocera Smartphone, but...

[mbstone]

... next time I'll buy a separate PDA, 'cause the airlines won't let me use a PDA-phone, even though the phone in my Kyocera SmartPhone powers-off separately and the PDA has a big, obvious display reading "PHONE IS OFF."

Dear mbstone:

Thank you for writing. We have recently updated our electronic device usage policy to include PDAs with cell phone capability (whether the phone is on or off) on the list of those items not approved for use during flight. We reached this conclusion because there is no definitive way to ensure the cell phone function is or remains off during flight. Therefore, in the interest of safety, we decided to prohibit their use all together.

We hope to have your understanding and cooperation on this important issue. Please travel with us again soon. It is a privilege to serve you.

Sincerely,

Customer Relations
American Airlines

Zire is the only one that make sense

[g4dget]

You can get the Palm Zire for about $80-$100 at your local electronics store. It's great for the things that PalmOS is traditionally good at: calendaring, TODO lists, and simple note taking. I think it's the only Palm that makes any sense.

The high-end Palms with high-end features (MP3, multitasking, cameras, high-resolution screens, etc.) are a horrible combination of hardware and software kludges to get PalmOS to do things that PalmOS was never designed to do. For example, many of those nifty features on the Clie have required Sony to hack their own extensions into PalmOS, and every Palm software vendor needs to accomodate those. And because each vendor hacks PalmOS to their liking, Palm can't even ship a single upgrade from PalmOS 5 to PalmOS 6--you will be able to upgrade your Sony only if Sony spends the time and money to create their own upgrade.

Unfortunately, the Linux PDAs aren't doing much better either. The Zaurus (I own one) is a brick. Several other Linux handheld startups went belly-up. And handhelds.org is fighting a constant battle to reverse engineer handhelds in order to run Linux on them--even handhelds that are developed within Compaq/HP, the company hosting handhelds.org. However, Motorola's use of Linux on their cell phones may give Linux on PDAs a new life.

I hate to say it, but if you are using Windows on your desktop and if you are looking for a high-end handheld, a PocketPC machine probably makes more sense. Even something like the iPaq h1910 ($299) runs rings around more expensive Palm models and is lighter to boot. The big problem with PocketPC is that it is completely proprietary: it pretty much only talks to Windows desktops and the primary development platform for it is Microsoft proprietary. But, then, it isn't clear to me why you would want a high-end handheld to begin with.

Overall, I'd just stick with the Palm Zire, and for the other features (MP3 player, GPS, camera, games, etc.) get separate, dedicated devices.

Re:Zire is the only one that make sense

[UnixRevolution]

Time for a night on the town! I need my geekcessories! Let me get my zire, my cell phone, my mp3 player, my voice recorder, my game boy with its seven cartridges, my gps, my digital camera... oh my. Now i know why they invented cargo pants...

Re:Zire is the only one that make sense

[guacamolefoo]

I would suggest buying a used handspring visor. You get the PDA stuff and you can use the modules. My current favorite is the Sprint PCS module, which gives you a (slightly bulky) cellphone/PDA combo for about $15 bucks (eBay). A Visor Deluxe or Neo can be had for about $70. Whole deal is less than a Zire and far, far cooler.

GF.

I've been messing with handhelds a lot lately

[Gizzmonic]

my girlfriend just bought the Clie (16MB, High-res display, b&W, Memory Stick)

and I myself received a Treo 90 for my birthday. (16 MB, lo-res, color, SD)

The Clie comes with so much useless software that my girlfriend had to delete a ton of stuff before she could install her medical reference software. She has 16 friggin MB, which should be about ten times as much needed for palm OS. She wants to get a Memory Stick, but a lot of Palm apps don't work running of the stick.

My Treo 90 is pretty neat...except that the backlight has blown out. Twice. And every time it happens, I have to wait on hold for 30 minutes. Hope it doesn't happen again!

So..I can't recommend either of these handhelds. Perhaps Dell's new offering might be a smarter choice!

Re:Who needs a "Palm" device of ANY kind?

[NMerriam]

I challenge ANYONE to convince me that they "need" a computer to keep track of their appointments and phone numbers

Nobody is forcing you to buy one, and I don't think anyone is required to convince you they are worthy of owning a PDA.

that said, if you've never met someone who:

a) has a lot of contacts with frequently changing information

b) needs to share contact and scheduleing information with secrataries, coworkers, etc

c) retrieves changing information on a regular basis to be viewed at unscheduled times

d) doesn't want to wait 30 seconds for a computer to turn on just to look up a phone number

e) doesn't want to constantly worry about a battery dying in the middle of something important

Then I can believe you don't know anyone who would find a PDA more useful than paper or a notebook computer. But some of us do all those things on a regular basis.

Handspring Visors...

[KeelSpawn]

Although the newest visor came out at the end of year 2000, let's not forget the clever feature that they all came with - the springboard expansion slot. With over 100 modules varing from GPS, digital cameras, digital voice recorders, language translators, bar-code scanners, mp3-players, CF/SD/MMC readers, digital projector adapters, Personal Massagers (!), to other numerous wireless moduels.

Maybe the newest handhelds today has all the above "built-in", but let's not forget who invented the wheel.

respect the modifier!

[Ravagin]

Sorry, this has been bugging me for a long time and hell I've got karma to burn. I'm not picking on the poster, just the general grammatical carelessness to which I too am occasionally subject.

Being a geek's gadget, :) I would recommend you guys to check out this roundup if you are planning to get a new Palm PDA

Okay, so you are recommending this to us because you are a geek's gadget? Some sort of AI agent perhaps, or a sexbot? Eh?

Okay, I'm done.

In on-topic news, my second-hand TRG Pro has lasted me well for over a year now; the CF slot keeps it expandable and the PalmPix camera keeps it indispensable. Use of the PalmPix is the only real argument against the HandEra 330 when the TRG fails.

Remember when OS 3.5 was hot? Anybody? No? I'll just go read this review for some new game called Dungeons&Dragons, then....

Looking for a used Palm

[abischof]

I have a Palm Vx at the moment, but I'm finding that I use Plucker more and more, which I figure would really benefit from a color screen. So, if you happen to be selling your (color) Palm, drop me a line :). (Plucker is a free offline web browser for the Palm)

Bought a Zaurus and have a Palm...

[SuperKendall]

The Zaurus sits unused while the Palm V still goes with me every day - because it's right there in my pocket with my keys!!! The Zaurus is just too big for that.

The Zaurus is kind of nifty but it's no real Palm replacement. Not to mention the battery life is terrible, especially if you even think about attaching a CF 802.11b card!

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW

[mildness]

1. Get a keyboard. I've had different PDA's since the first Palm. My tests show I'm 3x faster with the little keyboard (I can't do a little "v" in grafitti so save my life). I've read that Jot has even more keystrokes than Grafitti.

2. Palm OS is everywhere. If you want to use off-the-shelf apps from avantgo, etc get a Palm.

3. The smaller the better. Who cares how cool your xyz toy is if you need a backpack, dorkyass beltloop holster or little purse (like my buds with they Sonys) to carry the thing around with you?

4. If your goal is hacking, just like the desktop, get linux. If you want it to solve problems with a minimum of fuss go with Palm OS

5. Color is nice for pictures of family, etc. Greyscale is fine otherwise IMHO.

Cheers,

Bill

Not so sharp Zaurus

[iamacat]

I tried to give a cradled Zaurus access to our company's network by bridging connections. The bridge dutifully forwarded DHCP requests on the LAN to the server that the thing runs by default. Dozens of PCs got the bogus addresses and stopped working. The anger of the admin that came to my office to investigate quickly gave way to laughter when he realized just which device was acting as the "Enterprise" DHCP server.

Maybe Zaurus is powerful but its not very polished. It's bad enough that the desktop software is Windows only. Last time I checked, there was no Mac software and you had to wait for a patch for your exact version of Linux kernel, recompile it and run ipconfig by yourself. But even on Windows, it doesn't look as nice as Palm desktop and doesn't support network or modem sync.

At this stage, Zaurus is a good PDA for curious developers, not for people who want to have their address book, calendar and star trek e-books and not worry too much about setting things up.

I am holding my breath for iWalk. One can always dream, right?

Palm Zire..

[Chicane-UK]

I recently managed to persuade my boss to buy me a Palm Zire (yes, I realise that they are cheap, but he also bought me a Sun Blade 100 early last year so I think he has about spent all he is going to on me!) - I was asking about one because I am terrible at keeping notes on little scraps of paper all over my desk, then consequently losing or throwing them away.

I was expecting the Zire, at its entry level price, to be bulky and under-featured - but nothing could be further from the truth. Its very small & light and rammed with cool features. There are a few games on there to keep you entertained (heck, I even downloaded Lemmings for it.. I remeber when that was a flagship game for the PC!!) and lots of useful applications to keep memo's, phone numbers, appointments and more.

Worth every penny.. :)

It runs Linux, so it must be good...

[TheRaven64]

Newsflash: Linux is not the perfect solution for every problem.
I want a PDA that will play oggs, take notes / jotted drawings, connect to an 802.11b network, or GPRS when that isn't availible and un a jabber client. Oh, and I want it to fit into a shirt pocket. If it runs Linux, fine. If it runs ObscureOS(tm) then that's fine as well. Hell, I'd even be happy with it running Wince if it did what I want it to...
The original Palm prototype was a block of wood, and the only constraint that the design team was given was that their design should be no bigger than the block of wood. If I'm going to cary this thing around with me all day, I want it to be easy to carry. Linux is great in a server, but you simply do not need a full-featured, server-class OS in a PDA. Someone I know recently bought a Wince machine. It has a 400MHz CPU. It feels about as fast as a 33MHz dragonball based Palm (although the latter can't handle ogg playback).
A PDA is not a desktop computer, and should not be treated as such.