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New Palms: Zire 71 and Tungsten C
securitas writes "Today Palm released their latest in the PDA arms race: the Zire 71 and the Tungsten C. The Zire gets a color screen, digital camera and multimedia capabilities such as MP3 playback and 640x480 VGA video playback -- interesting since the screen is 320x320. The Tungsten C gets 802.11b (WiFi) connectivity and a VPN client to protect your data while in transit. More at
InternetNews, PC World and Business Week/CNet."
It's a shame such a prodoct doesn't have bluetooth : I think It would have been much cheaper and battery saving than to use WiFi ?
Any Ideas why it hasn't been included ?
Besides, it's important noting those PDA have an integrated keyboard.
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No extra hardware increases the value to the user without the cost of production. What's the hold up?
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Funny, my Palm m100, upgraded to 8mb still does everything I need. Sure it doesn't play 31337 videos and MP3s, but 95% of what I need a PDA for can be satisified by an Ebay m105 for
Sorry, Palm. I love ya and all, but until you make a PDA that can replace the usefulness of a cheap laptop, I've got no reason to upgrade.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
It's quite interesting that Palm selected the low-end Zire name for the 71. It 3 times the price of the original Zire, 8 times the memory, a much faster processor and a *much* better display.
If I recall, the Zire was an attempt to get the "its just a little too expensive" consumer crowd to buy into the Palm family.
BTW, my non-techie wife loves her Zire. It's just good enough to do the things she wants (calendar, address book) but nothing more.
www.christopherlewis.com
Review on infosyncworld.
The main gripe they have is the lack of Bluetooth, and that the IR diode isn't any stronger.
But are there not Bluetooth cards for the SD port?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Granted, I could add an SD or MMC card but really ... 16MB is pretty weak. I would like to see Palm at least have 256MB on board, especially if I am going to use this for any type of music or video!
$300 better spent on a 5GB iPod. I can use my phone for PDA functions.
PS. I have and use a Palm m125.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
God fsckn' damnit!!! I just did a 5-second snipe on a Tungsten T last night on eBay and I see this in the morning!
Overall, I think I still would have bought the TT over the TC. I bought my Palm mostly for portable editing of Word & Excel files (Palms do this better than PocketPC apparently).
In connection with the foregoing, I intend to buy the full-sized Ultra Thin keyboard. I've seen a lot of nice Clie's with built-in keyboards already, and I think for any real work a bigger keyboard will be better, supplemented by grafitti for quick note jotting.
The Wi-Fi built-into the TC would not be of much use to me. In fact, I have no use for the Bluetooth built-into the TT. If I ever need to use Wi-Fi, there's always SDIO add-in cards.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
With WiFi and Bluetooth becoming standard (or at least peripheral), I am waiting on the applications to make my PDA even more usefull than it already is. Like an SSH client and true IMAP, POP3 email client.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear to be bright. Until you hear them speak.
Most people I know that have PDAs download dictionaries, thesauri, maps into their RAM. Would it be possible and realistic for manufacturers to sell PDAs with ROMs that have data like the aforementioned dictionaries, thesauri, & maps? Perhaps this static memory would include music files, and books from Project Gutenberg that are in the public domain.
I guess this would make the PDAs akin to the Hitchikers Guide to the Universe.
Does anyone know if this is feasible?
Before Palm, where wasn't much of a PDA industry. The Newton was a great piece of hardware, but Apple didn't stop production because they were selling too many of them.
(Sorry about the blank post, had a bit of a mouse slip-up)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Well, hopefully they stick to three for a while ;-)
Seriously, it's a Good Thing that PalmOS has become as portable as it now is - different processors are best suited for different applications, and if you run on a particular platform, then there's a possibility that your OS gets selected for that use.
Dragonball, OMAP, and XScale aren't bad for starters. Though OMAP and XScale are members of the ARM family, and the software is probably pretty much compatible.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
1500 Amp? Yikes! :-)
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
You know, I've agreed with your sentiment for a long time. But recently I bought a Sony Clie SJ33 as a birthday gift for probably the most amazing, beautiful girl in the world, and after seeing her daily use with it, I've changed my mind on this.
I started with Palms ever since I got a Palm 1000. You know, that boxy dark-grey thing that had 128kb of memory long before Palm realized that independent developers would write thousands upon thousands of applications for the platform. Back then, they did one thing and one thing well--organize. Finally, there was some device I could hold in my hand that could actually improve my day-to-day life. Something that wasn't merely a toy but a real, useful tool.
I eventually moved up to a Palm Vx for the 8mb RAM, LiIon battery and small form-factor. To me those were great features that complemented the key point of it all--to organize. I loved my Palm Vx and shook my head with disgust as the Palms that came after disappointed me. The next Palms traded battery life for fancy colour screens and suddenly you were paying extra for features that didn't matter.
Well, this Clie SJ33 has changed my mind. Now they are actually coming out non-organizer features that are actually useful. The MP3 playback integrated with the Palm alone makes this handheld amazing. Sure, you can carry around your Palm, music playing device and cellphone. I've done that before, but I always had heavy, bulging and uncomfortable pockets as a result. The best solution I've seen is more than three years old, and it's the eholster which tucks your miniature high-tech devices under your arms. Unfortunately they aren't actually usable because they actually look like real gun-holsters and pulling out a PDA has made a few people around me jump as it looked like I was drawing a gun. Practical, but doesn't work too well in this post 9-11 society. This girl that I speak of prefers wearing pocketless skirts over bulding pants, so integrating the music player with a small form-factored Palm works perfectly for her.
Digital cameras on a Palm also work very well, found on the Zire 71 mentioned in this Slashdot article and also the memory stick cameras, not to mention the built in one on the Sony CLIE PEGNX70V or PEGNZ90. Sure, they are barely 1 megapixel, but they are a lot of fun. Basically if you're like me, you're going to have your Palm on you at all times. But I only think to bring my camera to social events. So now you have the ability to capture anything, anytime as you go through life. See a funny subway ad that you want to show your girlfriend? See Natalie Portman walking down the street and want to take a picture with her? End up spontaneously at a party and want to take some pictures? Sure the quality won't be up there, but you can still capture some memories at unexpected moments.
I could go on with the many more features available, but my point being that mere organizing changed my life, but now they are adding features that can also improve my day-to-day life, and everyday these features dive cheaper and cheaper.
infosync.no has some good examples of the pictures taken at day and night with the Zire 71
day photo
night photo
Infosync's full review of the Zire 71
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
My theory is, the faster the processor, the more programmers will take advantage of the speed.
And the more they take advantage of the speed, the shorter the battery life.
High speed processors, color screens, and bright backlighting all contribute to shorter battery life. When you are miles from home, the batteries are dead, and you have no way to sync your data back on to the device, you'll wish Palm had gone for long battery life instead of glity features.
Another point to consider: One of the strong points of Palm's handhelds has been the tremendous quantity of software available. You could take an app written for an original Palm Pilot and run it on a Palm Pilot Pro, Palm III, Palm M100, Handspring Visor, etc. The differences were largely limited to quantity of RAM and physical dimensions of the device. Sure, there were minor CPU speed variances, but it wasn't a whole new CPU at 10x-30x the clock speed. Apps for a Palm with a 400mhz ARM CPU with a 320x320 color screen won't run on the older Palms. Older apps will be unappealing to someone who has plonked down a big chunk of cash for a color, hi-res Palm. An app that requires the new Tungston C's 400mhz ARM CPU won't run fast enough on the Zire 71's 144mhz CPU.
If Palm was going to change things, they should have done it all at once, going from the original standard to a new one. Now they've got a current product line with 16mhz Dragonball CPUs, 33mhz Dragonball CPUs, 144mhz TI ARM CPUs, 400mhz Intel ARM CPUs, 160x160 monochrome screens, 160x160 grayscale screens, 160x160 color screens, and 320x320 color screens. They've really lost it.
Your requirements are pretty stiff for a PDA. I use a PDA for these things: appointments, phone numbers and email addresses, todo lists, notes, reading novels, playing games, taking notes, and listening to music. Almost any PDA will do all these things well (maybe not the music part; lots of PDAs don't do music).
You could buy a Microsoft-based PDA, a PocketPC, and that might meet your specs. However, I hate Windows CE, much preferring the Palm system.
I have a Palm Tungsten T, and I love it. But there is no 802.11b for it yet. It should otherwise meet your specs, including the ability to play MP3 and Ogg files.
Personally, I think you would be better served with a really compact laptop. If you really want to check mail, upload/download files, listen to music, remotely run things on your desktop... a laptop really is the way to go. A Lindows Notebook PC is $800, and you can always install some other OS if you don't like Lindows. You can check eBay for a used tiny notebook. You could probably get a Libretto cheap, and that's really tiny!
You might even want to get a NEC MobilePro. That's a Windows CE based subnotebook: it's like a really big PDA with a really big screen and a really big keyboard. Jerry Pournelle uses one to take notes, and he gave it his "Cold, Dead Fingers" award (as in, if you want to take it away from him you will have to pry his cold dead fingers from around it).
If you insist on something in your pocket, maybe you should check out the Zaurus PDAs. Since they run real Linux, you can make them do lots of stuff, and I hear they are great. I've never used one yet so I don't know.
Good luck.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely