palmOne Releases Two New Zire Handhelds

wPageUp writes "palmOne today announced two new additions to their consumer Zire PDA line. According to PalmInfoCenter, the Zire 72 has a 1.2 MP digital camera, 32MB of ram and a 312MHz Intel processor for $299. On the low end side, the new Zire 31 is the first sub-$150 color handheld to include MP3 audio and a memory expansion slot."

Comments

Palm renews mac support

[dncsky1530]

MacCentral reports: "The Mac installed base is extremely important to us," said Stéphane Maes, PalmOne's senior product line manager for handhelds. "We will continue to meet Mac users' needs regardless of what OS we're running."

Only EU has growing market for PDA's

[boogy nightmare]

According to the register here

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/28/global_p da _sales_q1/

(soz when i do ahref's from this machine they dont work)

PDA sales are falling all over the world except EU, this can be attributed to the power of the mobile phones that are coming out at the moment. Seriously, i have a nokia 6600, what can the Zire's do that the 6600 cant. This phone has
Calendar,
Notepad,
Plays music,
Expandable memory,
Todo lists,
convertors,
voice recorder,
Camera (with video function)
Address list,
opera,
games,
email
the list goes on

But it uses Symbian a better OS that i can upgrade, alter and get hundreds of progreammes for.

Its a nice little bit of cheap tech but would rather have the phone (prefer a p900 though)

Re:Only EU has growing market for PDA's

[boogy nightmare]

Agreed, how ever for taking notes i use the voice recorder and then add it in later via the bluetooth link and software on the PC. This is where phones like the P900 (and to a lesser extent the p800) work, although more expensive they have the same input type as the PDA, with stylus and touch screen.

However when i use SMS the use of predictive texting has about an 80% first time hit rate and in the hands of a average texter is not a disadvantage over a small qwerty keyboard, seriously, if you have not watched some of the kids today type on those keyboards its very fast, i think one Japanese girl hit something like 95wpm.

PalmOne

[Mr_Silver]

I considered submitting this story yesterday but thought that someone else already did.

Looking around the offices in the past 5 years I'm seeing less and less people using Palm's and those that are have the old Vx's or 50x series. Almost everyone who has a PDA these days has a PocketPC. Even I moved from a Vx to an iPaq and probably won't go back.

If I did then it would be if

1. Support of the fields that Outlook has is better than on a PocketPC. Sure I can install another application (KeySuite) but then I can't integrate that data with other applications.
2. A decent today screen with plugins. I don't want something flexible that allows me to define what my today screen shows and the order that it shows it.
3. Continious syncing. This is a big one for me. If I take my PDA out of the cradle then I want to know that it is up-to date at that very moment in time. This is especially important when I have someone else managing my diary so I don't necessarily know when I have to sync. I do not want to have to remember to press the "sync" button 5 minutes before I want to take the PDA to a meeting.

Palm kind of remind me of Apple, in the sense that they have only a few people making their hardware. Microsoft on the other hand has a large number of hardware manufacturers which means that they are pushing the specifications further and quicker than Palm are.

Camera, Bluetooth, wireless networking - all came from the PocketPC first because there was competition from the hardware manufacturers to differentiate their product from others. With Palm, there isn't quite so much of a need and so I get the feeling they're playing catch up (even though their screen resolution is better than the PocketPC's - but still no virtual grafitti area)