I recently looked at the Zire21 a monochrome entry level PDA, here it is the Zire31 this is colour, it is backlit and has expansion both of which the Zire21 did not have. The price for these extras is only around another £30.
Buy Now...
Palm devices seem to now come in two ranges Tungsten with the higher
resolution screens and Zire with 160x160 displays. These cannot carry
the range of detail of the Tungsten devices but at only a little over
£100 a colour device with expandability has to be worth solid
consideration.
It outwardly looks very similar to the Zire21 with the rubberised
cover slotting into the back and flipping up to reveal the 5x7cm
screen, the bottom 2cm of this is used for writing either with the soft
keyboard or using Graffiti 2.
Fold the cover back to reveal the headphone socket and the SD card
slot. This position on the Zire21 was for the mini USB cable and power,
on the Zire31 these are on the left side under a rubberised bung.
The control buttons are slightly different with a five position one
taking the centre of the line, a single push on the centre of this
gives a two second time display when switched off. The four positions
around this are used to navigate in N-S-E-W on the screen as well as
other tasks when switched on. There are two assigned buttons either
side of this and these can be programmed to display your choice of
applet, by default these are Tasks and Contacts but can be anything you
wish.
The on/off switch is to the left side of this line of four buttons.
There are the standard four soft buttons two either side of the writing
area. The display is bright in fact in a darkened room you could use it
as an torch alternative. There is an Intel 200MHz processor that I
found responsive to all tasks.
16MB of RAM is provided (around 14MB useable) and with the SD card
slot expansion is endless. This slot can be used to turn the unit into
an MP3 player as a copy of RealPlayer for Palm is included. The MP3
files must be on the SD but the RealPlayer applet runs from the Palm.
There is also a photo viewer however here you really see the displays
lack of pixels.
I have used the Zire31 for around ten days replacing my past its
sell by date Palm 5x, in these short pieces I always ask myself would I
swap. When I reviewed the Zire21 the only thing stopping me was the
lack of a backlight. Why then am I not jumping up and down saying YES
YES YES.
Here you have everything missing from the Zire21 and more as you
have a perfectly acceptable MP3 player and expansion to whatever you
may want via SD card. My one niggle is the display. 160x160 is fine for
monochrome but colour shows the dots.
Do not get me wrong, for students or the part time user the value is
superb, the amount of features and facilities make my old 5x seem
antiquated but for a full time user you need the added screen
resolution of the Tungsten range and this of course costs more. If the
Zire31 is for you then www.dabs.com have it for a very fair £105.
Link : http://www-5.palmone.com/uk/en/products/zire31/index.html
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