Rating: 
Summary: This is number two
Review: I bought the new Zire 71 to replace a Handspring that was dying.
The headphone jack broke after using it 4/5 times and I returned it to the store for an exchange. I'm on number two now and after inserting the headphones in the first time the metal in the jack looked like it bent which is the same thing that my first one did. I look for this one to do the same thing. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem but would like to know. The units that I have bought have had cheap jacks.
Rating: 
Summary: Love my new Palm Zire 71
Review: I just received my Zire 71 in the mail last weekend. I had some trouble transfering my programs from my older Handspring Visor. At first, it looked as if everything transfered nicely. But when I opened up the program, my Zire froze up. The older programs just did not work. My Visor was very old, about two years. The operating system was too old for the programs to be compatable on the Zire. I had to go hunt down new versions of the software and, in one case, pay an upgrade fee. In another case, I couldn't find an upgrade for a really useful program that I used a lot. I also had an issue when I was installed a program from a 3rd party vender. When I hot-synced I got an error message that instructed me to restart the palm. When I restarted the message would come up again and I would have to restart again, putting my Zire in perpetual re-start mode. I had to go to Palm online to figure out what to do and realized that I had to do a "hard reset". I then had to re-install all of my 3rd party software AGAIN. The lesson learned from this is to check the fine print to make absolutely sure that the software is compatable with Zire 71. Aside from my rocky start, I really love my new Zire. The processor is fast, hotsync time is fast, and I love the color screen. It makes game playing so much better! The camera is fun, but don't expect fantastic pictures. All in all, worth the trouble. And it's a good price, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Satisfied
Review: My wife lives and dies by her old Palm M100, and I bought her the Palm Zire 71 as a birthday present. She is thrilled with it, and that was before she discovered the built in digital camera. We encountered absolutely no problems with installing the Palm Desktop software. It also automatically loaded all the information (datebook, address book, etc) on the old Palm Desktop program from her last Hotsync with the M100 over to the Zire 71, as well as the shareware applications she had such as solitaire, tetris and her checkbook program. I knew from reading other reviews that some of the other people who bought new palms had a problem with compatibility for their older software, but we had only two very minor problems. (First, the solitaire program (freeware and God knows how old it was) did not work, but it certainly didn't cause any system crash. Second, the older programs were black and white, not color, but that was hardly a surprise.) We deleted the solitaire and we'll probably find some color shareware programs to replace the others. There were no problems with the hardware or the case. It has a very solid feel, and the metallic case is eyecatching. We took a few pictures of ourselves at dinner and had people from other tables coming over to look at it. Some of the negative reviews have complained that the camera isn't HQ. It is what it is. The picture quality is good for e-mail and excellent for viewing on the palm itself, and it seems to handle different light levels very well considering it doesn't have a flash. It doesn't handle very low light or motion well. If you plan on printing out photos to frame and hang on your wall, I'd use something else. PROS
- Very high geek factor for the money. Not many people have seen this Palm yet, so they drool over it.
-Picture quality excellent for e-mail. I have other means to take digital pictures, and I know one of the pains of having high quality digital photos is that I have to convert my pics to lower resolution for most of my relatives (They are all 56k-ers; they'd be downloading for hours if I sent full resolution) Most pics we've taken with the Palm seem to end up in the 40-50K range, perfect for e-mail.
-The device itself is great. No defects in workmanship. No flimsy parts. (The M-100 had a flip cover that broke off after a couple weeks) Sharp screen with nice color saturation. Easy to look at. Came with a nice carrying case.
-Rechargeable CONS- -Wish it came bundled with documents-to-go like some other palm products.
-Made in China. Who knows what sneaky communist stuff is hiding in the code? PS: I would add one other thing from a customer service point of view. I've shopped with Amazon for years. I've never had an issue with Amazon.com before. I click, I pay, my item comes in the mail. End of story. This Palm, coming USPS, didn't show up, and when I tracked the package, it listed it as delivered and the order completed. I e-mailed Amazon to let them know that I had not yet received the item, and within 18 hours they responded by apologizing and sending another one 2-day priority mail, free of charge. Of course I expected to get what I paid for eventually, but I was impressed that there was absolutely zero hassle about resolving my problem.
Rating:
Summary: Well, why not?
Review: This is my first adventure with any kind of PDA, but I've had some experience with a Handspring Visor and some other older Palm devices. This one has a relatively spectacular display. The camera is a c-mos chip with an incredibly wide lens. It's auto-everything and, under even mildly dim light, will extend it's shutter to kind of an intolerable level-meaning, don't move while taking the photo or you'll see smearing. That said, for what you're paying it's quite a nice and fun little toy. I actually have used it for production stills on video shoots with great ease and success; however, file management can be a pain. If you save pics to the internal drive, access is quick and easy, but you can only store about 90-100 or so before hampering the system. If you get a 64Mb card, you can store over 1000 images, but recall time is slow and computer backup can be clunky. And, yeah, it's 640x480 so not the best, but fine for reference and fun. All other aspects of the device work just fine. I highly recommend Documents to Go, which translates Word, Excel and other Windows files extremely nicely to the Zire's display. It charges fairly quickly while you sync. I have had one crash since getting it, but I believe that I'd stored too many photos on the system memory. Get a different case, don't expect too much from the camera and you'll be perfectly satisfied with this one.
Rating:
Summary: I like it.
Review: I got my wife a Zire 71 as a graduation present. She
had a 4.0 GPA, I'll give the Zire 71 a 3.7, not bad. We
both had Palm m105s and really used them a lot. Both are
a bit over 2 years old and both now lose everything when
the batteries are changed, or did until I made a battery
pack that has paper clips bent at the ends to hook into
the M105 battery clips when the batteries are changed,
that works very well, but is not very convenient. The Zire 71 comes with Palm Desktop 4.1 which installed
almost ok, and the first hotsync seems ok until I looked
at the log and found the NotePad hotsync to have failed.
Our laptop is running Windows ME and there was one error
box that had appeared on installation or hotsync, it
wasn't clear when. It claimed a problem with msi.dll, a
web search showed this to be a common problem. I ended
up extracting backups from a Windows cab file, they were
older, smaller versions, but so far have not caused problems. I reinstalled the new Palm Desktop software
but still had the NotePad problem, the NotePad just
wouldn't hotsync. I then checked the Palm Web site
looking at the Zire 71 Knowledge base. Couldn't find the
answer so I emailed and got a long detailed response the
next day. I followed the instructions and now everything
is working. These problems are probably not typical.
They won't come up if you are not upgrading from an older
Palm. If you are make sure to follow the instructions on
the Palm Web site on dealing with older software. Some
of the older software will not work. To be safe, install
all the extra software after you make sure the Zire works
ok. I had to download newer versions for a few programs.
Some programs were beamed from the m105s, sometimes they
worked (mostly), sometimes they didn't. Using the Zire 71 First the negatives. I wasn't happy with the slippery
feel, it seemed ready to slip out of your hands,
especially when trying to slide the case to access the
camera. I don't notice that so much now, it's not such a
big deal. It would be nice to have a rubberized case. The camera is fun but not a great camera. It is
certainly convenient. The images seems a bit soft.
Bright areas saturate easily, like the brighter parts of
a face. It doesn't do too bad in room light but you have
to be careful to hold it steady or the picture will be
motion blurred. Colors also are not a strong point, nice
bright greens in vegetation come out much more pale than
they should, sort of pale yellow green. The stylus placement is a bit awkward, right by the power
button. I'm not crazy about the 5-way navigator (that replaces
the scroll buttons), it seems a bit too small, I find it
a bit harder to scroll through text than the buttons. Finally, the case that comes with it could be better.
The navigator button sticks out a bit from the body and
it is quite easy to turn the Palm on when inserting it
into the case. Put the navigator button in last and be a
bit careful and it's not a big problem. All my negatives are not major items, except maybe the
camera. Don't get this as a camera, think of the camera
as an extra. Now for the positives. The screen is really good.
Especially after using the m105. I hold my m105 next to
my wife's Zire 71 and it really makes her feel sorry for
me. It's a bit of an effort to keep her from running out
and getting me a Zire 71. It reminds me of my
workstation screen which is a Sony Trinitron. I have not
compared them next to each other yet but I'm pretty sure
the Palm screen will be even sharper. It's very nice for
reading text. The 320 x 320 pixel resolution must be
getting close to the maximum useful for this size screen. It's fast. My old m105 now seems pretty sluggish. The 5-way navigator can be useful. I know I had it in my
negatives list above, but you really can use one hand to
look up a phone number. I'll get used to it. The extra memory is nice. I was used to living with 8
MB, the Zire 71 has a bit over 13 MB. More would be
nice, it can fill up pretty fast. The card slot is nice. I found a 128 MB SD card at [a local store] for ..., inserted it and it worked. The MP3 player is very nice. This is an extra on the
software CD. The RealOne Player is installed on your
main computer and a Palm version on the Zire 71. You can
save music from a music CD and put them on the Palm. It
wasn't really clear how to do this, but just knowing that
it's possible is a big help. It's not hard. I copied
Vivaldi's Four Seasons from a CD to hard disk, and then
to the Palm. It sounded very good (with headphones). It
could be a bit louder, but in a quiet room it works very
well. And it does play in the background when using the
Palm for other things. But it takes a lot of the
processing power so the Palm is a bit sluggish. NotePad
doesn't work too well, or even graffiti, but reading is
no problem at all, and even a star chart program worked
ok. It keeps playing if the power goes off by itself. Graffiti 2 is not a problem, it shouldn't take long to
get used to it. Avantgo doesn't come on the extra software CD but I've
read that the OS 5 beta version works ok. No PDA is perfect, but this one is very good.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Even Out of the Box
Review: I bought a Palm Zire 71 Handheld today. I did not even have an opportunity to use it. I took it out of the box, placed it on the charger, hot synced it, and went to use it...and found that the screen was cracked and when I turned it on the entire image was white. What a piece of junk!
Rating:
Summary: Finally.... and then wait...
Review: After Sony blew Palm away a few years ago, Palm didn't get back until this year. They are known for there $100 no color, low quality Palm's like the recently introduced Zire. They came with the Tungsten series for business purposes (T, W, C), but of course it would cost you alot of money. Finally at a reasonable price for what it offers, the new Palm Zire 71 has features which are standard on pretty much 90% of the market out there. Of course, it still has the stylus thing going ( which I personally hate, Graffiti, you can forget, and may have to leave what your writing to look at the lettering). It includes a digital camera, not the kind of 2.0 megapixel digi camera that is included in the Sony Handhelds, but something that makes sense. It takes pretty good pictures. It has full color screen, which makes it clearer to see ( for me at least). Think the features will blow you. Look at the price. Starting at $299, stores will probably charge a little more or less. Pretty expensive compared to $100 Palms. But most of the reasonable and not "overdoing" PDA's cost that much. I would reccomend the new Palm to anyone looking for a computer, but then, hey another $100 will get you a computer. People want it because it is portable, and cool. The Palm Zire 71 is currently avaliable
Rating:
Summary: My first Palm
Review: This is my first Palm and a I got it up and running without any problems. The camera works great. Instructions are easy to follow. My Outlook calendar, contacts and mail synchronized without a hitch. Everybody that sees it wants one. A lot for the money. The display is awesome. I called Palm technical support twice for some tips, there was no wait and great support.
Rating:
Summary: Great Features / Great Price
Review: When I read all the buzz about the Zire 71, I had to upgrade from my m130. What a great product this is. The screen is the most brilliant that I have ever seen on a Palm, it hot synchs quickkly and flawlessly. The ability to lsiten to MP3's is fantastic and I use it to listen to music all the time now. I have had no problem running the programs from my m130 on the Zire 71. It's a great handheld and has ensured my allegiance to Palm!!
Rating:
Summary: A great PDA with lots of features!
Review: I got the Palm Zire 71 after my almost 3 year old Handspring Visor stopped hotsyncing. I had bought the 3 year extended warranty from Best Buy. After putting it off for a few months i went in with 14 days till my warranty expired. They just let me pick out any unit... Needless to say the Zire has a lot more features. The display is the best on the market. It looks much sharper than the clie models at Best Buy. I also got a 128mb card at compusa... so the 16mb was not a big deal. I have found the camera to be a fun little extra. Sure you are not going to use it as your primary camera but it is a nice extra that i feel take pretty good pictures. The graffiti 2 does take a little while getting used to. I also agree with the other reviewers on the stainless steel case. It is very hard to hold onto. I am going to order the leather flap case on the palm website asap. Positive: Great display
Fast processor
Fun camera
MP3 player
Joy stick controller
Long battery life
Great value - compare features/specs to other models Negatives: Case is very hard to hold onto but looks good
Original graffiti users have to learn graffiti 2
Have to buy external memory do download MP3s, (i do
know if this is b/c of the Zire of realplayer) Overall this is a great unit. Previous PDA owners will love this as an upgrade and new PDA buyers I feel will find it exceeds all their expectations.
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