Rating: 
Summary: Palm VIIx vs Cassiopeia
Review: As a gadget fan, I recently purchased both the palm VIIx and Cassiopeia and compared them side-by-side. Both units are nice and have their specifically intended purposes. For the display, Cassiopea is far more superior than the palm VII. It has a bigger display area with vivid color. For those who like to use their hand-helds for reading downloaded materials (like Avantgo, which I highly recommended), Cassiopeia is the choice. It also has other features that palm doesn't have, like the voice recorder, mp3 player, audible player, and media player etc. However, Cassiopea is more bulky than the palm. It would not fit in a shirt pocket and its rechargable battery would last for a few days at the most. The desktop interface installation is not very user friendly neither. You would have to install microsoft CE and occasionally I ran into problems with 3rd party programs. Even though the Cassiopeia comes with 16 Mb (you should buy a 16 MB FLASH card), the application programs eat up a lot of memory space. I bought the palm VIIx mainly because of its wireless capability. For those who worry about being limited to websites that provide Web clipping, you can install the DPWeb program which allows you to access (almost) any web sites. There are a lot of great Web clipping applications on the palm.net site. You can read news, get map directions, do ICQ chat, access the yellow page, trade stocks, get stocks charts and real time quotes. If you want to take full advantage of the wireless access, you need to subscribe to the unlimited usage plan, which costs around $/month including tax and surcharges. I used more than 600 Kbytes of wireless transaction in just a few days ! The speed of the access is pretty slow but it is clearly worth the convenience of being able to access the web anywhere you go. The wireless access would also consume a lot of power. I would recommend using LiMH batteries. They would last for 2-3 days for heavy wireless usage.
Rating: 
Summary: Awesome Product
Review: I bought the palm and I think it is the best product on the market for the money. They have a web clipping called Vicnity Brandfinder and it actually follows you and tells you the nearest place of business to go to wherever you are. ie..Food, hotels, stores. All the other functions work great. My wife has our grocery list on the todo and we change it each week depending on what we need in press of a button. I can even check my email ie...aol, juno, yahoo, excite. Buy one today.
Rating:
Summary: I'm A Believer
Review: I got a Palm VIIx as a Father's Day present, and well, it sure beats another tie. Seriously though, as someone who carried a DayTimer book around for the past 6 years without ever using it (ok, maybe once or twice a month), I've found myself using the Palm on a daily basis to keep track of my life. The best feature is the wireless connectivity. And as for those reviewers who complain about the limitations, I think they're expecting a Honda Civic to be a sports car: The Palm VIIx is not meant to work as a substitute web surfing device. It's meant to allow you to check your e-mail, send relatively short e-mail messages (wouldn't want to try writing a 2 page memo in Graphiti) and to access some fairly simple, albeit useful applications- checking airline schedules, movie times, etc. E-mail is the best feature. In addition to the Palm.net account, you can download an app called ThinAir that lets you check and send mail from any POP account, as well as Yahoo mail and AOL. This has proven incredibly useful when I am out of the office. I've even figured out a way to keep a few family photos on my Palm And features like Vindigo and AvantGo make the train ride home a lot more interesting. The downsides to this model (which move it to 4 stars from 5) are: *Extra $ you have to spend to connect to Macintosh computers and any USB machine. The kit is expensive for what it is, and what could be more frustrating than taking the machine out of the box and learning you have to go back to the store before you can use it. *No Mac software included in the box. *Palm.net service is designed to make you use as many kbs as possible- I wish I could check and manage my palm.net mail from my browser. But both Palm.net and ThinAir let you send messages, which is a plus- you can lay in bed at night and send out e-mails. *HotSyncing is often a 5-10 minute process- don't know if it's just a Mac thing or if they all take this long.These nits aside, my experience with the Palm VIIx has been wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but a bit dated...
Review: I had one of these before replacing it with a Handspring Treo. If all you need is a PDA, and don't care too much about it being a mobile phone or not, this is a good unit. The screen is relatively easy to read, with a simple back-light option. Although its not color, the battery life is pretty good. Keep in mind that these units don't come with rechargeable batteries, so you will be using a lot of regular batteries here. I have seen some people hack the cradles for these to include a recharging facility, but its not stock standard. The good thing is the memory. 8mb is a good amount of RAM for average PDA stuff, although I must say that 16mb is certainly better. But the fact that you can pick these units up for a song these days, and there is a healthy used market for them as others like me trade them in on up-market PDAs, there is no reason why for infrequent use, this isn't going to do the job. I'd pass on the Palm.NET option though. Although it is pretty decent to have it, its very expensive to keep and slow, slow, slow. Depending on the plan you get, you could be paying $... per month for high data volumes and with the availability of GPRS/GSM Internet through carriers like T-Mobile, Sprint, etc. it doesn't take long to justify spending more money on a current model Handspring Treo, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but a bit dated...
Review: I had one of these before replacing it with a Handspring Treo. If all you need is a PDA, and don't care too much about it being a mobile phone or not, this is a good unit. The screen is relatively easy to read, with a simple back-light option. Although its not color, the battery life is pretty good. Keep in mind that these units don't come with rechargeable batteries, so you will be using a lot of regular batteries here. I have seen some people hack the cradles for these to include a recharging facility, but its not stock standard. The good thing is the memory. 8mb is a good amount of RAM for average PDA stuff, although I must say that 16mb is certainly better. But the fact that you can pick these units up for a song these days, and there is a healthy used market for them as others like me trade them in on up-market PDAs, there is no reason why for infrequent use, this isn't going to do the job. I'd pass on the Palm.NET option though. Although it is pretty decent to have it, its very expensive to keep and slow, slow, slow. Depending on the plan you get, you could be paying $... per month for high data volumes and with the availability of GPRS/GSM Internet through carriers like T-Mobile, Sprint, etc. it doesn't take long to justify spending more money on a current model Handspring Treo, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Good Wireless Device With Limitations, Linux Possibilities
Review: I have been using my Palm VIIx about a week now and definitely like it. As a deaf individual, the wireless email is as close as I can get to being on an equal footing with cell phone users. The service plans offered by Palm.net actually appear to be cheaper than service plans offered by Skytel.com for their Motorola text paging devices. The ideal solution for me would be a cell phone costing not more than $50 with a monthly service plan of not more than $10 and no data transfer charges. It would send and recieve text messages and surf the web anywhere in the world and talk to any wireless network, anywhere, for exactly the same price. We don't have price/performance like that yet. So I took the VIIx because I was impatient for wireless email. Now I have a minimally frustrating way of getting in touch with family while I'm on the road. It's really nice being able to carry all 427 of my contacts and a few tons of notes in a 6 ounce package. Is it worth my [$]? I am willing to pay that much just for the wireless email. (wireless web clippings appear to be well beyond my financial means at this time.) As for the rest of the device I don't know its true worth to me yet and suspect I will not for several more months. Linux users, you can HotSync a Palm to a Linux machine. Look for the pilot-link software for your distribution and be sure to check the O'Reilly web site for their Palm articles. Pilot-link, however, is focused on a serial HotSync connection. How about a little USB software too? There is for Red Hat users, but it is not targeted expressly for the Palm. If you have Red Hat 7.0 look carefully in your kernel sources for a module named visor.c. Open it in emacs and you'll discover it is USB-support code for HotSyncing a HandSpring Visor. Methinks with just a little work it can be ported to the Palm also, since the 2 devices use the Palm OS. The Palm VIIx has fairly severe limitations: 1. The Hotsync cradle ought to ship as USB hardware with a true USB interface just as the Handspring devices do. My desktop computer only has one free serial port and that is in use for my modem. (That's a tipoff that I'm a Linux user.) Few new computers have more than one RS-232 (serial) port. Old computers had 2 or 3, but new ones usually give you just one and a bunch of USB ports. Since a serial cradle ships standard, I may have to spend another $40 for the USB connector. (I'm thinking I might be able to go to CompUSA and pick up a serial port card for a lot less than the Palm USB kit. Is there such a card? Hmmm.) I think a USB option should be offered to Palm users free. 2. It should be easy to connect to a home network but is not. The VIIx is just another computing device. If you can hook it into a Windows or Linux based network, either with an ethernet cable connection or wirelessly, you can surf the web on a (far cheaper) landline connection without needing Palm.net. Palm OS 3.5.2 has TCP/IP code for making network connections. The interfaces Palm documents are through a serial (PPP, SLIP or CSLIP) connection. That means a hardware-based connection. I can assign the device an IP address or it can use DHCP. I should also be able to assign a hostname like 'bobspalm.lingpgmr.com'. But wait a minute! I'd like to sit down on my sofa (with a strong overhead light) and literally tap the VIIx into a wireless network connection to my home network. That must be possible because the handbook documents how to change the IP address of the proxy server, and there is now or soon will be wireless ethernet connectivity hardware available for the home. I should have a relatively easier time turning the Palm into a PPP-based network client in Linux than in Windows. But I would still be tied to the Hotsync cradle instead of relaxing on my easy chair and checking my stock account. 3. The Palm OS seems brain-damaged. For example I can only have ShortCuts of up to 45 characters in length each. Why that limitation? Why not 1K or more to each ShortCut? That way I can use ShortCuts to help fill in boilerplate text entries in DateBook or my To Do's. I'm limited to how many categories I can have as well. Why impose such arbitrary limitations? I might need 80 or 100 or 250 or 500 categories. The person next door might need 1250. That's flexibility. Memos and Notes are limited to 1K in length each. If you sync to Outlook 2000, an Outlook Note can be 32K long. There goes your notes if they are longer than 1K. Contacts in Outlook 2000 can have a large number of fields such as "Nickname" that the conduit will throw away no matter how badly I want access to them. What happens then? You suddenly find yourself reinventing the wheel, spending your valuable time paring existing data to fit the handheld platform when it really ought to be exactly the other way around: the handheld should accept whatever is thrown at it from the desktop application so that you can press that button and go. Instead of finding yourself with a mirror image of a desktop database you have 2 very different databases and each requires time to customize. What a waste. I think this is the fault of the Palm OS and very shortsighted design decisions. If you must reinvent the wheel someone was stupid somewhere. 4. I agree with all the other complaints made by others. The screen especially is very hard to see and use. I hate the greyscales and the reflectiveness of the screen and the difficulty of writing Grafitti. You have to be really determined to enter a lot of text using Grafitti. Complaints like these plus the presence of the Handspring platform may work to bring some humility to the Palm folks and convince them to make the Palm much more user and network friendly. If you are considering buying this device, waiting a year or so might not be a bad idea.
Rating:
Summary: Take a serious look at this one
Review: I have tried various Handsprings and Palms before, but the VIIx has just about the right combo of features, and the Amazon.com price is much less than what I paid. The wireless service is pricey, but if all you're going to do is check email, don't go for the unlimited service right away. The installation of the Palm CD is great for Windows 2000 and 98; I had the link to MS Outlook 2000 in no time. Also I was easily able to download 2 novels from some e-book sites and a drug interaction/infectious disease guide from ePocrates.com. In fact, because of clipping, 8MB is really all you need for normal use. On the wish list for improvements on this model, I would put a color screen at the top of the list. Also the wireless antenna can easily be broken; the design could be better. Add cell phone capability and this would be the perfect PDA.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome technology!
Review: I just ordered the Palm VIIx after going to Saturday brunch with a girl that brought her's along in order to check current movies listings and show times. She checked her email and weather reports (being that it was another rainy day in Seattle) and other stuff... I was utterly amazed at all that she could do from the breakfast table. As she was leaving to go to the bathroom (which lasted about 7 minutes) she said "go ahead and browse while I'm gone"... Seven minutes was all I needed to realize that I can no longer live without one of these babies... I went and purchased a Palm IIIxe from a local store and later realized that I did not have the same machine as her Palm VIIx. I really like the Palm IIIxe but since it does not have wireless internet, I decided to order one on Amazon.com at a much better price than local stores. I gave the Palm IIIxe to her daughter today and she was very grateful since she's never had her own PDA and her mother is always using her own. WORDS OF WISDOM - You can't be too critical of PDA's. I don't expect for it to do what a 1GHz Dell laptop or my dual Pentium III Xeon server will do... I only need the PDA while I'm out of the house or office and want to be able to check my email and surf the net until I can get home to my high performance machines.
Rating: 
Summary: Do not buy this awful awful thing
Review: If you are looking for something that will help you to orgnize you day, then I say this is a great product to buy. But if you are planning to use it for the internet, then this is not what you are looking for. Because one, it is slow and the monthly fee are outstanding...So right now, I cancel the internet service, and use the plam as my daily planner. I don't know why Plam still make Palm that require batteries. Do they know that people don't like to spend more on something they buy one time. If this product was rechargable, then I say this product is worth the 150 price. But then when I order it, it came with a free keybroad, so in a way I only pay 60 bucks for the palm Vllx. Hope this helps...
Rating: 
Summary: nice unit, but wireless is expensive and slow
Review: If you can afford the...wireless, and realize that this is not going to replace your desktop for web surfing, the Palm VIIx is a good way to stay connected. And it fits in your pocket! Like the other Palms, the VIIx does what it claims, and never complains. There are two catches, though. 1) wireless applications are a very limited version of the net. There's no built-in web browser that lets you go to any old web page. So unless you install 3rd party programs, you're limited to the 40 bundled destinations (Amazon, AskJeeves, CBS Marketwatch, Fidelity, ...). Surprisingly, there was no built-in wireless phone book. 2) the wireless connection is slow and expensive. The bandwidth is under 9600 baud, and there's a 2-4 second delay between clicking and getting a response. If you're an information junkie (stock quotes, news, email, eBay--is this you?) you will easily blow through the limited wireless plans... On the plus side: 1) I was always able to connect to the wireless net (in buildings, in a car, in a park where cell coverage is spotty) 2) The device always did what I expected. 3 stars. I'd give it 5 if the wireless service was cheaper and faster. --Pat
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