Rating: 
Summary: Great product
Review: Received Zire 72 for Christmas, so can't beat the price! :) Regardless, I've got nothing but praise for the 72. Peeling paint problem appears to have been resolved in later revisions like the one I have.
Battery life not optimal compared to previous Palm units (I had a Palm IIIxe for reference - 2 AAA's lasted for weeks), but I've never run out during the day yet. Keep in mind that the newer generation of Palm devices have a LOT more drain on the battery - high resolution screen which is always backlit, a MUCH faster CPU, greater amounts of memory, multimedia applications, a camera and more.
The LCD screen is gorgeous. Easily the best LCD I've seen to date.
Camera takes adequate pictures in good light. Forget about taking night or low light pics.
Bought a 1GB SanDisk card for carrying data and MP3s around. Zire had no trouble accessing card and plays MP3s beautifully.
I charged it fully and let it drain almost completely for the first few times, and now I just top it off nightly.
Bluetooth sync with my laptop (via USB Bluetooth adapter) is flawless and speedy.
Only con in my opinion is the lack of a hotsync/charging cradle. I suspect someone (palmOne or a 3rd party) will step up to the task eventually.
Hint: The Zire 72 will charge ever-so-slowly over just a USB cable connection if left turned off.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine basic functionality. Some weak points.
Review: The basic Palm functions are familiar and run fine on this machine. The processing speed is much faster than earlier Palms and Sony Clies I've owned. Walt Bilofsky's excellent Tide Tool freeware runs dramatically faster. Sync to a Mac under OSX 10.3.4 is fast and reliable. Palm finally has given Mac users some support. The camera is the poorest excuse for a digicam I've used. Pictures are extremely contrasty, and color balance is usually way off. The lens vignettes, causing severe shift toward green at the corners of the frame. The Zire 71 camera, although lower resolution, had better color balance and more manageable contrast. The audio player quality is not nearly as clean as an iPod, but good enough to be listenable. The output jack has surprisingly high gain. There's no equalizer, i.e. no tone control. The voice memo recording feature works well, and its audio quality, while not hi-fi, is good enough for guitar practice. Downloading audio files to the Zire 72 via USB hotsync is unacceptably slow-- several minutes per MP3 track (this is acknowledged in the manual). I bought a $20 SD card reader and copied the files to the card directly. This is many times faster. The case supplied by Palm for the Zire 72 is a bad joke. It's bulky, and the fit is overly tight. Earlier Palm models had convenient flip lids that attached directly to the machine. I don't know why Palm has retreated to this Mickey-Mouse approach. Also, the case supplied with my unit, when taken out of its plastic bag, had a powerful chemical or solvent smell (some sort of artifact of the manufacturing process?). All in all, a powerful machine, a reasonable value, but not a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: get it free!!!
Review: these pdas are a pretty sweet "entry level" palm device...if you want to get one for free, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/6yrqf
just complete an offer, get a few friends to do the same, and the Zire PDA is yours for free! sound too good to be true? check out this article from wired magazine about companies that run promotions like this one:
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64614,00.html
check it out...you can get it for free!
Rating:
Summary: Indespensible life companion (once you get used to it!)
Review: This is my first ever Palm handheld/PDA anything. I don't know how I lived without one all these years. If you've been using datebooks and address books and notepads, if you can afford one of these babies it will really enhance your life.
Great things about it:
1. Great calendar/date book feature, easy to use.
2. You can take snapshots as needed. When the lighting is good, the pix are nice and you can use Bluetooth to easily send them to your desktop computer and email them everywhere. Resolution not good in low light. Colors are brilliant.
3. THE NOTEPAD! Never thought I would use it, I use it all the time. Jot down ideas, lists, phone numbers fast and easy.
4. The address book. Fill it up with data, and you always have the info you need. You can type on your computer then synch with your Palm. Just terrific.
5. It's not your cell phone. I can write on it while I talk on my cell. I think combining functions into one gizmo would be a mistake.
6. Plays music. Yes I have an iPod, but I sprung for the disc memory so I have a bunch of favorite tunes I can listen to on planes, during idle moments, or when my iPod is out of juice.
7. Search feature -- let's see, her name is Cheryl? I was supposed to meet her in October but canceled? If you don't delete everything, you can search on whatever you remember and call up addresses, phones, etc. from anywhere in the Palm.
8. PRIVACY. My Palm is locked, and sensitive info like passwords are blinded without a password to see them.
9. GAMES. I fell in love with "Fish Tycoon" and played it until I finally got sick of it.
10. Calculator. Handy. Also a special place for Expenses for your expense report.
11. Battery. Excellent charge retention.
12. Great computer synch. If I lose it, at least all of my data are on my desktop.
Weaknesses:
1. Blue cover wears off. Gives it a kind of Downtown Chic, but if you don't like that distressed look, they are available in SILVER that doesn't peel off. I deliberately peeled mine off more to make it look worn, but it's not for everyone.
2. I had all kinds of battery trouble until I put it on lock when off. You should secure it anyway in case you lose it. It's easy to unlock. This was a bug and I trust they have fixed it on the newer models. Now, no trouble; but choose the locking function.
3. Buy a kit that includes a cord that connects to your computer for synching AND that drip-recharges your Palm at the same time. This is great for travel, if you take you laptop and are away for a week. You can keep you Palm charged with just one little cord, no heavy adapter.
4. Expensive. It's too expensive. It should cost $199.
Overall, a great thing to own and I love mine!
Rating:
Summary: Zire 72, Bluetooth syncs with Mac OS X
Review: This review is of the Zire 72, and its ability to sync with the Mac using both USB and Bluetooth, and using iSync and iCal and the mac Address Book. Getting everything to work was extremely difficult. The documentation provided, in both paper and electronic PDF form was little help. For that, I almost gave it 4 (if not 3) stars. I am a computer consultant, and while this was my first time with bluetooth, this comes no-where near the grandma test. This might even challenge teenagers. I had to install the Palm Desktop Software, which the 3 page glossy help managed to give innacurate directions for, then tried to use bluetooth. It didn't work (as I had skipped many steps) so I tried to sync with the USB cable. After a bit of fiddling, the palm synced nicely with Palm Desktop. The next step was to use iSync. You have to download the iSync Conduit from apple, install that, and then try running iSync. Using the USB cable, I was able to sync with iCal. Finally, I turned my attention to Bluetooth, and after playing with settings (which admittedly I had changed before) I was finally able to get it to work. This maybe took one hour or more. I might have even forgotten a step, so don't take this as the definitave guide. After all this, using bluetooth is beautiful. I press sync on my zire 72, and it starts talking with my powerbook. 30 seconds later everything is updated. I particularly like how the apple Address Book is flexible enough to let me have 3 mobile phone numbers for a contact. When I tried syncing my palm with yahoo's online address book last year, all of a sudden one mobile was a work number, the other mobile was a fax number, it was a mess. Also, one thing that REALLY surprised me is that the palm can be charged in UK, Europe, the US right out of the box, no additional hardware needed. The power adapter includes 4 little interchangeable clips that let me put on the international adapters. For people traveling, (like myself) the zire 72 is amazing. I can power ANYWHERE, using just one power cable, and sync without a cable at all. If you prefer the typical cradle that was on the 71, m50x and tungsten, you might not care for this, but I think its great. In brief: fairly complicated to setup, but well worth it.
Rating:
Summary: great lil device
Review: well i currently got this for x-mas and love it! i was skepitical to get it because i read reviews about the paint coming off but they fixed the problem!but it is extremly hard to figure out how to download music since i use wmp and you can only use this with real one player but i figured it out and it was worth it! however this is expensive but i like having the camera with me at all times i got mine with a rebate and got 4 free games! If you are looking for a pda this is is pretty good but look around for a good deal on the price!;)
| 
