I've got a Newton (MP2000) that I absolutely love but recently it is annoying me more and more that it is such a pain to get info on and off of it. It isn't exactly sized for convenience either which makes carrying it around daily not very viable for me. So lately I've been doing some looking at modern PDAs and the Palm Zires have caught my eye. I've only casually looked at Palms before (since I've got a Newt) and I don't know too much about their day to day functionality. I know plenty of people here have some experience with them however. Ergo I've got some questions.
I don't have many if any multimedia needs in a PDA. I want to be able to keep contacts and calendars and other sundry information readily available. I'd also like to be able to comfortably read books/papers/etc. using something like
Plucker. I don't need a built-in camera of an MP3 player specifically either.
I've been checking out the Zire 21 and 31 as they both seem like pretty nice systems for the money. I like the price of the Zire 21 and from reviews it seems much improved over the original Zire which I've seen but don't really like all that much. The Zire 31 obviously has a color screen and also has an SD slot which works out well since I've got two SD cards I use for my digital camera.
What I'm wondering is if the color screen, upgradable ROM, and SD slot are big enough features to make the Zire 31 worth the extra money. The color screen on the Zire 31 is an STN screen much like the m130, from what I've read it
only works with the backlight on so in sunlight it becomes hard to read. I don't know that I'd necessarily need to upgrade the ROM even when PalmOS 6 is released. I don't think it'd add too many exciting features to an older Palm even if it were available for it.
The SD slot is the big one I'm not too sure about. With a Palm does it need an SD card dedicated to use with the OS or can you easily go back and forth between say a camera and the handheld? Would it be possible to store some apps and files on an SD card and them stick it in a camera to take pictures with? To that point, how far does a megabyte go on a Palm? I know on my Newt I do pretty well with two megabytes available and a 2MB Flash memory card. I don't envision needing to store anything larger than a few books at a time. All of my contacts and calendars could likely be kept in a few kilobytes. If 8MB would last me a while the SD slot wouldn't be much of a concern.
1) Is the Zire 31
really that much better than the Zire 21?
2) Can SD cards be used in Palms and other devices?
3) How far does a megabyte go on a Palm?
4) Does the lack of a backlight on the Zire 21 make it difficult to read?
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