Zire 72 is awesome!

I'm on day 3 with my new 1.2 megapixel cam, bluetooth, 312 mhz Palm Zire 72. I wasn't planning on buying this device. I wasn't really using my Treo 90. Just carrying my Sony-Ericsson P800 cell phone/pda which after 11 months I still have mixed feelings about. It's too big, heavy and slow to boot for a cell phone and has a too-narrow 208 pixel screen for websurfing and no Palm OS.

My gadget-buddy, Bob Britton, bought a Zire 72 with my blessings last weekend, so before we started our every other week Alexander bodywork session at 5 pm on Wednesday, he demonstrated it to me by doing a little websurfing using his bluetooth connection to his Sony-Ericsson T610 phone. Very crisp. Really appealing but I thought I could resist.

The last week or so I've been flirting with David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) personal organizing approach. Reading Marc's Outlook on Productivity blog got me interested. Bought and read about 1/2 the book. Needed a good capture device and wanted one that was wireless - also I couldn't find the cable for my Treo 90 ;-).

After I stopped at my local stationery store Friday night around 6:30 looking for the ideal 4-color pen I walked across the way to Starbucks and did a little surfing. Somewhere along the way I started browsing GTD forum topics on GTD for Mac users and found a good Palm-based solution - Shadow Plan.

I emailed support @ shadowplan about the Zire 72 saying it was an emergency and that I wanted to make sure Shadow Plan ran well on the new Zire 72. It worked. I got a reply within 10 minutes and Jeff said the Zire 72 was "one hell of a unit".

That was all I needed. Went over to the Apple store in Corte Madera. Even though they charge full price, $299, I figured I wasn't going to get a much better price anywhere else while the Zire 72 was so *hot*. Apple had one Zire 72 on display. Being careful, I did a little more surfing on a G5 with a 23" display and found Zire 72 reviews at InfoSync World, Brighthand, Palm InfoCenter and CNET.

I'm now the proud owner of a Zire 72. I absolutely love the user interface of this palm device. All the applications seem optimized for the 320x320 screen and look like eye candy. The type looks like laser print, practically. I'm crazy about the calendar with its combo view showing all my appointments this week plus tasks due.

The Bluetooth app is fantastic and I easily paired with my Titanium and P800 and then synched to my Addressbook. I'm sure I'll have more to say about Bluetooth. This is the first time I've really gotten things working well.

I'm surfin' the web with the built-in, very good WebPro app via my P800. Works like a charm! Besides the included Versamail 2.7 which I copied from the included CD, I downloaded and tried out a trial version of Stand Alone's Hand/RSS. It's working wirelessly. It comes with a fairly short list of RSS feeds but enough for a taste. I'll need to put in some of my favorites shortly.

All I can say is that the look and feel of this thing is awesome. The eye-grabbing *zapphire* blue soft plastic casing is great to hold - a vast improvement over most cold and slippery metal cases. It's so good to have a mature pda. No doubt cell phone competition has inspired the folks over at Palm to get on the stick.

Comments

[Shawn Petriw]

Just wanted to say I've been looking at David Allen's processes as well, and I'm excited about becomeing a convert. In fact, it's Allen's idea of getting everything off your mind and into a system that has led me to Studio Manager. I want great systems to manage my "next actions" and Studio Manager will do that brilliantly.

[Janet Tokerud]

Yes. I really like his book Getting Things Done. Now all I have to do is set aside 2 full days to do the work of collecting all the incompletes and getting things sorted out and actionable. I'm using some of his principles now but want to do it right. I do think you will get what you are looking for in Studio Manager and am looking forward to getting your started - soon I hope. How are things progressing?

hey!ges wat? i too wasn't planning on buying the zire 72, but il be getting one tomorrow from my friend. how is it? is it good? well, i'm not much of a palm user yet, so maybe you could hit me back with the basics of using the zire 72 since you've had had some experience with itÜ oh and maybe you could suggest any sites where i could download softwares for my zire? thnx.. nice site too, very informative

[Susan T.]

A Zire 72 is a terrific PDA - for lots of things.
I'm an eBook nut, too, and always have plenty of GOOD READING with me in a doctor's office or wherever. McCullough's "Truman" is 6MB but well worth that much memory.
Get a wireless keyboard (the one that works with any Palm's IR port), and you've got a very powerful "laptop" that fits in a purse! I never leave home without mine... AND I use a TREO 600 as my cellphone and main PDA for everything else.

[John]

Would love it if you would explain how you got your Zire 72 to talk to your Mac.

I've been trying to do this for 2 days and keep getting PPP timeout errors. Never connected. Not once, yet, you say it worked fine there, so I MUST be doing something wrong. Can you explain how you did this? I'm on Mac OS X, 10.2.8, 1 gig ram, too many hard drives to count, dual 1 gig 2002 quicksilver.

Thanks!
John

[ramil]

Are you all feeling ok? I bought a Zire 72. Although it's my first PDA, I am not quite satisfied with the performance of it. The paint starts to chip off after sometime, the battery life is only 3 hrs (continous usage). And the functions are hard to use eg. connecting to internet, using the messaging, and the dialer. Can Palmone do something about this?