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.
