Customer Reviews for PalmOne m505 Color Handheld

PalmOne m505 Color Handheld
by Palm

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Customer Review: Full system backup in your wallet!
Summary: 4 Stars

However, I'm facinated in that the screen is clear and readable no matter what the lighting situation may be. When walking down a corridor or past windows, you never 'lose' the image like I did on my former greyscale and color devices. There was also no hint of streaking or banding.

Enough about the screen. The reason I bought it was because of the expansion. I can now travel with EVERY application I need, including my spreadsheets, relational databases, ebooks, and mapping software. I could only fill it up by loading multimedia clips and movie trailers. When it comes to making sure your data is safe, I can now carry a full system backup in my wallet. You insert the backup card in your Palm and two buttons pop up on the screen; Backup and Restore. Forget the manual! I should probably mention that you can put more than just Palm files on the card. Just drop any file into the Palm installer, send it to the card, and you have it with you. An extra trick when you get to that out of town meeting? Click on that special file and email your materials as attachments using McFile.

I don't really have to mention size, you can slip it in your pocket without looking like you are stealing bricks for your diveway. Even though it is more solid than other handhelds I've owned (this is my 5th), I find myself being more careful due to it's size.

One thing I was not expecting was the extra speed. If you don't know anyone with a Pocket PC (I have friends and coworkers with them), then go down to a local store and try out a Pocket PC with the 505 by it's side. You will be surprised by how sluggish most of them seem. I had to use a utility to slow the Palm down to get the responsiveness of the PPC's (HP Jordana was used in actual testing). Taking that same utility, you can crank the speed up to 50Mhz, which is the equivalent of above 300Mhz on a Pocket PC, and really watch it fly. Watch the battery though... you don't get as good mileage with your foot on the floor like that.

Hotsyncing was also drastically different. A normal hotsync take 12 seconds. Sometimes I do it twice because I did not see the first one, even though it says it did. A full reload from the desktop computer used to take me about 55 minutes. A reload to the M505 takes 9 minutes, including backup and verification.

On the downside, the battery life is not as good as the IIIc, which had a huge battery. Size does have it's tradeoffs, and Palm would have had to give up the expansion slot or vibrating alert to get more battery in there. Most users can expect about 2 weeks of use from a single charge, if they they don't watch too much video. But I should also mention that this is a concern only if you hotsync once every two weeks. The M505 soaks up a charge faster than any device I've known. In testing, it went from a 10% battery level to 53% in two minutes. Given time to stabilize, the voltage level evened out at 48%, so I imagine you would have to purposely avoid the cradle in order for the thing to even get low in the first place. If you do kill the battery by ignoring the many warnings which begin at 10%, it will not turn on. This is to protect your data, which will be safe for another week... but THAT'S something I'm not going to test!

Customer Review: Incremental upgrade to the Palm V/Vx
Summary: 3 Stars

Pros:
1. Display - Yes, a Pro and a Con, depending on whether you compare it to the Palm V or Sony Clie/Compaq iPaq. Despite it's shortcomings, I still feel it is better in most lighting conditions than my "green screen" Palm V. It is easier on the eyes, and the backlight is more useable in transitional lighting.
2. Performance - Faster than the Palm V on all accounts and display performance (screen draws) is better than m500, which is why I choose the m505 over the m500, not because of color.
3. Palm OS - Stable, easy, and thousands of simple yet powerful applications. And if you don't think it has breadth beyond a date book, look harder: Office apps, project plans, Pocket Quicken, photos, Access databases, etc. All on my little Palm.
4. Size - Small and light. It is a true "pocket pc!"

5. Expansion - Supports tiny SD and MMC cards. Why I choose m505 over the better display on Sony Clie. I did not want to be committed to "Sony only" memory stick versus more industry standard SD. Even new iPaq supports SD cards. If you already have Sony memory stick devices, by all means check out the Clie!
6. Memory - Relative to us Palm V users with only 2MB memory. For me extra 6MB in the m505 (and bigger flash memory too) was a huge incentive to upgrade now rather than wait for what will hopefully be a much improved display on next Palm.
7. Battery Life - Without the backlight, weeks, not hours, and even with much needed backlight, I have gone days without cradling it to recharge. (Your mileage may vary :)

Cons:
1. Display - Disappointing. I think Palm should have worked harder on getting resolution and brightness/contrast right rather than worrying about 65k washed out colors. It could have been a wow product! And don't tell me they couldn't have done it without huge sacrifices to size and battery life. Sony came closer! Palm clearly focused on making it "better than the Palm V/Vx" rather than focusing on the competitive Pocket PC threat, particularly the iPaq. Yes, the m505 is smaller and battery life is better, but when people put the iPaq next to the m505, Palm loses sales. Period.
2. Universal Connector - Two accessories I connect to this device so far, the USB cradle and travel synch cable, fit the connector horribly. The m505 is difficult to seat in the cradle no matter how much I use it, and the travel synch cable is an extremely loose connection.
3. Availability of Accessories - Not very many even though m505 has been out since May, and what few are out are still hard to find at many retailers.

Recommendation: If you need the expansion, more memory (coming from a Palm V like me), and small size is a big plus for you (versus a m125), this is still a worthy upgrade. But do not switch based solely on color display. You will be disappointed. I even considered moving to the dark side for a better display, and I have been a loyal Palm user since the Pilot 1000. What kept me? There are still key Palm advantages: simple/stable Palm OS, selection of applications, and size/battery life. However, consider a "discounted" purchase, as this device may move quickly to the clearance rack if Palm comes out with a much improved color model anytime soon.

Customer Review: Two steps forward, two steps back
Summary: 4 Stars

First, the good: the shape of the unit is nice. You have the slightly altered shape of the Palm V (it's shorter in height, but a tad deeper, most likely to accomodate for the color screen) that just looks so cool... It's a little heavier than the old Palm V, but that's expected. It fits very well in your hand.

The new Secure Digital (SD) and MulitMedia Card (MMC) expansion is welcome. Granted, there are only a few cards out there, but at least Palm finally noticed that this kind of expansion was necessary.

I like the fact that Palm added a vibrating alarm to the unit. Granted, it's not earth shaking, but it's a great alternative to an incessant beep.

Speedwise, the Palm is fast with the new 33 MHz processor. It's a tad faster than the Palm V.

Now onto the bad: Well, it's not exactly bad, but these are issues that will be a problem to some people, and it's only fair that I bring them up so you can make a smart purchasing decision.

The screen: The screen is a TFT reflective screen. This means that with direct sunlight, the screen gets brighter. So if you're in a dark room, you'll need the sidelight (yep, sidelight, not a backlight). Without the sidelight in a dimly lit room, you couldn't tell if this unit was color or not.

I have no problem with using the sidelight, and with the sidelight on it gives, to me, a clear view of the screen. Yep, it does drain battery life, but without the sidelight on, the Palm has an impressive battery life, so I take it as a good trade-off. The problem I have with the whole screen issue is that there's no way for me to adjust the brightness of it. Some people like bright screens, but if the sidelight isn't bright for you, you're not going to like this unit. I hope Palm makes a software update so that users can adjust the brightness of the sidelight to accomodate people who like bright and vivid colors. It just makes sense to me.

The "universal connector": You'll understand why I put that phrase in quotes in a bit. Palm had to redesign their connector to accomodate true USB support, so they make a new "universal connector." Bad news is none of your old Palm peripherals will work with this thing. You see the irony right now?

The stylus holder: If you're left handed, you might want to turn away right now. Palm had to make the Stylus Holder on the left side slimmer (to accomodate the new hardware), so you can't put the stylus on the left hand side. You can put the flip cover on, but not the stylus. As of this review, Palm hasn't made plans for creating a left handed stylus.

That's about it. It's a good unit, don't get me wrong, but there are just a couple of issues there that doesn't warrant a perfect review. My suggestion: If you've always wanted a color PDA with an expansion slot, and have not been introduced to a Handspring Prism or Palm IIIc, get this unit. Hey, you others might like it, but don't say I didn't warn you...

Customer Review: m505 - some experiences
Summary: 5 Stars

I spent approximately more than 20 hours in the net reading all the comments in several newsgroups and gathering all reviews and test information I could get for a palm with a colour display. Finally after some sleepless nights and in spite of all complains, I decided to buy a Palm m505.

First of all: the display is fine. I do really like it ! I have no problems with it. IMHO it is relaxing to look on a screen like this one (after sitting in front of a computers screen the whole day long). NB: I am from Gernamy, so I got a m505 assembled in Hungary.

I am very satisfied with that new toy. Especially I do like its small and slim size, the very high quality standard of the housing and the very long battery life time (with backlight off), while sitting outside in the garden and playing chess ... :-)). Great !

But I have noticed some issues, I would like to mention here:

- I saw a very strange behaviour using some backlight utilities on the m505. Some of them make the display flashing periodically, when the palm is powered off! Yes you are reading right! This happens every 60 seconds, exactly when the internal clock switches to a new minute. I found out, that the only utility which does not do so is the BacklightOn.prc, 827 byte. All other programms I have tried (505LightOn.prc, 17619 byte; Backlight.prc, 1981 byte, Keep_Lit_Hack.prc, 1336 byte) make the display flashing. Has anybody else seen such an efffect like this ?

- An other point: some people wrote in their reviews, that it is difficult to get the m505 out of the cradle. It is true. And the noise it makes is really suspicious. I tought this can‘t be healthy for the material and I worried about the lifetime of the hole mechanism. Because of this, I put very carefully a little grease (using a needle) onto the metal clips of the cradle and a very small amout onto their counterparts on the palm itself. What a difference ! Now it slides very soft, smooth and easy in and out (!) off the cradle. Very simple, but what an improvement !

- The display scratches very easily. Some people suggested to use commercial plastic protection films. Because I had none of this layers, but was very eager to play with the palm immediately when it arrived, I used a liquid hard-wax to make the display more mar-resistant. Check it out, it works very well. No micro scratches any more and the stylus slides much better on the display. But after applying the hard-wax you should not use a micro-fiber duster to remove finger prints from the display, because this removes the hard-wax coating too.

- Last but not least I saw that the unit becomes slow after running the GConsole (PalmConsoleDemo130.prc, version 1.3, 24155 byte). After haveing run this software once, the screen refresh is noticeable slower. This becomes clearly obviously when you power on the plam. After a soft reboot all is fine again. So this is not a big problem, but it took me some time to find out what software was responsible for this decrease of performance.

If somebody likes to write me his experience, please address your comments to Klaus@Dr-Siemon.de

Best greetings Klaus

Customer Review: It's pretty good, but...
Summary: 4 Stars

One of my gripes is with the HotSync cradle. When the Palm m505 is inserted completely into the cradle, there is a gap between the bottom of the palm and the cradle. The process of removing the Palm from the cradle involves tilting the Palm towards you and pulling up, usually making a somewhat loud snapping sound. While it may be sturdy, I’m always afraid that I may have broken the cradle. Palm could’ve definitely improved on this.

Now moving off the bad parts, the Palm m505 has a lot of great features. The one I like especially comes only with the m505 and not the m500, which is the backlit silkscreen area. When the backlight is on, the silkscreen area at the bottom is also lit up, showing the four icons and a well-defined graffiti area. Both Palms come with essentially the same software. I like the fact that Palm has included Documents to Go Pro 3.0. It has very good integration with my existing Microsoft Office. It also comes equipped with PalmReader, which is essential for anyone who reads eBooks on the go. The one thing I liked about Palms over PocketPCs was the sheer amount of software available, both to try and to purchase. The software ranges from cookbooks to slideshow software.

The expansion slot was a long-since needed idea. It allows the use of MMC in order to increase memory and expandability. I use a lot of large programs like AvantGo and Vindigo and it is nice to be able to expand beyond the 8 MB limit. When you’re installing software to your Palm while it has an expansion card in it, you have the choice of installing it onto the card. When the card is plugged in, it’s basically like another folder in which you can access your programs.

Overall, the Palm m505 is a nice piece of hardware. I’d have to agree with many people who say that the m505 is not the brightest looking handheld on the market. However, I would definitely not give it only 1 star because of that. When I use my handheld where I usually do, outside, it works fine. Beyond the brightness issue, the software included and available for download, the expansion slot, and the continuance of the excellent Palm V series design make the Palm m505 a very good buy.