Continues the Palm's great design philosophy (Palm M500)

Member Name: jenx

Product:	Palm M500
Date:	31/05/01 (324 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: clear display, 8mb Memory, Notepad feature

Disadvantages: fiddly stylus, poor cover, not much new

I have owned a Palm III for 3 years and in this time it has given me sterling service. So it was gutting when I accidentally dropped it on a concrete floor and the LCD screen cracked. However it is a testament to the durability of these palms that the III still worked. So I decided to buy the latest palm M500. At just under £300 it was almost twice as expensive as my III. But it has 8MB of memory, the card interface and a snazzy design.

OS4 is not that different from earlier versions, in fact the main difference is the ability to capture an image of your writing in notepad, great for when you hastily need to write down a telephone number, but is it worth that much? Not really.

So the new card interface, well not much is available for it yet, and the size of it really only means that memory will be the main use, unlike the handsprings. With 8mb and synchronisation, do I need additional memory cards? Not really.

The design is similar to the palm V albeit a little thinner and a couple of grams lighter, not really noticeably lighter. The cover is a flimsy piece of plastic which I am sure will soon need replacing. The only other complaint is the stylus, which instead of the metal body number that came with my III is a cheap plasticky little thing which is awkward to withdraw from the body of the M500.

So all in all, a great little machine, with the clearer display of the latest palms, a nice notepad feature, extra memory, a slightly faster processor and good looks. Is that really worth the extra money. Not really. If you want a Palm try and get hold of a Palm V, or wait for the prices to fall.

Summary: