45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
A great buy
If you are debating between a pocket PC and a Palm, you might try downloading Palm's desktop software from the web. I was debating between a Dell and the Palm Zire 72, mostly because there seemed to be some rather negative reviews about the Palm on Amazon. What swayed me is that I love the Palm system, especially the desktop software.
157 of 161 people found the following review helpful:
Good, but not quite good enough
On the surface, this is a really good device, but after a while you'll start to notice some real flaws.
What I like about the Zire72:
- The screen is brilliant, photos looks absolutely stunning. (There's not enough variance in brightness, though. I've set it to the lowest settting and it's still a bit too bright for reading under low-light conditions.) - Voice...
I've used a PalmOne Zire 72 for years. It simply has all the features I want. When it went down the toilet I was happy to get a direct replacement for one third of what I paid for the original. I had invested in plug-in software that will only run on the Zire and I couldn't see any reason to upgrade.
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I recieved the Zire 72 for Christmas. I loved it right when I got it and I couldn't put it down. I upgraded from the IIIxe and I am so glad I did! The CD that comes with the Zire has the Documents to Go, which is already out of date, but whatever, it still works well! I've tried all of the programs on the CD, they are great, but they take up a lot of memory. One review said that there was a hiss in the background on the MP3 player, I didn't hear that though. The digital camera is good, but it does need a flash kinda. All in all a good product!
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This maybe bias, but oh well. I had the zire 71 for almost a year, when my dog stepped on it and killed the LCD screen. I would have gotten a new Zire 71 but it was "out of date" and the stores no longer carried it so i was stuck with the 72. The camera in the 71 is better than the 72. The 72 has the voice recorder which is wonderful, but i'd really have the plug in the bottom so that i could plug in the the keyboard instead of a wireless one, which i never seem able to make work. I wouldnt recommend this product to anyone who enjoyed the 71's picture quality.
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The basic Palm functions are familiar and run fine on this machine. The processing speed is much faster than earlier Palms and Sony Clies I've owned. Walt Bilofsky's excellent Tide Tool freeware runs dramatically faster. Sync to a Mac under OSX 10.3.4 is fast and reliable. Palm finally has given Mac users some support.
The camera is the poorest excuse for a digicam I've used. Pictures are extremely contrasty, and color balance is usually way off. The lens vignettes, causing severe shift toward green at the corners of the frame. The Zire 71 camera, although lower resolution, had better color balance and more manageable contrast.
The audio player quality is not nearly as clean as an iPod, but good enough to be listenable. The output jack has surprisingly high gain. There's no equalizer, i.e. no tone control. The voice memo recording feature works well, and its audio quality, while not hi-fi, is good enough for guitar practice.
Downloading audio files to the Zire 72 via USB hotsync is unacceptably slow-- several minutes per MP3 track (this is acknowledged in the manual). I bought a $20 SD card reader and copied the files to the card directly. This is many times faster.
The case supplied by Palm for the Zire 72 is a bad joke. It's bulky, and the fit is overly tight. Earlier Palm models had convenient flip lids that attached directly to the machine. I don't know why Palm has retreated to this Mickey-Mouse approach. Also, the case supplied with my unit, when taken out of its plastic bag, had a powerful chemical or solvent smell (some sort of artifact of the manufacturing process?).
All in all, a powerful machine, a reasonable value, but not a masterpiece.
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At first glance, the Zire 72 looks impressive and I was excited about all the new features. Then the fun started. I sync'ed with my existing Zire 31 and surprise; RealPlayer and the new 72 camera do not work. Oh well, press ahead. I set up the password security option on the 72 to kick in after 30 minutes of inactivity, power down, top off the battery and go to bed. The next day, I go to power up - blank screen (not a lick of juice in the machine). Go to Palm's support site and discover in the forums that this is a common problem. When you set up security with certain parameters, the machine drains its own batteries and goes dead. But the best part is that Palm won't acknowledge what is now an established firmware problem. Their response - Sorry not our problem (great customer support guys!). BTW, when I plugged this useless machine into the AC, I had to do a hard reset to get it working. You know what that means - all my programs, data and setup preferences LOST. Yeah, my Zire 72 is on its way back to Amazon for a full refund. Note to Palm - sorry, not my problem. PS Picked up the Dell Axim X30 in the meantime and it is SWEET. Kicks Palm butt and actually works as advertized. Thanks Dell.
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This is the best palm I have ever owned it's very easy to operate light weight. The thickest part of it is the camera. The blue color peels off very shortly and a very cheap stylis comes with it. Overall the Zire 72 performs very well.
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This is a pretty good PDA, but grafffiti 2 and the blue coating really make this a disappointing purchase at $300. Withing a few days (maybe even hours) of purchasing this product, the blue coating started peeling off where you insert the stylus. Now a few weeks later, the blue coating looks more like camoflague and it's embarrassing to bring this thing out at professional meetings. Also, after being a former user of the Handspring Visor Deluxe and Visor Prism, I reallly disliked the transition to Graffitti2, which makes writing simple letters like a "k" really difficult to master. This almost defeats any frequent usage of the product, particularly if you're mobile and don't have time to waste practicing the alpahbet. Another frustration is the camera (handy in outdoors pictures only) and the RealPlayer mp3 player, which requires Mac users to go through sometimes tedious or unworkable conversion of audio files so they can use this feature.
It's too bad these basic quality control and performance features are so lacking, becuase I was really attracted to this product by it's good color screen and fast processor. I should have gone with the lower cost Tungsten.
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I have T-mobile with the unlimited T-zones service ($9.95/month). Palmone has created an excellent bluetooth set up program in this new Zire 72 but it just doesn't work. Fortunately I found something that works. Search the 1src.com site for forum posts by clicclic (Amazon doesn't allow URLs it seems).
Any problems you have connecting can be found on message boards. on Howard Forums.com. Although that site is so stuffed with posts searching for something is like finding a floating coconut in the Indian ocean.
After getting the wireless access going through GPRS and the Nokia 3650 the Zire became indispensable (spelling?). Web Pro is an excellent browser and PalmOne's Versamail is great. The Zire 72 also can download and send SMSs. The device is finally finally connected. Or rather, *I* am finally connected. I know some people who had wireless in 1999 on their Palms/Handsprings. What do I know...
This is an excellent device with an excellent screen and a fast processor. It's just great. Get a 256MB SD card and load up all the freeware/movies/mp3s you can get your hands on and have fun. Check out these totally fun freeware games from a great programmer in Japan named "Naoki Ito". He has great freeware games.
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Works great for us! My husband takes pictures of troubled sites for work. He videotapes the kids at skating events. Has all his phone contacts stored. Plays music he downloads.
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well i currently got this for x-mas and love it! i was skepitical to get it because i read reviews about the paint coming off but they fixed the problem!but it is extremly hard to figure out how to download music since i use wmp and you can only use this with real one player but i figured it out and it was worth it! however this is expensive but i like having the camera with me at all times i got mine with a rebate and got 4 free games! If you are looking for a pda this is is pretty good but look around for a good deal on the price!;)
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