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Apple Archive

Photos, Music, Calendar, and Address Book To Go: The Zire 31

, 2005.08.12

A few weeks ago I visited a friend of mine in Massachusetts. My friend's mother had recently taken to using a PDA, and I was curious to find out what she was using it for. She volunteered to show me her PDA, a PalmOne Zire 31.

The first thing I noticed was the Zire 31's screen. Unlike PDAs that I'd been used to using with black and white (not even grayscale) screens, this one had a color screen. Not just a 16-color one either, but a screen good enough to display photographs.

The next thing she proceeded to show me were the photos that she had stored on the device.

Zire 31The Zire 31 comes with 16 MB of built in memory, but it's easily expandable with standard SD cards - the same type that go in many digital cameras these days. That means you can take photos with your camera and stick the card in your PDA to show them to your friends.

Photos aren't all you can put on the SD card. You can store MP3s (the Zire 31 includes RealMedia player) and listen to them with the audio-out jack. In fact you can copy just about anything over to it that you want - applications, whatever.

The other nice feature - and PDA's have had this for a while - is that it uses rechargeable batteries. Unlike the old Palm Pilots and Handsprings that used 2 AAA batteries (which lasted for about a week), the Zire could end up paying for itself on what you're saving in batteries alone.

Speaking of money, that was the part that amazed me the most. The Zire 31 is only $129. Compare that to the $200+ that the old black and white Palms used to cost. Sure, they have PDAs that are better than the Zire 31 (the Tungsten series, for example), but for the price, the Zire would do more than what I need.

So I bought one, along with a 256 MB SD card.

There are two options for synching your Palm to a Mac. You can use Apple's iSync, which isn't too difficult - just go into the iSync application, and choose "enable Palm-OS syncing" from the Devices menu. This sets up your Palm to communicate with iCal, the Address Book, and Mail.

But I prefer to do things the other way with Palm's own Palm Desktop software. I've always liked this software (I even did a review on it a while back, link below), and while they haven't yet come out with a version 5, it tends to function fairly well anyway. I like the way the address book, calendar, and notepad are all included in one application rather than in separate ones (as Apple does).

Don't get me wrong - I don't dislike Apple's Address Book or iCal. I just find the convenience factor (and some of the additional options) a nice plus when dealing with my PDA.

So what have I been using my new Zire for? So far, mostly just storing pictures. It's nice to be able to put the pictures on the SD card and show them to friends on one small device without having to take out the digital camera and hope they can see the small 2" screen.

When school starts up again, I plan to use it to record assignments and manage due dates for papers and presentations. If I have something small like this that I can carry with me, perhaps I'll have better control over my schedule.

Either that or I'll become an expert in solitaire. LEM

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