BrianJarrett.com

Okay, I love my new Palm Z22 PDA. I’d almost given up on carrying a PDA altogether after carrying around the brick-sized HP Jornada for several years. About five or six years ago Traci bought a PDA to replace her two planners. She had a planner for school and a planner for personal stuff. She bought the HP Jornada for $600 (yes, I know it was expensive) and it worked great for her. I wasn’t sure I’d actually use a PDA so I bought a very inexpensive Palm m100 (for around $150) when she bought hers. I eventually discovered that I did use the PDA extensively and eventually replaced the Palm m100 with a Jornada like Traci’s (for about $250).

The Jornada had a bunch of bells and whistles but after a few years I realized I never really used anything but the basic organizer features. It was a heavy, bulky, expensive pain in the ass. Not to mention ActiveSync was a real piece of crap, constantly duplicating events (especially birthdays).

So a few weeks ago I decided we should finally upgrade. I knew that I wanted something inexpensive (since we would be buying two at the same time) and I figured the Palm would be the best bet. The Microsoft PDAs started at $300 and had a bunch of stuff we didn’t need. Palm had a $99 model with a color screen and all the basic functionality we would ever need. Plus it synced with Outlook; that was absolutely necessary for our family scheduling process.

I’ve had the Palm Z22 for about three or four weeks now and I love it. It not only provides the basic functionality we needed (calendar, contacts, tasks, sticky notes, and memos) but it also provides some functionality I wasn’t expecting. The unit also ships with a photo viewer, a game, an eBook reader, and some other apps. I won’t go into all the details about the basic organizer apps since that’s been covered extensively on the Palm site and many other review sites. Suffice to say they perform very well, provide all the functionality I need, and sync very well with Outlook.

The photo viewer is nice but since the unit is so inexpensive the screen resolution isn’t the greatest. Not a big deal in the long run since I didn’t explicitly buy it for photos.

I downloaded a few free games from Astraware and even bought another game for a couple bucks. I have maybe five games on the device; more than enough to pass some time in a waiting room.

The eBook reader, however, is the most impressive surprise. I used to read a lot, before the career, wife, and the baby, but now my free time is significantly reduced. Palm has an eBook store with thousands of titles, most priced at what you’d pay for a paperback. I purchased two books from their book store and have been reading them on the Z22. It was strange for maybe the first ten pages or so but now it’s completely natural and much, much better than reading a normal paper book. I can read anywhere now since I always have my PDA with me and I can also now read in bed at night without disturbing Traci. I can fit about 15 or 20 books on the unit; more than enough. Plus, any eBook you buy from the book store can be read on your PC and can be re-downloaded again if necessary.

Overall I’m very, very pleased with this PDA. It does everything I need it to do and, in some cases, even a bit more.