This is the first review I have ever written for Epinions, but after seeing that the Zire 72 only had one review, I felt that this product deserves even more praise! I have had the Zire 72 Special Edition for a little more than a month, and so far am very happy with it. I am definitely a first timer to PDAs, as I once thought they were only for the elite executives whose lifestyles are so full of meetings and agendas that they needed one to schedule it all, and I am certainly no executive! Then one day I realized that I was trying to coordinate too much (doctor appointments, addresses, telephone numbers, checkbook registers) in too many places. I had the wall calendar in my kitchen, the organizer / datebook in my purse, the cubicle calendar at work, not to mention the calendars on both my home and work computers. There were Post-it notes galore wallpapering my home, my car, and my life, and I decided that I either had to get organized or I was going to go nuts! That is when I began looking into exactly what PDAs are.
My first stop was ConsumerReports.com, which I consult for every purchase I make, closely followed by Epinions. I am a Macintosh user, and after reading on Consumer Reports that for compatibility with Mac right out of the box, I would need to go with Palm (I tend to be VERY impatient and can't wait to play with a new gadget right "out of the box!!). After seeing on the ratings that Palm scored very well on their tests, I came to Epinions. Due to my budget constraints, I narrowed down my search to either the Tungsten E or the Zire 72. Because the Tungsten E was more inexpensive, I initially chose to go with that PDA. The Tungsten E was great at first - very small, slim, and sleek, but I quickly realized that the lack of Bluetooth wireless capabilities was going to be a huge negative for me. I have a Bluetooth enabled laptop and cell phone, and after fooling with the USB cable a few times to sync the Tungsten E, I kept regretting not spending the extra money to get the Zire 72, which IS Bluetooth capable. After just a couple of days, I packaged the E back up and returned it to the store, where they happily exchanged it for a Zire 72 Special Edition.
The Zire 72 is astoundingly easy to set up on a Mac - compatible "out of the box", and was up and going in no time at all (after the initial 4 hour charge). The installed manual gave very detailed instructions on usage and setup, and when you turn the 72 on for the first time, it walks you through the device setup step by step. In all, getting started was a breeze, even mastering Graffiti2 was much more simple than I had expected!
Graffiti2 is sort of an "alphabet" using all one or two strokes for each letter, when writing with the stylus on the little touchpad at the bottom of the 72's screen. The touchpad is very intuitive; I am still amazed at how this little gadget can interpret my letters, numbers, and symbols into typewritten font so easily! It is not 100% accurate, sometimes a completely different letter will appear from what I wrote, but correcting the occasional error is simple with Graffiti2 - just a simple hyphen (-), drawn from right to left, and you erase the last letter you write. If you want to erase a whole word or line, just bring your stylus to the screen and manually highlight the items to delete, then back to the touchpad and one backwards hyphen deletes it all.
Needless to say, it wasn't long before I was totally addicted. I had heard somewhere that when it came to PDAs, either you put it in a drawer and never used it, or you became so dependant on it that you never put it down... I have quickly proven to be the latter type of user. I entered all my addresses from my several paper address books, all of my upcoming appointments and events from every calendar (including friends' & families' birthdays, which could be scheduled to recur every year!), all of my Post-it reminders of tasks I needed to complete in the upcoming days, and I was still thirsty for more organization! I found that the Palm website (www.palmone.com) has tons of downloadable software, compatible with most of their current products, ranging from personal budgeting to complete maps of North America, from games to ebooks. I downloaded a home budgeting software and began keeping up with my checking accounts, savings, and credit cards, right down to the pennies of interest earned every month. I especially love this type of use, as I can enter transactions daily and check my bank account online to see which ones have cleared, and always have my register with me to verify amounts and mark items as cleared.
Of course, those kinds of utilities can probably come with any PDA, so I'll be a little more specific about the Zire 72. It is very fast, and the display is gorgeous... It was a couple of weeks before I realized that I had the brightness turned way down, which is recommended for longer battery life. I was quite surprised, as the display is so clear and readable even with the brightness at less than halfway. The Bluetooth technology, which was really my deciding factor, works without a hitch, every time - syncs with my computer and gives a friendly little chirp to let me know that sync is complete. I have to admit that I have never used the digital camera, as I have a real digital camera that works great and besides, the camera feature wasn't part of my reasoning to buy the Zire 72.
I did add a memory card to ensure that I would not run out of space for applications or files anytime soon, and there was nearly no installation at all necessary to do that - just plug the memory card into the slot, and you're ready to save / add files to it. I would definitely recommend purchasing a memory card if you intend to save important data of any kind to the Zire 72 - all things have a certain way of crashing when we least expect it, and also, a pretty decent chunk of the 72's 32mb of memory is taken up by the software pre-installed on it at the factory - the apps that keep it running. A memory card is fairly inexpensive and holds a LOT of data for a palm - I believe I spent about $60 for a 512MB card, and I haven't used even a hair of space on it (you easily can check used / available space on the Palm itself and on the card, if you have one).
I only have 2 gripes about the Zire 72, one pretty small and one that really irks me. The thing that I have gotten used to but wish I could change is the auto shut off. You have options for your handheld to automatically shut itself off after 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, or 3 at the most. This is a powersaving feature to prevent the battery from draining, perhaps as a result of users who might wander off and leave their handheld on for hours until it completely dies, and while I appreciate Palm's concern for conserving my battery power, I do wish there were a way to turn off the option completely and have the device remain on, untouched, for an unlimited amount of time (or at least longer than 3 minutes!) before it shuts down. This can make reconciling a bank statement a frenzied event at times, and can be particularly irritating in staff meetings at work, where sometimes it will take a coworker 5 minutes of rambling before stating anything worthy of making a note of! :0)
The other gripe is that this Bluetooth enabled handheld, which is advertised as being able to sync with "most" Bluetooth enabled cell phones, is not compatible with my LG PM-325. The handy thing about a PDA that can communicate with your cell is that you can supposedly use your cell phone as a modem and access the internet and email on your handheld, as long as your phone is nearby. The Zire 72 refused to recognize my phone, and my phone refused to acknowledge the Zire 72. After digging through the installed manual and the Palm support website, I finally found that ONLY certain types of phones are compatible with the 72. So unless you have one of the following 5 models of cell phones...
Sony-E T68i
Sony-E T610
Nokia 6310i
Nokia 3650
Siemens S56
... you will not be able to utilize your web enabled Zire 72 on the web using your cell phone. I really wish they had put that on the box or somewhere more obvious, as it might have affected my choices. BUT, I managed to compromise by downloading the free Avantgo software (www.avantgo.com), which allows my handheld to automatically download updated content from websites I preselect at every sync, and I can then browse those sites (read the news, etc.) until my next sync. I still can't check my email, but at least it gives me something to do in the doctor's waiting room or while waiting for an oil change.
Bottom line, I would definitely get the Zire 72 again, overall it's great for what I need it to do and has so much more capability than what I have even explored for myself. The executives can work on their spreadsheets or Word documents, the students can install all kinds of reference software and study aids, and the busy soccer moms can rest knowing that all of their appointments and phone numbers (and even shopping lists!) are always at arm's length.
