Comments on: Palm m505 Review Part II

John

You only need to worry about "memory" on NiCad or NiMH batteries.

For an objective comparison on screen quality between the m505 and Clie, check out the link below.

http://www.pencomputing.com/palm/stest/m500vsN710C.html

A Moron in Person

if you were to just buy the right handheld in the beginning you wouldn't be living in a sea of mediocrity. (sorry, but the word fits the situation *perfectly*.)

i bet you can't truthfully say that you like having only 8MB of ram. how many times have you had to remove programs to fit a different one in memory? 16MB+ makes a world of difference, as does a memory expansion card. just think of all the great things you'd get to keep on your handheld without having to remove other great programs.

teach Palm a lesson. give your money to a company that is innovating rather than trying to play catch up.

"Who cares what YOU are doing? Why do people like you continually post to these message boards regarding what you are doing with YOUR Palm. It's apparent that you have trouble making decisions like this and want people so support you."

What a blind follower you are. You are so freaking loyal to your beloved Palm that you are willing to back the company and everything it does completely without question. You're just a clone!! You are so loyal that you would jump and attack anyone who has anyone who even dare to critize your beloved company.

Do you actually think that Palm care about you, even knows who you are, or is grateful that you are defending them? (I say this not only about Palm, but most big companies including Sony) Palm is only grateful that you gave them $450!! Come on wake up and get a life!!

Now back to the topic at hand, I think Palm's develope of the m505 does bring critism. I think that the biggest complaint that people is with the screen. I know that some people don't seem to mind that the screen is dim and dull, but the majority of the people are saying that the screen is 'medicore' at best. Someone wrote that they won't mind living with a medicore machine along with a medicore life. That's just depressing....who are you a librarian? (heh)

I don't know about the rest of you, but if I'm paying $450-$500 of my hard earn money, I want a screen display that looks like it's worth 450-500 bucks!!!

If the m505 didn't suite him SO BE IT!!! I love my IIIc and will keep it.

Did any of you even read what Ed posted? I guess not cause he said the same thing I just did. Damn, go ahead flame me now.

Palming away.....

Seriously folks, lighten up. I think we're all forgetting one little thing here that I'm pretty sure EVERYONE learned when we were children (or, are children, not to leave anyone out) - WE'RE ALL DIFFERENT. Nobody has the exact same needs for anything - including PDA's. (Well, except oxygen - most people I know are pretty bent on having a decent supply of that stuff..)

Some may want a thin device that can display good quality color images for business, or some may want a bit heavier device that can display pictures of their kids in high quality, bright as could be color so they don't have to worry about losing them in their wallet..

Others may want a bit more in terms of multimedia capabilities, and not mind yet an even larger size, and opt for a PPC.

This isn't intended to start one of those wonderful Palm vs PPC wars - all I'm trying to say is that everyone has their own needs and their own opinions. People can see the screens for themselves, without everyone attacking the few daring enough to say what they think. I really doubt anyone is going to read one single post of someone saying "I don't like the screen," and decide to never buy another Palm device again.

State your opinion, be friendly, or shut up.

Evan

I think we need to remember that everyone has their own opinions and preferences. I value opinions posted here but the one that matters the most is my own. If you like the M505 then great, if not, that's fine too. To each his/her own.

No reason to fuss.

Can you elaborate on the "much brighter" comment? Are you referring to the strength of the sidelight or the contrast of the screen itself without the sidelight on? Did you examine both units with a full charge?

Ed,
I own a Hungary model and still have about a week in which to return it. If you could pursue this USA/Hungary "brightness" difference for those of us in my situation and give your opinion it would of great help. Thanks.

I have a USA m505 bought last Monday at Office Depot in Atlanta. Available for a drink?
--Bruno.

To attempt to remove any bias I probably have, I took it around to about 15 people in my office to get their opinions. Most don't own any Palmtop devices, but there are a couple Prism and non-color Palm owners. The worst comment I got was, "That looks pretty nice."

Regardless, in my opinion, the m505 I picked up looks excellent. I find it hard to believe that so many people would complain about the screen if they all looked like mine, so I'm willing to bet the manufacturing process wasn't too great.

And no, it's not Hungary vs. USA.

Is the screen side lit from all 4 sides? My upper right side doesn't seem side lit.

That all being said, I have a Hungarian model purchased from OD (first shipment). Generally I like to buy "Merican" if I can, but OD didn't have and USA assembled models available. My m505 seems to have a blueish white light with frontlight on. The complete graffiti are is lit up. I have no complaints. Also, I find I only need to use the frontlight about 20% of the time as I have fluorescent lighting in my office, though not as bright as some offices. I guess all those carrots mom fed me as a kid come to some use.

I really think the Hugary vs USA arguement is a nonstarter. We all know the good 'ole US of A makes superior products ;-)) But don't forget, at least those of us old enought to remember, that Hungary produced the Gabor sisters (three gorgeous blondes in their day).

:(

http://cmkohl.8k.com/m505.html

The side light on my Hungary model also doesn't light up all the way to the very bottom of the silkscreen but that is apparent only in very dim light so I couldn't see if this was true about CompUSA's model.

I'm not going to return my Hungary model for a USA one over this. The difference is just too slight to be worth the hassle.

---
News Editor
Palm Infocenter

Keep the comments coming folks...perhaps Palm will wake up and see that us users are smarter than they give us credit for!

I have two USA assembeld M505's and one of them is like this where the very bottom of the graffiti are is not lit up. The other one is lit all the way to the bottom, but it has a big flake of dust on the edge, under the top layer of screen and I'm afraid it will migrate out into the viewing area. Anybody else have a device where the lighting doesn't go all the way to the bottom? Should I exchange it?

He told me that brightness varies from unit to unit and has nothing to do with country of manufacture. Also, and he emphasized this over and over, he said that the brightness problem is a software issue. I couldn't believe this, but he repeatedly told me it was true. His claim is that the brightness is set at the level it is for purposes of keeping the battery life at a reasonable amount. He implied that it's just a tradeoff between battery life vs. screen brightness.

Mark's Palm, btw, was very bright. And guess what? It was made in Hungary.

http://www.davidpogue.com/

I'm pretty sure he's used a Palm device for more than 2 minutes.

Allan

Really, everyone needs to be a little more independent and form their own opinions? "Parroting" what they've heard or read other places is an excellent description of what's been going on with the M505 discussions.

To buy something else just because what you want isn't out yet is just plain foolish -- even more so when you only have to wait for a month or two. Besides, most of the people here already own a PDA. You can afford to wait.

2c

Don't get me wrong, I don't care much for Sony computer products, but they are a huge company with lots of resources and may end up being the last man standing on the Palm OS side of PDAs. And if Sony every purchased Palm, Handspring can probably kiss their OS license goodbye!

Palm appears to be in the process of imploding and might not be around much longer as a separate company. I expect to see them taken over within six months, perhaps sooner if their new lineup flops. The first step will be a series of resignations, likely to be announced within the next month.

Microsoft is now poised to step it, but it remains to be seen whether or not PPC4 has been simplified enough to challenge Palm's intuitive design. Don't be surprised to see massive changes in the PDA market over the next 4 months.

Btw, funny the author of this article mentioned that MSMOUNT was created for the CLIE, but did not mention anything about McFile.
Well McFile was created FOR the CLIE also, see the little Memory Stick icon on the bottom left? And Click the "Palm" on the top right, It'll change to "MS"

And anyways, Sony Clie was better off the block. Sony Clie comes with MS-GATE an almost full featured file management program (McFile is still better), but Sony's MS-Gate is a lot more better than whatever the m500/505 uses to copy stuff to the SD/MMC.
Heh. Palm m500/505 is Half-Assed

Let's see if Palm will release what is being called a "m515" --

320x320 screen
brighter lighting
contrast control
soft Graffiti area

D'oh! That will teach me to write reviews until the middle of the night. Thanks for the correction.

---
News Editor
Palm Infocenter

joemc

Unfortunately, the selling quantity of N500C told the truth and dropped dramatically which were well below SONY exception I guess. and it causes N700C/710C showing up less than one year after N500C debut. This time, SONY bounces back and presents IPAQ-like of screen. The feedback in TAIWAN are all positive mostly.

I am not coming here to say how great N700/710 is. just thought it might be usefull information and hoping Palm should note what the mistake SONY has made. Sorry for my poor English.

PS - what is that silly black grid between pixels for anyway? With all our modern technology it seems they could have made it white to blend in some or shove the pixels together to make it unecessary altogether. Again, excuse my apparent lack of understanding.

"In Fact, STN Screen has already been used by SONY 500C last year which never appear in North America."

Is this true? The Clie500 and the m505 have the same screen? Because I remember, not too long ago, that everyone was bashing the hell out the Clie500 for the poor screen quality (even Sony didn't think it was good enough to ship over to the US). Now, all of a sudden, the same screen it beautiful in a m505?

Are American standards that low?

2c

The m505 costs $450, plus tax maybe, or no tax and shipping.

>PS - what is that silly black grid between pixels for anyway?

Have you ever looked at a IIIc or Prism? the black grid is way worse.

I'm closing off this thread. You guys are wasting everyone else's time with your flame war.

---
News Editor
Palm Infocenter

Ed, you should delete crap like that.

BUT wouldn't that be MORE distrubing? If I want buy a product, I want the same standards, not a range of variations. That will be a distasterous blow to customer confidence for the Palm, not to mention questionable quality control.

Anyway, I don't think screen variation is the case.

What I DO think is the placebo effect. Some users are so focus and put so much expectation into the m505 that they subconsciously convince themselves that the screen is not all that bad, even "great". This may also explain some of the vicious attacks that people here make toward others who are critical of the m505.

***Can someone tell me where to find the answer to my question about the black grid between pixels????

Well, I did a little reasearch and found a discussion tread on Visorcentral where someone posted a picture of the S500C next to the N700C and compared that to a picture to the m505 next to the N710C.

I think that poster made a good point...Palm should have known that producing the m505 with a dim screen will draw criticism just like Sony's S500C.

I posted a link to the Visorcentral tread last night on this very tread. This morning my post was gone. Am I being censored?

http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=14941

Thanks for clearing things up. Sorry I didn't know about the long links.

By the way, the two links above showed the same information, but on two separate discussion boards. Looks like I'm not the only one that saw the pictures.

Tired of the dull, hard-to-read display of the standard Palm m505? Having difficulty reading text indoors without using the sidelight? The much-anticipated new Supernova Software release, bright505 instantly fixes all of the m505 display deficiencies, providing users with an extremely vivid color screen. This program is a HackMaster/EVPlugBase system extension and directly modifies the display registers, resulting in vibrant, razor-sharp text and graphics. Photo-realistic colors are finally within your grasp.

Apps running "from" the card can take about a second to start up (presumably as they are being copied from the card to RAM). Copying a 483Kb WordToGo file from RAM to the card took ~10 secs (timed with the second hand on my watch).

Another friend has Palm's 16MB SD card, but he hasn't tried it out yet. Hence, I personally can't make a comparision between SD vs. MMC.

We recently found this bug in the special version of
Zap!2016 which is shipped with Palm's PalmPak Games Card for the m500 and m505. The PalmPak contains a specially enhanced version of Zap!2016 which stores all of its graphics on the SD card, reducing the amount of space that the game needs to run on the device. The bug causes some of the game's temporary memory to not be released when the user quits the game and returns to the Applications screen or other applications.

This problem occurred because when games are put on ROM cards for release with a new device the software has to be developed very early and sometimes there's not enough time to understand how to use the newest features properly. Neither Palm's Quality Assurance team or Astraware's found the bug before the cards went into manufacture.

For information on how to work around this bug, see our website at:
http://www.astraware.com/support/palmpak.html

Kind regards,
David

---
David Oakley
CTO, Astraware Ltd. http://www.astraware.com/

What kinds of problems are you having? As the OS is supposed to copy the entire app into RAM and run it from there, all apps should run exactly the same as they would if they weren't on the card, aside from the delay in loading.

---
News Editor
Palm Infocenter

Low (1 100 watt floor light):
Vx light off: Fair Vx light on: Poor
505 light off: Fair 505 light on: Good
Prism lowest: Good Prism highest: Blinding

Notes: Thats right, the Vx and the 505 look the SAME in readability with the 505 light off. It gets the job done but its not great. Again, the Prism on its lowest setting looks the SAME as the 505 with its light on (but the colors arent as good). If you want to see a 505 with its light on, lower a TFT to its lowest setting; there you go.

The 505 should be compared to the V series because of the form factor, not Prisms/IIIc. If you change from a IIIc or Prism, you still sacrifice screen for size, just as always. Only the 505's backlight actually works and the color's nice.

Around the house in Medium Lighting, the Vx is not very useful. That's one reason I went to the Prism, I was tired of not being able to read it all the time. The 505 is the same readabilty as the Vx until the lights are on, then the Vx is bad. We all know about the mono light; if it was conventional lighting ala Clie, it would be fine. With the Prism, I longed for the V form factor, but wanted better medium light quality. The 505 is the best compromise so far; it's Fair to Good under ALL conditions but excels at none (even in sunlight, I'd say its only Good). It is a good compromise, not the dream machine.

JohnC

I was able to compare the Vx, Prism, m500, and m505 also (at the local CompUSA) and came to the same comclusion. Your comment is appreciated!

-original poster

I'm a "form factor" person, and I think the m505 screen is good. I've owned Palms since the original Pilot, and have been using a Vx since it first came out. I skipped the IIIc because although I wanted color, I just couldn't deal with the size. I've found that the major drawback of the Vx (and all the monochrome Palms) is that in certain (lower) lighting, the reflection off the screen is so strong it makes reading difficult (looking up an appointment or phone number is OK, but anything more is tiring to the eyes). The screen of the m505 improves the contrast to make it very readable under these situations.

It's been mentioned that the m505 screen is similar to that on the original Sony color Clie. Did anyone ever come up with a software or hardware hack to adjust the sidelighting (i.e brightness of the screen)? Anyone have any thoughts as to whether this will be possible?

Also, Ed mentioned that he was able to get a serial cradle for the m500 series. Where? I need one to sync with my WindowsNT computer at work, and was told by Palm that they wouldn't be available for a couple of weeks (and I haven't seen any in the stores).

Sorry, the Clie doesn't have a microphone. You might be thinking of the HandEra that's also coming out soon and does have one.

I do want to make one other observation:
1-KISS (keep it simple stupid) time and time again I always thought that more was better. I found that this wasn't the case. In my humble opinion, with a handheld device...less is more.

2-Look at the "mass" population: you've got mother, students, house wives, etc... (mass majority) don't care for all the "features". It's wise of Palm to take this approach because the want to reach out to a horizontal market. What you techy needs is something like the Handera/TRG which is more of a vertical market.

Keep in mind that Palm has consistently keeped it's price the same. The only time that the price of a model drops is when Palm releases a new model not because of Sony or Compaq etc... Observe the price of the first Clie...where is it at now? The new CLie is priced at $500. iPaq was $499 and now $599 for 32 megs and $649 64 megs. Everybody's price seems to fluctuate but Palm has always been consistent. Now let me ask one last question, will the vast majority pay upwards of $500+ for a PDA that does everything?

But most importantly, it has an excellent screen. The screen is how you interact with your PDA, and a poor screen makes for a poor PDA - no matter what other attributes the m505 possesses. I actually prefer using the Vx monochrome screen instead of the m505 - it's not a crisp screen when used in typical indoor lighting. I am amazed by the number of people who are trying to rationalize their choice of the m505.

To each their own. If you want a dim-screened PDA
without MP3 capability and for $50 less, by all means get an m505. It's just that it would be a shame to see a lot of people make an ill-informed choice and end up with a handheld they end up disliking.

My advive to everyone considering getting a new PDA: don't buy one until you have at least tried the CLIE N710C. It's that good.

Don't say you weren't warned.

At least you can use DateBk4 and get the color working for you!

Weird it is...

p.s. what hapens when u use other usb devices

I set my m505 up today with this!

I noticed that this is a beta version that says it will expire 5/31/2001.

I want to find out where I can find out more info on this app and where I can download new updates.

Hacker Dude-San doesn't seem to mention Power Run on his websites at all.

Thanks,
Bob
bhughes@dowco.com

Do you know if Hacker-San Dude plans to release this as a shareware app, or freeware app?

Also, do you know how to contact him (i.e. his e-mail address)? All of the docs are in Japanese.

Thanks,
Bob

I think I'm going to order a XTRA-XTRA PRO and go away 2 years more with my IIIx.

Dave from BCN

Why Palm then decided this screen was good enough to use in their most expensive PDA is the question that everyone's asking.

http://www.handspring.com/products/sbmodules/minijamdetails.jhtml

Yeah no you don't awesome !!
But 199 bucks for MP3 + 32 or 64 MB ?

Clie's Audio Adaptor is 129 dollars, and it'll cost you about 90-100 dollars for a 128 MB MS module, so that'll add up to a 229 dollars cost. but it's a 128MB MP3 player (VS 32 or 64 MB)....

Next: "Look at sony's past attempts and their reach and ask yourself will they have the kind of commitment that palm got from other companies making modems ect."

I am really not sure what you are talking about here, all I can say is in the software side they should not need to worry about support of developers. on the hardware side, they did lisence their Memorystick to compaines like Sharp, Philips ('http://www.memorystick.org/') go check the info. about MS yourself there are 189 companies supporting MS. (BTW: if you don't already know Sony did invent the 3.5" floppy disk look at how well supported it was in the last 10 years)

"a good solid handheld with good color and lots of potential go with palm."

hmm ......... you know you are biased, well I am not saying I am not biased, but the fact is 320 > 160