Palm Debuts the Zire 71 and Tungsten C Handhelds

I agree. They should move the original Zire's price down to $79 or so, and release (essentially) the m125 with the latest OS 4 rev onboard in the Zire's formfactor. Of course, a backlight and a full set of hardware buttons would be necessary. If they could cram on a 5-way mini joystick from the Zire 71, it'd be a perfect unit to release at $125 now and then have down to $100 by Christmas. It's a shame such a device could not have been out right now to catch a lot of the "Dad'n Grad" purchasers out there. At the very least, Palm should slash prices drastically on the last of the m500's and m125's.

Otherwise, today is quit a good day indeed for the Palm world! I just am holding out for a refreshed T|T with a backlit Graffiti area.

Or even a virtual graffiti ;)

Could it be!?!? The return of Fzara2000!?
Or could it be the new models from Palm!?

Nah. I just wanted to have a nice bash. ;)

"Now thats just PRIME!"

Plus the C5xx DSP on the OMAP1510 seemed to only be used in the voice recorder on the TT, and for that low pass filter which the latest TT sound patch essentially removed. But the ARM9 multiplier turns out to be plenty fast for FFT's and many types of digital filters.

Also the Zire 71 has no microphone or line input.

Review: Palm Zire 71
"Conclusion: At $299, the Zire 71 is stacked against Sony's CLIE PEG-SJ33 handheld. For the first time that we can recall, at a given price point Palm beats Sony in both feature set and design and integration. The Zire 71 is an excellent device. We're disappointed by the lack of Bluetooth poor stylus, and pointing stick Navigator, but the good camera, mouth-watering screen, and excellent software integration win us over. The Zire 71 is now the device to beat in the mid-range market.
-What's positive: Superb screen, good camera, good software integration
-What's negative: Plastic stylus, pointing-stick Navigator, no Bluetooth or high-powered IR
5 out of 6"
http://www.infosync.no/system/print/index.php?id=3460

Brighthand Reviews the Palm Zire 71: "The Palm Zire 71 is a remarkable mid-range handheld that combines style and functionality, while remaining true to Palm's "pocketable, easy-to-use, long battery life" philosophy. Its only shortcoming is its lack of integrated wireless, which we hope can be somewhat overcome in the near future with support for Secure Digital Bluetooth and Wi-Fi cards."
http://www.brighthand.com/article/Zire_71_review

Brighthand’s Preliminary Review of the Palm Tungsten C: "....the Tungsten C looks like a very impressive device. When I first heard hints Palm was putting together a model with built-in Wi-Fi and a 400 MHz processor, I expected it to cost at least $600. Palm really surprised me by pricing it at $500. That puts it $100 less than the Toshiba e750, which has a roughly similar feature set. This device could win Palm not only sales among power users but among large corporate clients as well."
http://www.brighthand.com/article/Tungsten_C_Preliminary_Review

For the business user, Palm has upped the ante with the fastest processor ever in a Palm OS handheld. The Tungsten C is backed by an Intel XScale processor running at 400 MHz, twice the speed of any Palm OS handheld to date, and offers 64 MB of RAM, four times that of any other shipping Palm OS handheld. (The Garmin iQue 3600 is expected to have 32 MB of RAM, but is not yet available.) It offers the same 5-Way Navigator and thumbboard of the Tungsten W, while keeping almost the exact same size and shape. Although it has no external antenna, the Tungsten C includes an integrated 802.11b "Wi-Fi" radio. In order to provide all-day usage, it also sports the same 1500 mAh battery of the Tungsten W. Although it does not include an MP3 player, it does include a voice recorder, DataViz Documents To Go, a proxy-less web browser, and VPN support."
http://www.infosyncworld.com/system/print.php?id=3459

Palms range of WiFi is about 40-50 feet here (compared to all the negative talk about Bluetooth range of 30 feet?????) and am curious about the battery life (the Toshiba e740 runs less then 2 hours).....

"There are 2 kind of people my friend....those with wires and those without"

"Plus the C5xx DSP on the OMAP1510 seemed to only be used in the voice recorder on the TT"

The DSP on the T|T is used for playback of streamed sounds (according to a TI engineer). This should cause some differential in background audio performance. Whether or not the 192K of cache on the 310 will offset that, I don't know, but I can't see it. If PalmSG does an update to the OS and implements it properly, it could be used for both decode and playback of MP3/OGG. Whether they'll do either remains to be seen.

Don't they both have 192k internal memory? At least, that's what it says on the TI's website:
"192-KB of shared internal SRAM - frame buffer"
The difference between OMAP310 and 1510 seems to be only in the DSP core...

"Don't they both have 192k internal memory? At least, that's what it says on the TI's website:
"192-KB of shared internal SRAM - frame buffer"
The difference between OMAP310 and 1510 seems to be only in the DSP core..."

Yep, I must've missed it this morning because it's not broken out separately like the 310 spec is.

OS 5.0 was never meant to support anything beyond ARM v5 codes. The DSP in OMAP1510 is an utter waste of silicon. Z71 using 310 confirms this.

>The DSP in OMAP1510 is an utter waste of silicon. Z71 using 310 confirms this.

The Z71 doesn't have a voice recorder, a feature which is a requirement of many TT purchasers.

I have personally tested MP3 playing on the Zire 71 and it sounds good. (tested without head phones) But I didn't test and see if it would play music in the back ground. I will try it to marrow when I go back to work.

I use PocketToons MP3 Player....

Sounds good all the way around! It will play in the background. But will crash if you set over amp. to +3db. But +6db will work(strange). Anyway. It crashes at other times (just some tweaks the programs will have to work on)... But for the most part it works very good!

I received my Zire 71 as a gift (I actually received an Toshiba e335, but exchanged it for the Zire) and DSP or not, it really sounds great. I haven't had any problems running music in the background while using Wordsmith or iSilo, but that's all I've run it with. I really love this fun little palm.

TC

"...in the end the only one left smiling was the Jester, and his was only painted on..." - TC

"OS 5.0 was never meant to support anything beyond ARM v5 codes. The DSP in OMAP1510 is an utter waste of silicon. Z71 using 310 confirms this."

Because Palm's OS 5 release can't deal with a DSP chip (or do decent multitasking), the chip is a "waste of silicon"???

Operating systems are supposed to make hardware accessible to application software. The degree to which Palm OS fails to do that, that's a deficiency in Palm OS, not in the hardware.

In fact, this is a perennial problem with Palm OS: every megabyte of memory added, every screen pixel, every flash card, and every piece of audio hardware is a hard-won battle with that OS. Let's hope that OS 6 will be better than this because if it isn't, Palm is history (or at least should be).

... and did anyone else notice that, just like the T|W, they have a / but no \. Maybe they'll have to send out a "patch" like Sony 8^)

~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~

On this keyboard you get the backslash with the Fn-Symbol combination.

I WANT VIRTUAL GRAFFITI !!!

Me too. Lately, they just kick out units with this thum(b) keyboard (or the Zire71 with regular Graffiti area.

Take the Tungsten T, replace the sliding mech with a virtual Graffiti (it would be nice to have even a better display, e.g. like Cliés) and off we go.

Don't need camera and other gimmicks. But....

...give us the real estate (screen) we deserve!!

and bluetooth for mobile connection. (I don't want to download huge attachements, but just get some plain eMails and eventually some small attachements. This will be perfectly satisfied by bluetooth.)
And I want the mobile to dial my contacts from the Palm without lining it up for IR!

PALM SG, are you listening???

presently using m105 - waiting for Garmin iQue3600 with Bluetooth

Does the Tungsten C/Graffiti 2 do the "write in the main screen area" trick that Jot does? I could live with that.

BTW, I've used the thumbboard, it's not bad, my only complaint is that the D-pad is a little small. Us fat thumbed will be at a slight disadvantage...

Put me on the virtual graffiti waiting list too.

Don't need a camera, don't need WiFi, don't need
a thumbboard. But I'd like something smaller than
Sony's clamshell units with a large screen so I
don't have to scroll so much when reading long
documents. IMO, this is Palm's biggest weakness
compared to Pocket PC.

I believe if they put vitual graffitti on this unit (eliminating thumb board) that it would be as popular as the V/505/515 model.

At least that's what I'm holding out for!

I want V-Graffiti too. My 760 is getting long in the tooth but nothing seams to do anything it can't. The new stuff might do it faster but speed isn't that impotant. Sony or Palm, I couldn't care. Just let me read an ebook on a 320-480 screen.

Yes - add my voice to the screen real estate over thumb keyboard crowd.

The ideal form factor (this minute) would be that of the garmin ique 3600 - 320x480 and under 5.5 oz - but with selectable 802.11b/bluetooth (both radios onboard and user switches between one/both/none of them) instead of the GPS (though that is tasty too).

Major uses would be browser/internet/email, calendar syncing with whatever group calendar you use, and phone/contact interface via bluetooth. Camera, if you want one for occasional use, could be slipped into the SDIO slot or use the one on your phone instead.

But what is virtual Graffiti?

It's often mentioned, but I've seen no definition. (Maybe I have to get up earlier in the day.

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