Palm is the Way. Review on Palm m125

Am using a Palm m125 for the last one year. Is a pretty decent Palm top considering the fact that its one of the least priced in the Palm Family (around 200+ USD). All the Featrues that you can imagine or probably want in a Palm Organiser is available in this baby.

Features

There is some sort of hardware extensibily possible using a Universal connector. It boasts of a 8MB of storage media. Quick access keys to access your calculator, scheduler or address book makes it very eary to navigate.

This one comes with the Palm V4.0 Applicaton Software The Graffiti Recognition is not that effective, needs to practise a lot. Sometimes I wish there were a inbuilt AI which recognises and builds up a database on how I write my characters. Its pretty simple to write as Palm prescribes and also you can invoke the key board by tapping on a specific part of writing area.

The interface with MS outlook is awsome and and handy. All this and others is done by sync of the handheld with your PC. Its done using the Hot Sync feature which has two options one is

Local IR(Infra-Red) to PC or Handheld or Using Cradle and Cables.

Modem PalmModem, IR to Phone, Serial to Phone, Serial to Modem

You can also store To-Do lists, Memo's and Notes apart from addresses. You can assign Password to your hand-held and also speficy after what time it should automatically switch off. I have not assigned any password cos there are a lot to remember and was worried that I may forget it.

The Find feature in the writing area is very powerful, on entering a text and pressing the find icon, it searches everything, I mean it searches the occurance of the text in your Addresses, Datebook,Memos,Notes and To Do items in one shot. It comes pretty handy.

There are couple of games available on expansion cards. The backlight is pretty effective during nights when you are lying in bed and get a sudden inspiration for a review on MS. I had Solitare on mine but dissappeared when once I removed the battery and put on new ones. I don't know how to make it visible again. I have downloaded a Manual from the Palm Site which may help me to solve this problem.

The m125 runs on two AAA batteries and battery life is ok but not great.

Issues

I love color and this baby displays only in grey scale and probably that's what I detest most. The Characters are bit small to my liking but they are legible. The battery life could have been much better. I had to work hard to make the Graffiti work, as such I have a very bad handwriting and my 'f' looks like 'b', I think the Palm was confused initially, but following Palm's recommendations solved the problem. But I would have loved to write the way I write.

What I feel

Priced at around 200+USD this baby is bit expensive for the features its providing. The customer service is ok and the http://www.palm.com site is quite user friendly. Remeber to register your product oline as you may get some goodies and better support.

They have comprehensive manuals online in the PDF format which you can download and use. Overall, its a pretty decent site. I find my m125 very useful and its a good friend. It helps me to organize my disorganised life in many ways, from helping me to get up in the morning to rembering that I need to shoot out a mail to a customer at exactly 9:46 pm, and most of the times the task occurs when am having a smoke outside the office.

So looking for a 'less' expensive Palm, then m125 should be the one, it may not boast of all the features of a high-end Palm model, but it enough for a average person like me. Overall, a quite good product, considering the Pros & Cons

Peace

Ranjith