Palm Palm m505 Color Connected Organizer 8MB

Palm M505

Palm m505 Color Connected Organizer 8MB Review, by Richard Baguley April 29, 2002

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• Reviewed by: waldrich

  Strengths: Until two months ago it seemed to work well. Then it became a complete PITA!

  Weaknesses: memory, support staff, website

  Overall: Palm Support for this product is ABSOLUTELY AWFUL! I encountered off-shore folks who could barely speak and understand English. The website does not easily give downloads for firmware. I spent hours on the phone and exchanged numerous e-mails. I would not encourage anyone to buy this product. From what I've heard, the m515 is no better.

• Reviewed by: fl

  Strengths: I liked the calendar function with the time stamp which was useful for billing purposes

  Weaknesses: It was unreliable

  Overall: The first unit stopped working within a month and had to be rplaced. The second unit lasted 10 months before totally failing and those months were an unpleasant experience. The battery (not replaceable) stopped charging fully and the unit would go dead in the middle of the day. It was a tossup whether, after pulling of the cradle in the morning it would work or would choose to perform a hard reset necessitating wasted time performing another lengthy hot synch. I got so frustrated I put it away and bought an IPAQ with a real colour screen

• Reviewed by: pcastric

  Strengths: Slim, professional looking, ease of operation

  Weaknesses: No brightness control, easily affected by ESD (electrical static discharge - static electricity), specific support programs only available to US citizens (I live in Canada)

  Overall: I purchased a Palm 105 in the early part of 2002 and moved up to an M505 in December 2002. Since December 2002, I have had to return a total of 3-Palm M505s to Palm Repair due to ESD (electro static discharge, i.e. static electricty). ESD scrambles the Palm so that you can no longer synchronize using the USB port although using a serial cable works. A number of support programs which would help in correcting ESD are only available in the US and not available here in Canada. Having gone through the above, I still love my Palm and depend on it for both personal and business uses.

• Reviewed by: MalPALM

  Strengths: Is thin, pocket size

  Weaknesses: The display is very dim, there is no contrast adjustment. The lock for the expansion card is very, very sensitive and breaks pretty easy, therefore you can not plug it back.

  Overall: Do not waist your money, do not buy this PDA. The expansion card was the feature I bought it for, and now that is broken is useless, I tried to have Palm honor the warranty and they just concluded that it was my fault and it will cost me $40.00 just to revise it and another $100 to fix it. The lock is very, very sensitive, just imagine that on the first time that I attempt to pull it off It broke. Buy a SONY CLIE instead the card works withstands normal usage.

• Reviewed by: AEConfidential

  Strengths: Battery life, syncing, size

  Weaknesses: Number of expansion cards available, no spell checker

  Overall: I really like the m505, I got rid of my Ipaq H3635 for my Palm m505. The battery life, size and SYNCING of the Ipaq H3635 were the reasons for getting the Palm m505. I do wish the Palm m505 came with a spell checker. Sometimes (according to Palm) 3rd party software causes the battery charging indicator to not work correctly. I can leave it in the cradle all night and it still indicates it's charging. Hitting the reset button fixes this. Over all, I'm very happy with it, I also wish Palm would make more expansion cards for it, at least one with a spell checker.