.KEYWORD pppalm125
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE The Palm m125 makes expandability affordable
.FEATURE
.SPOTLIGHT figalt cover.gif
.SUMMARY The Palm m125 is Palm’s newest handheld. This one’s particularly cool because it incorporates an SD card, at an affordable price. Read this important review by Contributing Editor Steve Niles to find out why you should put this Palm OS device on your Christmas list.
.AUTHOR Steve Niles
On September 20, 2001, Palm, Inc. released a brand new handheld called the Palm m125, the latest addition to the popular m100 series. The Palm m125 is pictured in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A The Palm m125 brings expandability to the m100 line.
The Palm m125 handheld has the same contour shape of the other products in the m100 series, but it sports a unique two-tone Sonic Silver and Dark Black faceplate and a flip cover that has a soft, flexible feel and follows the contour of the faceplate. The Palm m125 uses the latest version of the Palm OS, Version 4.0, and it improves on its predecessors with a faster processor, the Dragonball VZ 33 MHz. It’s powered by two AAA batteries and includes 8MB of RAM.
The Palm m100 line was introduced in August of last year. You can read my review of the original Palm m100 in the August 2000 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200008/m100001.html. Palm surveyed a sampling of Palm m100 buyers and discovered a full 95% were first-time buyers, and 25% were under the age of 25. They also noted a higher proportion of buyers were women than was typical of Palm handheld purchasers. To Palm, this was a great success, as women, youths, and first-time buyers were exactly the target audience they were aiming for with this line.
The attraction of the Palm m100 line for this segment of buyers was its durable design, its low cost, and its ability to be customized with a colorful array of interchangeable faceplates like the ones pictured in Figure B.
.FIG B The Palm m125 can be customized with interchangeable faceplates.
The Palm m125 retains all these qualities, making it sure to appeal to that same user market. But if it has all the same features as the earlier devices in the m100 series, why should you be interested? What makes the Palm m125 so exciting?
Quite simply, what’s most exciting about the device is that it represents Palm’s follow-through on some promises made earlier this year. I’ll explain.
.H1 Migrating technology
When Palm introduced the m500 series back in March, they also introduced a number of important new features, including an SD and MMC (Secure Digital and MultiMediaCard) expansion slot, a Universal Connector, wireless connectivity, and document reader capability.
This is all well and good, but for a large number of users, students for example, the high-end Palm m500 series devices were just too expensive. While the benefits of these new technologies are great (which I’ll get to in a moment), a large pool of Palm handheld users were unable to take advantage of them.
Palm did make the claim that they would migrate these key technologies down from the high-end models into the rest of their product lines. At last, the Palm m125 is proof of their coming through on this promise. The Palm m125 has an estimated U.S. street price of $249. The primary features that everyone loves about the m500 series have been carried down into the Palm m125, creating an expandable, connectable, yet very affordable unit.
Let’s take a closer look at the features I mentioned above to see why the Palm m125 should be your next Palm handheld.
.H1 Dual-expansion capability
As I mentioned already, Palm introduced its dual-expansion architecture with the m500 line. You now have the ability to insert postage-stamp-sized content cards into the Secure Digital and MultiMediaCard expansion slot. These cards allow you to run a variety of different applications without consuming any of the 8MB of storage space on your device.
In the m500 line, the cards are inserted into a slot positioned on the top most edge of the device. In the Palm m125, however, the cards are inserted into the left side of the device, as shown in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C Expansion cards are inserted into the left side of the Palm m125.
There are already seven Palm branded cards available, including the PalmPak Travel Cards (for cities in the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific); Games Card; Dictionary/Thesaurus Card; Backup Card; and 16MB Expansion Card, which lets people store applications and content they create themselves. Five of these cards are pictured in Figure D.
.FIGPAIR D Here are five of the seven Palm branded cards already on the market.
Following shortly after the release of the Palm m125, Palm, Inc. is introducing five new PalmPak cards. First, there’s the PalmPak Travel Card: Rand McNally Road Atlas that provides you with maps, driving directions (city to city), and points of interest in the 48 continental United States. Then there’s the PalmPak Language Translator Card that allows you to translate among English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, with 40,000 words and 5,000 phrases. Finally, there are three PalmPak eBook Series Cards. These entertaining and informative ebooks include:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Personal Finance Series: seven popular Personal Finance Books, including "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter;
.BULLET Mystery Book Series: Six books by Michael Connelly featuring Harry Bosch;
.BULLET Science Fiction: one trilogy and seven stories by Peter F. Hamilton.
.END_LIST
The new cards are scheduled to be available in November. The 12 PalmPak cards range in price from $29.95 to $39.99 (estimated U.S. street pricing). That’s a lot of content, and that’s just what Palm itself is offering. Many other companies offer expansion media content cards, including the following:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET FranklinCovey: FranklinCovey Handheld Library, including best-selling books such as The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People at http://www.franklincovey.com;
.BULLET Franklin Electronic Publishers: Holy Bible, King James Version at http://www.franklin.com;
.BULLET Handmark: SCRABBLE Crossword Game at http://www.handmark.com;
.BULLET Purple Software: 5 Classic Board Games at http://www.purplesoft.com.
.END_LIST
The SD card is a low cost memory option, one of the main reasons Palm chose it as its expansion standard. The small size of the card was another important factor in their decision, along with the high speed of data transfer and the amount of storage room available in these small chips. In fact, executives at Palm expect that in the near future a card capable of holding up to 1GB of information may be developed. Palm also chose the SD card because it has broad support from a wide range of companies, meaning it will be possible to take your card from your Palm handheld and put it into such devices as MP3 players, digital cameras, printers, etc.
Dictionaries, translators, ebooks, games
