Palm Z22
Picked up a Palm Z22 a few weeks ago, and so far it seems like it was a good choice.
note: This is a stock photo. I don’t have any kids.
The USB connection has been convenient enough up to this point, and since the Palm also charges when it’s connected to the computer I have yet to see the battery drop below 100%. I also have a few spare cables for this particular size of mini-usb left over from an old thumb drive.
So how about the included Palm Desktop software? It’s crap. The Apple iSync conduit? It works once before corrupting the user’s preference file. It didn’t take me long to purchase the program many others swear by – The Missing Sync.
Missing Sync is working great for syncing with Address Book and iCal under 10.4.4. The lack of categories for items in iCal forces me to use different calendars as my categories, but that seems to work fine as well. Unexpectedly, it copied my Address Book’s custom user pictures to the Palm’s address book as well. Nice touch. On top of stable syncing, the software also supports iTunes syncing, something this model of Palm does not support. (again, a feature more than covered by my iPod)
As far as the capabilities of the thing go, it does everything I needed a PDA to do and more. My To Do list is always up to date and I can read ebooks on a nicer screen than my iPod. Since my iPod works fine, i had no reason to consider looking at PDAs with MP3 capability – they most likely wouldn’t support AAC/MP4 or Apple Lossless, and I know they wouldn’t play iTMS-purchased songs. Most of my digital music is in MP4 at this point, so anything that doesn’t offer support isn’t on my shopping list.
It would be nice, after all, to be able to use Bluetooth to transfer images and books instead of USB, and to be able to surf with WiFi access. However, these features seemed to significantly increase the price and lower the battery life.
I like having all the information on my Palm password-protected, just like my phone. Even though there are programs available to crack the password, it’s better to have some protection than none at all.
Although my index cards won’t fall completely into disuse, the Z22 is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I’m very happy with it so far, and will post an update if anything starts to wobble or melt.
