PalmOne Zire 31 Handheld PDA Review

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The Zire 31, the successor to Palm's Zire 21, is designed for value-conscious students, parents, and anyone who wants to keep their most important day-to-day schedule and contact information close at hand. Priced lower than most other PDA handhelds, the bright color screen lets you show off snapshots, listen to MP3's, and sports a Secure Digital card expansion for storing digital audio files and photos.

The Palm Zire 31 features a 160 x 160 color STN screen that displays thousands of colors and features contrast and brightness controls. Media abilities are included with RealPlayer for Palm OS.

The Zire 31 is powered by Palm OS 5.2.8, which provides higher performance, enhanced multimedia features, and enterprise-class security. It useses the intuitive and easy-to-learn Graffiti 2 writing software to input data into the handheld (as well as an on-screen keyboard). Windows users can synchronize calendar, contacts, tasks and notes with Microsoft Outlook. The Palm Zire 31 is compatible with PCs running Windows 98, NT 4.0, 2000, Me, and XP, and with Macs running Mac OS 9, version 9.1 or higher, or Mac OS X, version 10.2 or 10.3.

The Zire 31 offers the following improvements to the Zire 21:

* Color display (versus the Zire 21's monochrome screen)
* 16 MB of Memory (versus the Zire 21's 8 MB)
* MP3 digital audio capability
* Palm OS 5.2.8 (versus 5.2.1 for the Zire 21).

Pros: Affordable price, good features for cost (basic features mind you). Good sound. Great first time PDA

Cons: Small screen, see above why.