Remember when I thought that the Axim was all that and a bag of chips?

Well, (sorry cemeinke, NA), I'm not going to get an Axim. Why you may ask?

Because I fell in love with the Palm Zire 71 (http://www.palm.com/us/products/handhelds/zire71/)! Everyone who I've talked to, who has one, loves theirs.

Because I was happy with my old M100, I found out that I really like Palm, and that just a few tweaks that they did, made the Zire 71 nice. I especially like the built in camera, I want it as a little snapshot camera, that I can use at school, work, DL, Etc.

It's not useally what I like, Microsoft, it's much better. :D

My current Palm is gasping it's last breath, and I really want a Zire 71 too.

I looked at the Axim too, but I think I want a Zire 71 more...now I just have to pay off a few bills to be able to afford it...:cool:

Zire 71's Rock! I've had mine for a while. I wanted a Palm IIIc, then a Palm 515 but I could never justify the price for the lousy screen. Then came the Zire 71 and my Palm III was history.

Be careful with the accessories though. The doofus sales dweeb at Staples assured me the screen protectors from Belkin would fit my Zire 71 but he was wrong. Luckily my wife has a Zire so she will get those.

I also want to get the Slipper case from EBCases but they are always backordered so I ended up with the Palm brand Zire/Zire 71 case for now. Velcro but it's OK for now, I hated yanking the Zire from the included case. I'll eventually get the Slipper case.

The camera is cool (I wouldn't care if it had it or not) but the outdoor photo's are so-so. I took a pic at DCA and is was OK. The nice thing is that you can save directly to the SD card.

However the color screen is great, the included software is great, the speed is great. The SD memory is good but you'll need third party software to back it up. FYI, I heard Sandisk SD cards above 128Mb have problems. I have a 64Mb SD card and I ended up formatting it and haven't had any problems.

The SD wi-fi card is supposed to be out this month and a SD FM radio is supposed to be out soon too!

The SD Wi-Fi card did come out this month, but only with drivers for Power PC. The Palm version is set to come out in October. They also are supposed to release a version late this year that will also include 256MB of memory. Since the current Palms only have one SD slot, I would consider that to be the version to buy.

With regards to the Zire 71, it does appear to be a really great unit, but there is one caveat that those considering buying it should keep in mind. PalmSource is expected to release Palm OS 6 early next year. While the hardware for the Zire 71 could theoretically support the new version, the unit does not have the OS on Flash ROM. What that means is that the OS wouldn't be upgradable without physically replacing the ROM chip.

For this reason, I'd tend to advise people to look more closely at the new Tungsten T2 that just came out. It is $100 more, but it does have the OS on Flash ROM and should be upgradeable. It also twice as much built-in memory as the Zire 71, built-in Bluetooth networking, a much better suite of included software, and a nicer form factor and case. About the only advantage I see to the Zire (other than price) is the digital camera, which strikes me as a pretty gimmicky add-on to a PDA anyway.

-Jeff