Frankly, the Palm file’s 256-colour screen is lacklustre. The absence of super-bright backlighting means longer battery life between charges — Palm claims about two weeks — but the advantages this quality of colour brings to the simple Palm OS 3.5 interface are debatable.
In other respects, the Palm lllc is very similar to its predecessors. The case has the usual four-button con
trols with direct access to date book, contacts, to-do and memo, plus a pair of scroll buttons, and a power
button that doubles as a backlight brightness control. The top edge houses the stylus and a custom infra-red trans mitter window for beaming data 1 to other Palms.
The screen is very tough and resists extra pressure well, without Palm devices apply to the moire patterning even when pressing Ilk. It’s as easy and logical to use as any, hard. The flip lid that protects it is unattractive, but extremely practical.
Power for the Dragonball CPU and 8M of RAM is supplied by internal, nonreplaceable, lithium ion batteries. The batteries are charged automatically when synchronising in the supplied cradle, rather like the V series. In the standard kit this is serial, not USB linked, but syncs and program uploads were still very rapid.
The unit comes with the standard Palm Desktop, additional automatic links into Outlook, Excel-based expense charts and a range of email clients. Applications from AvantGo and AlbumToGo are also included to allow download of Web data and viewing.
All the comments image usual about but the addition of a blue tinge to the text makes almost no difference to operation. The only other colour element in the standard form is a yellow highlighting feature, which is equally ineffective. The images on AlbumToGo are pleasant, but 256 colours at 160 by 160 resolution isn’t stunning.
In most respects, the Palm lllc cleverly demonstrates that technology can find a solution — but the Palm platform didn’t really have any problems for colour to solve. Consequently, you do the same things, but get less battery life and more weight than with the equally priced Palm Vx.

Article Tags:
Palm lllcArticle Categories:
PDA