Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best low-cost PDA out there!, 28 Mar 2002
This PDA is good value for money. The colour screen is very clear, and Palm have finally made a good colour PDA afforable to the masses. The design is slim, elegant, and sits very comfortably in your hand. You can benefit from the use of M500 series peripherals, such as fold-away keyboards, GPS receivers and modems. You can also use SD cards to store large programs or files on, and the recently released Bluetooth card brings interesting connectivity options as well, in terms of wireless communication with bluetooth-ready mobiles, printers and other devices.
Palm's operating system is well-tested and efficient, and there are 1000s of programs out there on the internet to download, from route-planning and streetmapping, to spreadsheet and word processing packages, as well as e-books, internet software, and also some pretty nifty games as well, like Tetris, Scrabble and Monopoly. The bottom line is that this is a cool device at a fair price - you can store your contacts, plan your diary and to do lists, surf the internet, read your e-mail, play games. What more do you want?! The bundled software suite is excellent too, allowing you to view colour image files, video clips, and work with Word and Excel files. The only area to fault is perhaps the battery life of the lithium ion rechargeable battery - some users report that they are only getting 2.5-3 hours use in between re-charges. Nevertheless, the battery can be topped up in 10-15 minutes, so I don't think this is that much of a big deal.All in all a 5-star product from Palm!
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46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent for virtually anything!!!!!, 1 May 2002
By A Customer
This is my first PDA and I love it! My life has become much easier now, since I have all my data in this cute baby. And I don't have the fear of losing my data ever, because of the hotsync capabilities, I can backup the information really easily to my PC. And with its expanding features I'll also be able to backup onto an SD card, which is really handy. The main applications already included are extremely useful, and the best thing is that you can customize your pda in any way you want by downloading literally thousands of applications. Not to mention the games of course. Still, you shouldn't expect too much from m130, it is only best when you're intending to have a useful, expandable and colourful handheld. There has been some rumours going on about the quality and the resolution of the screen. It is true that it has a 160x160 pixel resolution screen, which some people call it "low resolution", whereas it isn't. I agree that it could look quite dotty next to the 320x320 pixel hi-res Sony Clies, but believe me, this baby has it more than enough I think. I wouldn't need any more, because it does its job literally perfect! Also there is this issue: If you like playing fast-paced games, then m130 might not be your one, because it is true that the transition of the colours on the passive matrix screen is quite slow, which means there tends to be a fogging effect on the screen. But once again, since this was designed to help people organise their lives, which was my main intention on buying m130, it is a perfect gadget. It also works great as an e-book reader. There are tons of titles available now, but even as more titles come up, I'll be carrying my fav books in my tiny library, my PDA. If you are looking for a wonderfully fun, yet affordable piece of beauty, you should definitely go for m130. I'm really happy with mine. Highly recommended!
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60 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Palm m130...THE BEST, 21 Nov 2002
After having bought the palm m515, I decided to go to the palm m130, simply because I thought the screen was just a tad on the pixely side, and I wanted to explore palm's amazing handhelds.
After 3 months of excessive testing and use of my new palm m130, I can say that this handheld is better in parts than the m515.
Hardware:
The palm m130 has a round bottom base which fits the groove in my hand better than the m515. (as seen in the picture), and an ergonomic 'flick' on both sides at the top of the pda. This is good as it follows the shape of the underside of the thumb, and feels remarkably comfortable.
It is a thicker handheld than the m515, but this is good for me because it provides better grip. This of course depends on different people.
The casing is fairly good, the black plastic on the underside is fairly cheap (I do agree on the review that it could smash to peices if dropped on a soft surface). I have already dropped it and a small chunk of plastic broke off from the outer rim of the infared port. However is still intact.
The blue and silver plastic cover that palm shipped it in is (bleuchk), so I bought a different colour cover (palm m100 series) and placed it on top (fairly simple, but I was always afraid of breaking the little tab). I like change, so changing between the two make it stand out a bit, and make the colours more vibrant.
The colour screen that it has is beautiful. It may be slightly pixely, but overall better than the m515, as it has the same pixel count, and a smaller screen, it's like a high res small screen, so it's allright, however palm have got the colour slightly wrong. Instead of the advertised 65,000 colours (16 bit), it is a measly (4,800) colours (12 bit) (it was only 4 months after releasing the m130 did palm realise this). But seriously, 256 colours is more than enough anyway!, so unless your really bothered, this palm should suit you well.
Software:
Palm ships with palm OS 4.1 with a 33 MH dragonball processor, which is a good enough speed for a handheld computer. The palm desktop software is fairly good, and 'organises your organiser', as you can see what you have done in memo pad, note pad, your adresses, phone numbers and to do list, and you can make corrections of your handheld from your PC. With a push of a button, and all your information is Syncronised in under a minute.
To make use of all the adequate enough amount of the 8 mb ram you can download lots of freeware and shareware from several sites...
You can download patches and hacks for you palm to make it better, such as change the font for some applications, eliminate the lines in Memopad, add screensaves and lots more. (Loads of colourful games for it as well.)
One of the small problems of the screen is that is that it is passive matrix, meaning that any games that you happen to play end out fuzzed (or so it's meant to be, but I haven't witnessed any of this :).
The free software that palm have added with the main software is incredible. I immediately downloaded dataviz documents to go. It really is a good program, and I can now write word documents and edit excel spreadsheets on the screen. You can also view powerpoint presentations, and you can reherse them right before [the big meeting], and it really is good.
To make use of the more than enough colours of the computer, you can download the MGI photosuite, where you have the option of installing pics of your loved ones in black and white, 256 colours, or 65,000 colours. You can also make the picture to get larger or smaller, so you can see the picture in more detail, but naturally, when you have the picture at 65,000 colours and large setting, they each take up at least 360k of precious space.
As well in the software package is Avant go web clipping software, here you can 'cut' internet pages off the web, and view them offline on your palm. Which can be useful for reference when you most need it.
Along with Avant go, there is the mobile connectivity software, allowing you to access the web by infared, just as long as your phone has GPRS, and infared.
The dual expansion is very good, as you can buy memory cards like I have done to give you more memory for your palm, (you can also buy a bluetooth card for accessing the internet if your phone has Bluetooth, which can be useful).
Since purcasing the palm portable keyboard for my palm m515, I have been able to use this on my palm m130 (backing up the other guy's statement that all m500 extras will fit the m130.)All in all a good PDA for good money (keeps you v. organised too ;)
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