I love my palm pilot to pieces – unfortunately one of those pieces just went <kaboom>.
I got home today and found my Zire 21 just wouldn’t turn on – not only that, but it was pretty damn warm, which is odd seeing as how it’s below freezing outside.
I’ve tried a few resets and hard resets, but the screen only stays on for a few seconds, enough for the digitizer screen to briefly pop up before the screen goes dark.
All in all, I think my battery just bit the dust.
So, does anyone have any suggestions for a replacement? Please bear in mind that I do not need a phone…
I have a Tungsten E, but it’s over 2 years old, so I have no idea what they have warped into now. The battery life blows (2.5 hours, maybe) but otherwise, okayfine.
If you don’t need any wireless capability, just the tasks and contacts and such, there’s the Z22. It’s what I use. It’s the bottom-of-the-line and fits my needs perfectly. (I’m not out of the office very much, and when I am, I’m in court. Either way, I don’t need a super-duper phone-e-mail-net-browser. I just need to know if I’m supposed to be in my office or in court, and the Z22 handles that just fine.)
I’d love to just replace the battery, but so far as I can tell, it’ll cost me $60-70 (once you factor in shipping and potential border-crossing fees). And it will be non-returnable non-refundable and non-warranteed.
I have one of these too. I have had problems with the synch software (still can’t get it to work on my home computer), but otherwise I like it just fine.
I have a Palm TX that I’m pretty happy with. Both my home and office have wi-fi, so I really wanted that feature. After a year the touchscreen needs to be re-regitered pretty often, and Blazer is the worst browser in the world, but you can run Opera on it, so thats OK.
The Tungsten E has morphed into the E2, which retails for 200ish nowadays. It’s got a nicer screen than the Z-whatever and it’s got some extra other features which you may or may not care about. I’ve never used the Bluetooth feature, for example. The screen has an annoying whine which is common to all Palms, as I understand it.
The power switch on mine quit within 3 months of purchase. I never sent it in for repair because this would have meant doing without for something like 2 weeks (grrrrrrrr). This means I have to use the application buttons to turn the damn thing on. The power switch on its predecessor, a Tungsten E, also died promptly on mine (but not on Typo Knig’s… which leads me to believe I’m doing something wrong though I can’t figure out what).
I’d seriously consider getting the Z22 (think that’s the low-level model) if you’re used to something of that ilk now. It’s got the same RAM as the E2, I believe, which should be more than enough for most people (I’ve never maxed out mine).
My experience with replacing the battery on my old Zire when it died was that it was a total waste of time ($60, major hassle). Within 2 weeks it was belly up again, at which point I replaced it with an E2.
For whatever it’s worth, I used to work for the company that provides tech and customer support for a manufacturer whose name has become synonymous with the device. I did quality assessment monitoring of the techs in India. I was not impressed with what I heard. We who performed shakedown on the account were pretty much unanimous that we wouldn’t own one of the things.
