Chris Phillips responds
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed the article.

I have to say that even though the screen is not as good as some of the other models, it still stands head and shoulders above any of the grayscale screens. The trade off of keeping the small size of my Palm Vx is well worth a slightly dimmer screen, and there's no way I could go back to a grayscale screen now.

To get around the washed out appearance, I installed GlowHack, which causes the sidelight to come on every time I turn the Palm m505 on. This has greatly enhanced my enjoyment of this unit, and I haven't seen any noticeable battery drain. I understand Palm is in the process of building this option into Palm OS 4.0, so users won't have to use a hack master program.

Even with the shortfalls, I love my Palm m505 more each day. As I upgrade my existing programs to color versions, I wonder how I ever made do without. Thank you for your comments.

My favorites
Just read your article in PalmPower concerning the new Palm m500 and Palm m505 PDAs. Your article answered many questions for me, and I thank you for an honest appraisal of the newest Palm handheld.

I had viewed one at the local Office Depot, and I too immediately noticed a lack of luster in the Palm m505's color screen. I really thought it lacked punch. However, beyond salivating and fighting the urge to buy one on the spot, I decided to wait until the reviews came out. I'm glad I did. I currently own a Palm IIIx with an expansion memory module from TRG Products (now HandEra at http://www.handera.com) that gives me 8MB of memory. It more than meets my needs, and I cannot really justify the move to the Palm m505 under the guise of increased functionality. I guess I will have to stick to the more realistic position of, it's new, it's sleek, it has color, and it is expandable. Yes that's it, it's expandable. Ha, ha, I have found a reason.

On a more serious note, your article mentions that you use a Bible reader. I was wondering which one you use and also how you liked it. I too read the Bible, and I must say I have not chosen to install it on my Palm handheld because of its sheer size. The entire Bible takes up just too much memory. I also tried loading the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. Then just a few books, and I finally scrapped the project. You know when you have just a few books someone always asks something about a book you don't have. When you have the New Testament loaded, it seems like everyone wants to talk about the Old Testament. I guess my goal of carrying the Bible around on my Palm handheld is going to be the issue for me. At least the new Palm m500 series devices have an expansion card slot. Could the Bible and reader be stored to it, leaving main memory apart?

I am interested to know what your experiences have been in this area and what you use and how? Thanks. By the way, whenever I correspond with a Palm handheld user, I always ask them what their favorite Palm applications are. I have found many new applications this way. Please let me know what yours are. Here are mine: