Palm has learned well from previous incarnations of its entry-level personal digital assistants, among them the cheap but dismally bare Palm m100.
Most were woefully short on random access memory. And some, such as the m100, did not allow e-mail.
The Zire 71 sports a Texas Instruments 144-megahertz processor, 16 megabytes of Ram and 4MB of read-only memory running its most up-to-date Operating System 5.2.1.
The beautifully bright and sharp screen makes it a big improvement on its older sibling, the Tungsten T.
But make no mistake, the newest Zire is still an entry-level Palm.
Those who say Palms have speedy processors may think otherwise when the most basic multi-tasking comes into play. For example, run an MP3 on RealOne player (the Zire 71's OS 5.2.1 also allows video clips to be played), then try reading some downloaded Web pages through a client such as Advantgo. Things almost grind to a halt.
The Zire 71 boasts a built-in digital camera that emerges as you slide down the metal back cover. Initially it is fun to zoom around and snap pictures of anything and everything, but the device can feel like an encumbrance when you switch back to an ultra-compact digital camera.