I have had a Palm III for a long time, and figured it was about time to get a new PDA. The newer ones have much better displays, so I can save my eyesight a little. I have been a big fan of Palm, and believe me, it was hard to stray from it.

I wanted to keep the cost of my new PDA in the $200's. As you could probably guess by my username, I am a HUGE Linux fan. So when I found the Agenda for around $250, I was pretty much sold on it.

I opted to get one from auction rather than actually purchase one from the site. I found too many conflicting reviews...and I couldn't go to a store and try one out for myself. So I didn't want to drop $250 on something and risk not liking it. I got the developer edition too, which is slightly different than the consumer model.

It has all the stuff you would expect. Contact list, to do, scheduler, world time, calculator, and a bunch of games. All of them seem pretty adequate, **AND YOU CAN BEAM EXISTING RECORDS FROM A PALM DEVICE**

I can't say enough about the look and feel of the actual device. The pictures don't do it any justice, you really need to see it next to another device. It is very small, and the developer one that I have is a cool blue and kind of a milky clear color. It fits very well into your hand, and has a very solid feel.

In comparison to my PalmIII, the screen is a wonder of modern computing. It is much easier to read in dim light. The only other PDA I can compare it to is a Handspring visor. Both have 16 levels of gray. The visor's screen is a little clearer, but the VR3's is pretty good. The only complaint I have about it is the backlight. It has the inverted backlight like the visor, however, when you tap the screen, the backlight dims a little. Very annoying when you are writing and the screen keeps flickering.

The handwriting recognition(HWR) is not as good as Palm's Grafiti. As long as I make my letters slowly and deliberatly, I don't have any problems. I can not write nearly as fast as I can with grafiti. Of course the upside is that if I were so inclined, I could recompile the HWR to the way I want to right it. I find myself using the on-screen keyboard most of the time. The keyboard/HWR is actually another application that runs on the screen, it is not separated like the PalmOS devices are. As such, that screen space is usable screen space when you are not using the keyboard/HWR.

I run Linux exclusivly on my home machine. Syncing the VR3 with my Linux box is a matter of running rsync. The way I do it is start a PPP server on my host, start a PPP connection on the agenda, and then run rsync. I have tried a couple of GUIs that accomplish this, but I like doing things by command line. I have no clue how syncing works on windows, because I never tried it.

There are a lot of things that were done right with this device. One cool little feature is that there is a switch in the stylus holster. So you can turn the unit off and on simply be removing and replacing the stylus. The sync cable unplugs from the cradle, so you can use just the cable or the cradle. Both of them lock into place, so the agenda cannot come disconnected accidentally.

I am marking the recommending box for this review. But...I am recommending it for linux geek types. I do not think that the average person (the type of person that doesn't live and breathe Linux) would really get that much use out of it. I think they would get frustrated with it quickly. I think that the device has tremendous potential, but for the general user, I would still recommend a PalmOS device of some type.

Perhaps in another year it will be a serious competitor, but I don't think it is there yet. For now I think it is a cool novelty for Linux geeks :)

Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 160