Palm i705: a Vast Improvement Over Palm VII, But Not Enough to Ditch Your Blackberry
Earlier this week Palm introduced a new personal digital assistant called the Palm i705. This is the second device offered by Palm which provides a form of wireless Internet access, and is definitely a vast improvement over the previous model, the Palm VII. However, we do not believe that this PDA will make people forget about the Blackberry line of wireless communication devices from Research in Motion.
Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal agrees with us. In his latest Personal Technology column, Mossberg says that the i705 lacks the convenience of the RIM Blackberry. According to his review, "...the only reason to buy the i705 is for wireless e-mail, and here the unit is flawed. It does, as promised, collect your e-mail automatically. But the device lacks a built-in keyboard, which I regard as crucial to composing e-mail. Most people aren't fast enough or accurate enough at Palm's on-screen handwriting system, called Graffiti, to write a lot of e-mails with it, yet this is the method Palm relies upon. Palm does offer an optional clip-on keyboard, but it costs $60, balloons the size of the i705, and is cumbersome to carry around."