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Palm m515

(discontinued)

Introduced March 4, 2002, the m515 is an improved version of the m505. The m505 and m515 are some of Palm's most exciting product introductions of the past few years. What's so exciting? Among other things, the m515 offers color in a very small sized unit, and 16 megs of RAM-- a first for a Palm-branded PDA. Like its predecessor the m505, the m515 comes with a USB syncing cradle and has an MMC/SD expansion slot.

Palm m515

The m515 has a 65,000 color 16 bit reflective backlit display. Users compained about the washed out, dim display of the m505 and this model is a vast improvement. The screen is brighter and more color saturated- yay!

The m515 has an internal expansion slot housed at the top edge of the unit that can accept SD (secure digital) and MMC (multimedia card) cards. These devices include memory cardsfor added storage, pre-loaded software such as Atlases and eBooks, and Bluetooth wireless network cards. Probably the biggest benefit is that you don't have to worry how much memory the Palm comes with, you can simply add more memory for storing applications and data by buying and SD memory card. Though for most users, the built-in 16 megs is plenty!

The units are about the size of the Palm Vx, and maintain the Vx's svelt look and feel.

m515, m130 and iPAQ 3970

Above: Just how small is the m515? It's at the top of this stack, the Palm m130 is in the middle and the iPAQ 3970 at the bottom. You can see just how small and slim the m515 is.

MGI Photosuite Mobile

Above: MGI PhotoSuite Mobile is included.It allows you to view MOV .AVI .WMV, .JPG .TIF .GIF .PNG and .BMP image and video files on your Palm. It supports SD cards so you can store your images an albums on an SD card.

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The PDA comes with a USB sycing cradle, and you'll enjoy the same fast Dragonball EZ processor running at 33 MHz used in the m500 and m505. (finally catching up to Handspring). The USB syncing bug that affected some m500 and m505s is cured in this model.

Since this is a high end unit, you'll get a great software bundle, including Documents To Go standard edition for working with Word and Excel files on your Palm, MGI PhotoSuite for viewing images and photo albums, Pocket Mirror for those of you who want to sync to Outlook rather than Palm Desktop, and Palm Reader to read the many ebooks available for Palm.

Original list price $399 US

Specs:

Display: 160 x 160 pixel reflective color LCD (standard Palm size screen). Great indoors and outdoors. Adjustable backlighting.

Performance: 33MHz Motorola Dragonball VZ processor. 16 megs of RAM. 4 megs flash upgradeable ROM for OS.

Size: m505: 4.5 x 3.1 x .5 in. / 4.9 oz.

Audio: Built in speaker for alarms.

Battery:Rechargeable Lithium Ion.

Software: Palm OS 4.1 and the usual suite of Palm applications, including Address Book, Date Book, Clock, To Do List, Memo Pad Calculator Calculator. In addition, DataViz Documents to Go is bundled (allows you to work with Word and Excel docs on your Palm). Also bundled are MGI PhotoSuite Mobile Edition, AvantGo, Pocket Mirror 3.0 (allows you to sync to MS Outlook), Palm Reader, MultiMail SE . Palm Desktop for Windows and Mac included.

Modem: None included. Bonus: Mobile Internet Kit included, which can be used in conjunction with data-capable mobile phones and external modems to access Internet email accounts. AOL for Palm OS® handhelds included.

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