Palm V

One look at the Palm V handheld and you'll know it's something special. Its sleek design and anodized aluminum case appeal to your sense of style. Weighing just 4 ounces, its ultrathin exterior belies its organizational power. You'll have thousands--literally thousands--of names, addresses, phone numbers, appointments, to-dos, plus hundreds of e-mail messages at your fingertips. The advanced LCD screen is razor sharp. And you can recharge the lithium-ion batteries in the HotSync cradle in minutes a day. A full charge lasts for up to a month. Simply put, the sleek new Palm V handheld lets you organize in style.

Product Description.
One look at the Palm V organizer and you'll know it's something special. Its sleek design and anodized aluminum case appeal to your sense of style. Weighing just 4 oz., its ultra-thin exterior belies its organizational power. You'll have thousands -- literally thousands -- of names, addresses, phone numbers, appointments, to-do's, plus hundreds of e-mail messages at your fingertips. The advanced LCD screen is razor sharp. And you can recharge the lithium ion batteries in the HotSync cradle in minutes a day. A full charge lasts for up to a month. Simply put, the sleek new Palm V device lets you organize in style. The way you do everything else.

I got a Palm V about 2 years ago. My hope was that I could trash my full-to-bursting filo fax with multiple addresses/business cards for my ever-moving family and friends and also take my work calendar and address book on the road thereby avoid the constant stress of not being able to get hold of my secretary to access diary appointments and contact details when away from my desk-top/lap-top.
The touch -screen alignment of the first Palm V I received went out of whack almost immediately making it impossible to "tap" anything in the top half inch of the screen and extremely irritating. I tried a number of times to access the help-desk but who has an hour a day to stay on hold? By the time I finally got through it was about 10 months into my warranty. The chap I spoke to was very pleasant and advised that I return my Palm for a refurbished model. The return policy was easy and I was impressed by the "just put it back in the box it came in, have the courier service pick it up and we'll sort it all out" and hopefull of a successful result.
The refurbished model I later got turned out to have exactly the same problem once I hot-synched it with my desk-top application (leading me to think it was the software and not the actual device). It was a few more weeks before I had time to brave the help-desk again. This time my one year warranty was up so I was told I could either pay $100 to get it fixed (and risk getting the same [bad] system back again) or buy a new one. I decided to put up with the one I had. Unfortunately the "refurbished" model turned out to be even [worse] than the first one as not only was the screen out of whack, this one randomly "fainted" when I took it off its cradle even when fully recharged, i.e., sometimes I would switch it on and five minutes later it would totally run out of steam and freeze up, sometimes I could take it away for a week-end and it was ok. As it always seemed to pass-out and leave me stranded on the business trips, I took to taking a hard-copy of my contact database with me as a back-up. I am now at the point where I print out my entire database and calendar when I am out of the office AND take my filofax to keep the business cards in.
I am still committed to the idea of the Palm and jealous of my friends' functioning models but am wary of shelling out another [item price] for something ultimately less useful than an etcha-sketch.