What's The Cheapest/lowest-end Possible Palm

[+trippy1976]

Anyone know?

[+Learned Gerbil]

You only need 2Mb to do that.

 

A Palm IIIxe will certainly do and leave you plenty of memory for other applications - a III, IIIe, IIIx will do.

 

M100 is equivalent to III and IIIe but has a smaller screen.

 

M105 is the smaller screen eqivalent of the IIIxe.

 

M125 and M130 are enhanced versions of the M105.

 

The cheapest end Zires are the modern 2Mb equivalents of the III but with features like backlights missing. For less you can get a superior IIIxe in near mint condition, so why bother?

[+trippy1976]

Thank you O' Learned Gerbil

 

Excellent name especially in light of the very informed post.

 

I'm looking to snag an el-cheapo palm for my cache bag that'll run with CacheMate. Tired of playing chicken with my pocket PC that I also use for work

[+Panda Fan]

I have an old Palm IIIxe that I use. I have had it for a long time and it work well. My cousin has lost his several times and bought replacement ones on Ebay for real cheap. I think it has 8 megs. I have over 300+ cachemate logs in it. And it will hold hundreds more if needed. I also have several cool game on it for those longs drives to new cache spots.

 

I works great for going paperless.

 

One more suggestion. Get a good case. I love my bodyglove case. It was cheap, but very good protection from droping. I've droped this thing to many times to count, and never a problem. It bounces real nice.

[+NightPilot]

As LG said, pretty much any Palm will do the job. Some will be faster than others, and some will look better (color, high-resolution, etc) but they will all work, as long as they are in operating condition. A case is a good idea, but if you pay $20 for the Palm, IMO there is no point in paying $30 for a case for it. If you buy a cheap Palm, then get a cheap case if you get one at all. I'm not sure it's worth it for something that cheap.

 

I do recommend a later version that accepts an SD card, though. The card gives you lots more storage options, as well as the ability to back the Palm up, in case it crashes or the battery dies. For caching alone, though, with a real cheap model, this may not be worth the effort.

[robertlipe]

Any of the low-end older Palm/OS units such as Handsprings or the old Palm roman numerals series - even the 2Meggers - will handle 500 typical caches with 5 logs if you use software that doesn't suck. CacheMate actually manages to squeak more caches per byte than Plucker.

 

I've long been a fan of carrying essentially disposable PDAs for caching. If I dunk a $30 handspring in a creek or shatter it tumbling down a bluff, I'll be bummed when I walk back to the car and get my spare. If I do the same with a $600 Ipaq, I'm going to cry.

 

But with folks like Palmone and Overstock constantly moving refurbished newer models in the $30-$40 range, I wouldn't spend too much time scavenging the bargain bins.

[+EScout]

I agree with NightPilot. For a few dollars more you can get a color, high resolution screen and memory card capabiility. The memory card is so nice because you will need to do a hard reset or battery will discharge completely, eventually. You can restore quickly from the card, without a computer. I have a Sony Clie TJ25, which has a 320x320 color screen that is readable in sunlight, and takes a memory stick ($20 for a 64MB, $30 for a 128MB.) It does not have a camera or WiFi but it is small and well built, and can charge from any USB port, cig lighter, etc. ON eBay they go for under a hundred....well worth it.

[+New England n00b]

I'm still using my original Palm III. I have over 600 caches in it at any one time. Works for me, though a bit slow to go back to the main listing of caches when i am done looking at one.

 

Still, for a paltry $2-300 new, not bad!

[+Riddlers]

We started with a Zire 21. It is black and white and sometimes hard to read in a dark car. It sells new for around $50.00 and you can get one on ebay for about $20.00. It has enough memory to run cache mate and right now I think there is 700 caches in there with only half the memory used. I Now have a Zire 31 with a card because we wanted to add maps and I use it for work so I have many medical things on it, but we still use the 21 so both of us have a palm and both have a garmin. And if you register for the cachemate he lets you load all of the features on all your units with no additional fees.