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-- Why Deluxe? (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=684)

Looks like most of you have purchased the Deluxe Visor. Are the 8mbs that important to you or are there other factors? (Color?) I'm a PDA newbie looking to order probably in the next day or so.

Thanks,
Buck

I purchased a standard Visor, and wish I had purchased a Deluxe. Color is a non-issue for me, since I would have chosen the graphite anyway. I thought 2M would be enough, but I hadn't planned on putting the entire Bible on it when I originally purchased. That's 1447k right there (out of 1794k total available, not 2048k like you'd think). Even if I wasn't going to put the Bible on it, I'd like to have the extra room for books and/or other stuff.

Sure, I can get an 8M Springboard for about the same price as the difference between the standard and deluxe, but that takes up the Springboard slot, making it necessary to swap it out if I get a pager or cell for the slot. Next time I purchase a new PDA, I'll get as much as possible on the unit, so that expansion area(s) can be used for non-essentials.

But if you really do plan on using it for nothing more than the standard PDA stuff, like contacts, appointments, some email, and notes, and nothing more, 2M should be more than sufficient.

I ordered a 2mb on 9/14 and then changed it to an 8mb on 9/17. I'm glad I did. I'm already using 5mb with the Avantgo Browser and some books. This is my first Palm product . What a marvel it is!

Go for the extra RAM. Makes a huge difference in what you can do! There's another thread here that's a poll on how much free memory people still have...it might be informative for you.

games.

Remeber your first hard drive? My first drive was 15Mb and that was replaced by a 30mb and now try and find something smaller than a 10GB...there is a reason, software.

Go for the extra ram because it will fill up fairly quickly once you start adding software. If your purchasing a Visor odds are you are kinda of a techie and like to try different things, such as software.

If you know that all you will use it for is storing names, calendar and to do's then you won't need the extra ram however as a Palm beta tester from 4 years ago...the basic software with the Visor is better than what Palm includes but it's still just a scratch of the surface. Go to www.palmgear.com and check out the top 50 downloads or "the essentials" and see what's available. It'll blow you away and these are only the top 50 programs.

I keep documents from my desktop on the Visor and these can eat up tons of room. I use Documents to Go. There are several good document readers such as Docs to Go and Aportis Doc.

This is long explanation but go for the ram.

Thanks for the replies. I went ahead and coughed up the extra $70 bucks for the extra memory. Merry Christmas to myself.

Now the wait begins!

Ordered: 11/29/99
Received: ????

Buck

Hey I just bought a 2 gig hard drive. So ha. You can find one less then 10 gigs

Old-timers in the computer industry will all tell you that RAM and hard drives all come in the same size: Not Enough.

Always get as much of either as you can afford, the chances are vanishingly small that you will regret it, and reasonably large that you will wish you got even more.

Remember the old computer axiom:

Storage and memory are vacuums that need to be filled in order to attain cyber stasis.

(paraphrase: You can NEVER have "enough" memory!)

My first modem was a 300 modem (1984). Today I complain about my 1 Mbps modem (aDSL) - too slow for file transfers.

My first computer had 140 KILObytes of disk storage (floppy). I just upgraded my floppy (zip) drive to 250 Mb, because the 100 Mb disks were too small.

The first computers I used had between 2 and 48 kilobytes of memory. My current one is 64 Mb, and has far too little memory. I need at least 128 Mb, but 256 Mb would be a nice bonus.

And, I don't work in the computer industry.

You can never have enough storage. My palm friends say that unless you only use as an appointment organizer than 2 Mb is definitely not enough.

I used to say that for the average person, to get a reasonable complete desktop computer you have to spend about US$2000. 15 years ago that was true, and 5 years ago that was true too. Nowadays maybe the number is $1700 but the point is that as technology matures, your "needs" also increase. 2 Mb might be adequate now for a Palm PC, but won't be by next year for the vast majority of people.

What they said....

Seriously, though, if you're reading this, you're an early adopter, whether you realize it or not, so you'll probably be pushing the hardware harder than the average user. Trust us, you'll quickly find a need for >2MB. I parted with a trusty Palm III that I've had for nearly 2 years because of 2 things: I wanted the newer screen, and 2MB of RAM wasn't enough.

You describe yourself as a PDA Newbie, which to me is a positive term. You're trying something new, expanding your horizons. At this stage, though you have no way of knowing exactly how *you* are going to be using the Visor. Everyone is a little different. Heck, I don't know how *I'm* going to be using mine in 6 months and I got my first PDA (an MP110) in 1994. Plan ahead and leave yourself room for growth. A 2MB machine might seem like enough now, but once you discover the world of Palm OS apps, you'll be cryin' for more.

So don't be a cheapskate!


Brian

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Body by Cheetos, Brains by Mattel