This was my favorite palm at it own time. I had almost every palm model since Palm IIIe. This Palm was great for reading books with functions that today at 2012 I don't find in any phone or tablet. It auto-scrolled the text and buttons up and down where used for speeding up or down the text. No page turning needed.

I remeber testing some gameboy emulators too.

It works beautifully, I just wish it had a light so I could see the menu items when I am not in a lighted area. Other than that, I am very happy with it.

I purchased this Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) as a christmas gift for my wife. This is not the most advanced, or feature-rich PDA on the market, but I wouldn't buy an HP iPAQ 5555 to my wife just because it's better.
My wife is uninitiaded in the PDA arena, and I couldn't overwhelm her with dozens of features she, as a newbie would never use. The Zire 21 has all the basic capabilities for someone to get organized; Address Book, Calendar, Notes, you can even jot down handwritten notes using the Zire as a paper notepad. It's small, thin, light, fits perfectly almost anywhere and it does the job, period. Another plus is the internal battery, no need to buy AAAs or AAs anymore, there's a battery charger included and it only takes 2-3 hours to recharge completely.
A CD is also included; it has the Palm Desktop software and the necessary drivers for the PC (or Mac) operating system to recognize the palm when you connect it using the USB cable. This software allows you to:
1- Enter the data on the PC instead of the PDA.
2- Transfer data between the PC and the PDA and synchronize both
3- It makes your PC act as a backup repository for your data. If for some reason your Palm data is erased, you may recover by re-sycnhronizing with the PC data.
4- It allows you to install 3rd party software that you download from the Internet.
You don't need to have a PC or Mac to use the Zire, but it is strongly recommended to have one.
I think the Palm Zire has the best value for the price, it's simple to operate and it looks nice (and this sentence rhymes).
Good purchase

Okay, I'm still sorta old school. I bought my first Palm Pilot maybe 10years ago or more.. I liked it because it was easy to enter info via my computer, and it could store a massive amount of information on it. It was easy to access that info from the device. I ended up having to replace that device, and beings as I upgraded my computer the operating system on the new computer wouldn't accept the Palm disc.. but I had a tech friend from work figure out how to make my laptop link to the device. I'm not even sure how, but I was happy. I also learned that Palm got bought out by HP, and then sorta got dumped. Then my second Palm (Zire 21) died and I had to buy another one. I had to search to find one, but I did through this Amazon site, and I'm glad they were still available. This newest one had a better case, and a better cable link system. and it matched up to the system in my laptop. so I am happy again. I have a droid phone, but I still feel the need for my Zire 21 because of all the type of data I store. That is why I give this product 5 stars; but like I said, I'm still sorta old school.. Thank you. Buzzy

I have had my ZIre for a couple of months. It has done nothing but help me coordinate my outlook calendar, task list and contacts. It keeps my information at my fingertips and is very easy to work with. I found no problems with this handheld, it has never lost my data as previously reported. Of course I would love to have a tungsten but face it, its not gonna happen at this price. This is a great choice for a first handheld. It looks fun and looks very impressive I am told when kept in the Zire series hardcase which is not included but can run you 10-15 bucks. I read these reviews and several others before purchasing this and I decided to give it a try and my life is so much more organized now, boy am I glad I did!!!