9. Palm Zire

Designed as a budget organizer, you can pick up a Zire for $99 or less. To build it down to this price, Palm has done away with an ungodly number of features. There are no expansion slots and only 2 MB of memory (sufficient for addresses and appointments but not enough for programs). The 160 x 160 pixel monochrome display is no longer competitive and does not have a backlight. It is really only sensible to use the 110 g Zire in normally lit rooms.

The 16 MHz Dragonball CPU is perfectly adequate for standard PDA functions. Thanks to its moderate consumption, the batteries are good for an extraordinary 31 hours of continuous use. No other PDA, Palm or Pocket PC, comes close. Thankfully, Palm is now fitting a rechargeable battery instead of the AA dry batteries supplied in the past. However, the Lithium Ion battery is not removable.

The only accessory supplied is a USB cable. No docking station is available, but the Zire does come with an IrDA port, allowing it to communicate with a notebook or other PDAs.

The Zire is only recommended to first-time users, the impecunious, and PDA purists who want to manage appointments, contacts and notes, and nothing more. The only points in favor of this low-specification device are its price and battery life.