We had one of the special releases of this version of the Palm, which comes with a translucent plastic shell. Not that it made any difference to it feeling very, well, plastic in the hand.With an asking price of $349 Palm is banking on people not expecting too much from their Palm IIIe PDA. For the most part the IIIe faithfully constructs the Palm flavour - the applications are the same core offerings on every one of the Palm family. Address Book, Calculator, Calendar, Expense Calculator, HotSync, Mail, Memo Pad and To Do List are all standard fare.
There are four hot keys for activating the calendar, address book, to do list and memo pad and the rocker switch in the middle of the buttons for scrolling through menu choices. The 2Mb of RAM in this model limits the amount of data the Palm can hold, however. In a test transfer synchronising a Lotus Organizer 97 file holding nearly a decades worth of appointments and contacts, the Palm transferred fields accurately but truncated without transferring the data entirely.

Nor can the lack of memory be alleviated by any expansion. The Palm IIIe memory is fixed, nor are there expansion slots of any description available. Another bugbear is the use of disposable AAA batteries instead of an integrated rechargeable cell for power. Initial purchase cost may be attractive but depending on your working patterns, a pair of batteries every few weeks adds to a sizeable running cost over a year.

The ROM is not flashable either; any interface with the outside world has to go through the connector to the host PC or Macintosh or via infrared. Normally this would involve Palms universal HotSync process, with the Palm placed in its docking cradle and its synchronisation preferences set, but the growing number of options that plug into the HotSync interface like modems and cameras does not limit the IIIe model to a host computer only. Users thinking of making use of some of the gadgetry that can plug into the Palm might need to check first whether they overrun their memory resources.
Palm is pitching the IIIe at entry-level users like students. The limitations mentioned above will affect mature users who have existing data that they need to synchronise, but for anyone starting out there is hardly any better way to do it than with a Palm.