Palm Visor Platinum review (Silver)

Handspring's new Visor Platinum is like a turbo-charged version of the company's popular Visor Deluxe. Although essentially the same on the outside, the difference is on the inside; the Platinum is powered by Motorola's new 33MHz DragonBall VZ processor (the Deluxe uses the 16MHz DragonBall EZ) and features Palm's newest OS, version 3.5.2. The only other differences are the color and the slightly higher price. Handspring's new Visor Platinum is like a turbo-charged version of the company's popular Visor Deluxe. Although essentially the same on the outside, the difference is on the inside; the Platinum is powered by Motorola's new 33MHz DragonBall VZ processor (the Deluxe uses the 16MHz DragonBall EZ) and features Palm's newest OS, version 3.5.2. The only other differences are the color and the slightly higher price.

Upscale Visor
The Visor Platinum is identical in size and shape to the Visor Deluxe and is slightly thinner than the comparable Palm IIIxe, but the Platinum's look is decidedly more upscale. It is offered in only one color choice--a stylish, somewhat conservative, metallic silver, matched with a removable black plastic cover, which should appeal to both executives and Oakland Raiders fans alike.

The Platinum has the same 8MB of RAM as the Deluxe--the current maximum found in Palm OS handhelds. The only difference found under the hood is the Dragonball VZ processor, which gives the Platinum a significant performance boost. It proved about twice as fast as the Visor Deluxe on Quartus's freeware Palm benchmark. This kind of performance increase is pretty dramatic if you use large databases and games such as Dreadling, but we noticed almost no difference in performance when using ordinary PDA applications.

The software bundled with the Platinum is essentially the same as the Deluxe's and is comparable to that of other Palm OS devices. But it does come with Palm OS 3.5.2, which offers improved synchronization over 3.1, as well as greater IR capabilities.