I am the satisfied owner of a palmOne Zire '72' but not without it's downsides. It started with my first Palm device, a Tungsten 'E' model. Or should I say both of them. Both suffered failures. The first was a system failure. The second was a display related problem with two of the superbright LED's turning yellowish. I traded in my last 'E' model for the '72'. I realize that manufacturers have quality control problems from time to time that are not representitive of the breed so I tried once again. This has rewarded me a very good device, one which has surpassed my Ipaq 1910 in terms of ease of operation. It even survives 'crashes' much better with the least amount of work to get up and running again. Most (over three quarters of these related to downloaded applications).
It's major setback is appearance related. It's nice blue coating is no longer. It started chipping off soon after (within a week and a half) much like a sweepstakes scratcher ticket. I found out that I could scratch off the remaing coating with a plastic knife minus damage to the case. No more ghetto look. It doesn't get the looks that the 'E' model got with it's polished case but it works great.
It's bundled software works very well, especially it's 'Doc's To Go' program. I have loaded news articles for later reading from a local web cliping service as well as the Palmreader for offline reading later. The camera works well too, with video (SD card required) for catching those spontaneous moments. I enjoy the Mp3 player too. Games (Asteroids, Bejeweled, Free Chess, and Solitaire) keep the boredom level low.
If there's a setback it's the ease of or rather the lack of securing the device to the belt with access to it's functions. The other is a very high pitched whine the device makes while on. The dispaly seems to be the culprit. When the backlight goes off during Mp3 play the whine stops, and also when the unit is off. It would be nice to find out if there's something I can do to alleviate this.
I hope this helps others with similar difficulties. Other tips of shortcuts would be appreciated as well.