My Zire 31 has that Orange Blob disease

I seem to have attained a nice level in the Murphy’s Law world. When I was younger I was teased, nearly to death, over “Murphy’s this and that” in my family.

That followed me into my individual life as I grew, chances were, if I picked something off a shelf, it’d be the one that wasn’t as it should be (only find-out-able once purchased and home with it.) Secondary influences came via anyone that was getting something for me. Invariably my mother would bring the thing home happily, only for me to melt due to “you didn’t get the thing I asked for, that is something else.”

I have grown up though, and do not dwell there in Murphy’s Law world. I still see the secondary type of it happening through DH, and it’s just plain, if I want it, I have to pick it out. If it’s broke and I picked it out, that’s bad enough, but alright, since if someone else gets me something and it’s not what I wanted, and they THOUGHT they were getting the right thing that I wanted, urg. If they do get the right thing though, it’s likely to be broken.

So I am thinking about this why? The other variation of it: It’ll work for awhile then suddenly go “Na Na Na Na” at me.

DD’s Mix Stick from This Christmas Past. We had tried to get it local, but ended up having to get one from a store miles and miles away, no one else had it. They had 4. They set one aside for DH, he picked it up. That’s a 3rd-Party Variation. It’s the thing that you had to get it out and play with it to find out that it seemed O.K., then find out later, it is not working, it did, but won’t no more.

That situation did resovle, we got a new one through the Warranty. It’s a 3rd-Party affair again, but so far, longer than the first one, it’s working.

The latest 3rd-Party Variation is directly mine, all mine. Last year, Sept/Oct 2006, I got interested in Audible.com (audio books) and was able to get a deal through that get a new Palm Zire easily, and get content from Audible. I didn’t have a device that I could use with Audible, only a WMP type MP3 player.

So I got a Palm Zire 31. I would have chosen a 71 or TE if I could, but I couldn’t 😉

It was a loverly thing, when it came. I knew it didn’t have the screen resolution that I’d like, and was only a color and button upgrade with media player capabilities from my Palm Vx, but seemed more frail. My Vx is still around and hard and lovely as it can be in gray scale. I liked it, but didn’t find it as motivating as color (which is true and real for visual people) and since I wanted Audible it made sence to do it via a Palm color.

So since then I’ve used it, and not as much as I meant to, but I was just getting back up with things since my mother died, I opened it up and thought it might have died (run out of power) and that would be no problem since I hadn’t done anything new with it since the last HotSync. I turned it on and it had power, but urg, urg, urg! I couldn’t see the power indicater, nor more than half the screen. Only the bottom third, about, was clear. Over the rest was/is a large dark blue area with what looks like a nasty crack/crease in the upper mid-left and there in that area was/is a large orange blob. Urg!

My first attempt was to do a soft then hard reset. No, they did nothing to solve the problem. I went onto Palms website and looked for help and found nothing much, just got the understanding that THEY will say they’ll replace the screen for $$$. I say it’s not worth it. The darn thing works fine, you just can’t see a thing you are doing. So that makes it a mystery freak PDA. Audible things still work too, but you can only see the a name of a book if there are more than one loaded. You can play things you can’t see the name of, the soft-controls are at the bottom of the screen. It’s a bit more mysterious than I care for, in a gadget.

O.K. then, what did I do to it to brake it? I didn’t brake it. It just happened. Normal use, less than normal time put into it compared to others who use theirs moreso. I had it since early Oct 2005. I did open my Palm on our last FL. trip. It looked great then. That was the end of April.

What of that? It’s a mystery and I’m not alone. I’ve found several others via searching the web, that have the same “orange blob” or “lines” etc. Mine is extreme it seems, two-thirds of the screen is taken up with dark blue, a “crack” sort of thing with orange blob at the top.

I’ll just be plain as plain can be and say, the “crack” likeness points to the top kind of like it comes from the SD-slot. Ya, I usually had an SD-card in the slot. Is THAT the deal? I mean, really, it is not that, or might be, but it could be an influence on the screen, and if the screen had something wrong it’d do it eventually — and mine had it big. It lasted for just about 7 months, my nice Zire 31, then **dark sky blob Attack!!!!**

So then it’s just peachy and moldy. I can’t afford to get a new something, and least of all I don’t want to get an audio-only device for Audible, but even if I did, I would still want a nice little Palm-like device in color to be my friend.

I don’t see the value in fixing this Zire 31, really it’s nuts. A new one might be just as peachy and last without molding up. Fixing this one might make it nice again, but might just make it nice and it’ll mold up again. It’s a toss of the dice.

I’d rather just figure out if the Zire 71 gets this sort of, or some other problem, and know that at least that one has longer Warranty, oh, yeah, the kicker, Z-31 just has a 90-day Warranty. There’s an extended Warrenty available, and that’s another animal.

I’m talking pie in the sky here, I have no way to get this resolved any time soon, and resolve isn’t something I want with the Zire 31, except for it to get over it’s trantrum and just work fine again. I mean, do it all by itself. I have faith in it, that it could do it. I mean, haven’t you ever seen a gizmo of any type just get off it’s death bed and work again? One day it works, next it don’t and doesn’t for days, then blah, blah, it’s working again!

Windows (PC) is like that, lessons enough.

I really have the faith for it, just not the actual hope needed.

My next deal to do with the Zire 31 will to be: Take it apart and fiddle with whatever and see if it gets happy from something I can do to please it. It’s out of warranty and who cares. Glorified ugly little audio player. I can’t imagine that I’ll cry when it totally dies, but I have more hope that that, that it won’t be ME who kills it by opening it up on the table. I have skills enough to have faith there. 🙂

It’s always fun to open stuff up and see how cheapy it’s made and have a laugh that way. “I paid WHAT for this?”

I want a device anyhow that is hard and worthy of being thought of as “platinum” — my favorite metal, even before I had a clue about metal values. It’s therefore my thought that everything should be platinum-ish if it’s mine. The Zire-31 failed miseralably there. White and blue plastic. Ha!

I must think on that next time and only get something that, through smooshed out vision it looks plantinum enough … I mean smooshed out vision as being, looking at something with nearly closed eyes to make it look nicer … if it passes the platinum test though, it’ll be metal and silvery and that’s enough. 🙂