As a IIIc owner, the incredibly light weight and small dimensions of the device took me by surprise. I don't have a digital scale like Steve, but this little guy is something you can put in your pocket and hardly notice. It's pretty fast too. However, it doesn't seem quite as fast as the Handspring Prism. I don't have access to the Prism at the moment, but I will post its Benchmark speed to the discussion board as soon as I can.
Contrast is controlled by a utility accessed by tapping the upper right corner of the Graffiti area.
The alarm is much louder than the IIIc, which should make quite a few frustrated Palm owners very happy. It's one of the things that has been consistently complained about, and Palm has finally listened and installed a much better quality, louder speaker. The m500 is the first Palm that can truly be used as an alarm clock. I can only hope that it gets a little easier with time. They did, and it has already come in handy.