Comments on: Palm Treo 650 & Treo TripKit Giveaway

OK - I'll play along. True Story - A couple weeks ago, I had an apointment to close a big deal and was scheduled to rendezvous with an associate before the meeting and then head over to the client together. My associate assured me that he had all the info needed and not to worry - just meet him and he'll get us there. Well, something came up and my associate could not meet me in advance - but he was the one that knew how to get there! And I was already on the road! He started to ty to give me directions over the phone but he was confused and his directions were convoluted. Luckily, I have a Navigation system in my car so I asked him for the client's address so I could plug it in. He didn't know it nor did he know the phone number for me to call! He just "knew how to drive there". It was now 1:10pm and the meeting was at 1:30pm so time was tight. I finally remembered that I had just downloaded a freeware application called "Directory Assistant" and I told him not to worry - I'd just meet him there. With Directory Assistant, you can look up Yellow/White Pages info of businesses and people via the Treo's web access. I simply plugged in the name and city/state of the client and BOOM! I had the address/phone of the client, plugged it into my Nav system, and I was there right on time. Needless to say, we got the business and the rest is history. The Treo paid for itself many times over that day. And kudos to Rick Whitt, Developer of "Directory Assistant".

http://home.triad.rr.com/rlwhitt/palm/

This one time...at band camp...I had my Treo and used it to look up a number to call to get pizza. I used the google search where I typed in pizza and the zip code, and the list of pizza places came right up.

Ok, here's my entry: My trusty old Treo 600 has done pretty good for me, it saved me the week we bought our house with email when I was otherwise offline, but more fun for me has been the surprisingly good pictures it's taken in some exotic locales. I hate lugging around a camera or anything else I don't have to. Heck, that's why I got a Treo, I didn't want to have a PDA and a phone. I figured the camera wouldn't ever do me any good, but wanting to save space, I decided to take it on a couple of trips to the Middle East. The results, while not exactly 8x10 wall-framing stuff, I thought were pretty darn good and certainly web presentable. Check out these shots from Lebanon http://www.menavista.com/lebanonjune2004.htm and these ones from Egypt http://www.menavista.com/egyptdecember2004.htm

One friend even used this shot http://www.menavista.com/Qayt%20Bay/Picture426_11Dec04.jpg on the cover of an Arabic instruction book he's selling now. Not bad work for my trusty old sidekick. That said, sure wouldn't mind upgrading to that 650!

Gamal

My trusty Visor Neo, still running after all these years, is a key component of my geocaching kit. Whenever I go caching, I load all of the geocache descriptions onto the Neo, and use it to keep notes on whatever I've found along the way.

Geocaching is a hobby where you use your GPS to get you to the general vicinity of a hidden contain -- the geocache -- and then you use clues from a web site -- the cache description -- to find where the container is hidden.

Some geocachers are very clever at hiding things and it's very useful to have their clue with you. Once, when trying to find a particularly difficult geocache deep in the redwood forests of Northern California, I read the clues from my Neo several times and searched for a long time with no luck.

I had hiked many miles to the secluded area of an open space preserve and wasn't looking forward to returning empty handed, so I searched for longer than I normally would for a hidden geocache.

Finally, I put my Neo down on a pile of pine needles in an old tree stump, and walked off to see if I could get lucky. Having no luck at all, I returned to the stump and picked up the Neo.

Doing so, I accidently brushed away some of the pine needles. They were covering the geocache. I had set my pda down on top of the cache I couldn't find, and wouldn't have found it if I hadn't picked it back up.

Marty Fouts
Linux kernel developer
Available for work after 2 Dec 05

I suppose my best PDA-related travel story would be finding my way through the wilderness with a Bluetooth GPS. It's not as exotic as some others, I guess, but I'd never pass up a shot at a T650.

I live pretty far off the beaten track. Very far. You can smell the cows, that's how far. Around here, the roads can be tricky, and if you get on the wrong one you can find yourself making a major detour. I once saw a road which couldn't be driven along because of the inconveniently large creek passing through the middle of it, right overtop of where the road used to be. I should note that this was not on the map, but then I think the mapmakers were scared off by the banjo music. There are also roads where you can drive for ten or fifteen miles without a single turnoff, driveway, or anything else to turn around in.

Context over, on to the story. I was even farther out than usual that day, down somewhere in Alleghany or Cattaraugus county on my way to Pennsylvania. I had decided to take the scenic route.

This was my first mistake.

On my map, it was only flagged as County Route 400-something (I can't remember the exact number). The fact that nobody wanted to name it should have been a hint. It looked innocuous enough, but once you were actually driving along it, you got to realize how far into the wilderness you were when you saw the road going up a steep hill, with no guardrail--and the asphalt of the road was literally starting to slide off the edge of the hill.

Once you're on one of these roads, it's very hard to get off of them, because the rare connecting roads usually look exactly the same, and there are few to no road signs. You could get lost with remarkable ease. I actually drove past a few houses that were so far from civilization that I think the owners were people who had gotten stuck out there some time in the 1980s and never made it back. I think I saw a "Re-Elect Reagan" sticker on a rusting Oldsmobile.

Here's where my trusty handheld and Bluetooth GPS came in. With an exact location for myself, and a full set of maps on the handheld, I was able to plot a set of roads that would return to civilization, then follow them precisely. Although I must say, I am glad that I went that route--it was a spectacular view, not to mention another addition of my list of places to hide out from the law and/or dispose of bodies.

This is a true story of how I used my M505 to get my butt out of the middle of nowhere in Laos and back to my hotel without knowing the local language and without my rescuers knowing English.

A couple years ago, during the depths of the .crash, I got involved in this project to bring telecom and data service out to a remote village in rural Laos. The prototype was built here in the US, and we did some basic testing and integration here as well before flying the system, myself and a couple other geeks over there to do the local integration and then set it up.

The foundation I was volunteering for had their office about 10 miles outside of the city of Vientiane, the capital. Like many cities in small developing countries, Vientiane goes from bustling downtown with paved roads to wooden/cement block shacks and dirt roads in nothing flat.

One day I was at the foundation office, in deep geek mode arguing with a couple of the PCMCIA wireless drivers we were going to use for the systems and totally lost track of time. Afternoon became dusk which became dark and when I looked at the clock on my laptop and it said "23:30". I packed up, locked up and headed out the door into pitch black darkness. There was a streetlight about half a mile away, but other than that it was completely dark. This is not a part of the world where everybody has or can afford electricity, so the complete lack of light from the houses across the street wasn't terribly surprising, but still annoying.

I could either wait in the pitch dark for a passing tuk-tuk(a 3-wheel motorized pedicab, nobody has a real car this far out), hope he didn't hit me before he stopped, or I could walk back into town and hope I was not set upon somewhere along the way.
I decided to wait. Walking back in the dark was likely dangerous and if nothing else I could always let myself back into the foundation office and sleep on the floor.

I wait 30 minutes before one zips by, completely oblivious to me.
About 20 minutes later, the same thing happens. Finally, after more than an hour of waiting and occasionally frantic waves, one driver sees me and pulls over. I gleefully run the few steps over to my anonymous rescuer hand over the card of the hotel I'm staying at. He looks at me, nods, and says something in Lao that I didn't understand. I say "15,000 Kip!", the amount I'm willing to pay for the ride. This is about $1.50 US and what I can get a ride for during the day. It's ridiculously low for nighttime, but I'm trying to appear adept at haggling and in control of the situation.

He shakes his head and repeats the same phrase. We go back and forth on this a couple more times, neither of us understanding each other. He looks like he's getting ready to be done with my pasty white geeky ass and take off when I remember my Palm.

I whip out my M505 and go to the NotePad application. The backlight blazes out into the comparative dark and lights up the road around us. I'd only been there a couple days, but the one thing I'd picked up on was that everybody seemed to know Arabic numerals and how to use a four-banger calculator regardless of whether they knew English or not. Commerce is truly the international language.

So I move over to where he's standing and in plain sight scribble "15,000" on the screen, then hand it to him. He shakes his head, scratches out the 15,000 and writes 70,000, which is WAY more than I even have on me. He hands it back. I scribble out the 70,000 and write 30,000 and hand it back to show him. He scribbles that out and writes 45,000. That's fine with me(being precisely what I have on me), so I nod demonstratively, grab my PDA, throw my pack into the vehicle and jump in.

We zip off into the night, stopping briefly to pick up a local, who I notice gets on for all of 5,000 Kip, and about 20 minutes later, I'm at my hotel. I get out, grab my backpack and empty my wallet, placing a sheaf of 5,000 Kip notes in his hand. We nod and smile at each other, before I head into the hotel and he zips off into the night.

Hi guys, I don't know how many Brits you get on here, I check PIC daily and love reading the news and your comments. Anyway here's my story (this is true):

Every year my wifes family hold a family reunion camp in the middle of Wales (UK). We don't go to a dedicated campsite, one of her uncles owns a peice of land literally in the middle of now where.

Before leaving for our camping trip I had been watching a few items on ebay, one item was quite rare to find on ebay and had lost auctions on similar items before, and I didn't want to loose this one! I checked with wife's uncle who had a house about 25 miles away and asked if I could head over there on the night the auction was due to finish and watch the item, which was ok with him.

The auction was due to finish 3 days into the trip, but come that evening I suddenly remembered about the auction but didn't have enough time to make the trip. So armed with my T3 and bluetooth phone, set out to fine some signal to dialup.

I was luckey to find a spot with 2 bars, and using Web Pro, connected to ebay and watched the end of the auction which I won.

Returning back to camp happy, I told those who were interested what I was able to do with my Palm and I think I sold about half a dozon units that night!

Look forward to reading more of your stories, they are all pretty cool

A couple of years ago I got a Treo 600 and started using it for everything. With the right apps, there isn't much a PalmOS smartphone can't do. (I still don't understand why Palm doesn't have a website showcasing all the things you can do with the Treo.) I was planning a trip to Hawaii and used Google to research things I wanted to do during the trip. Having Internet access with you all the time is great because you can actually do something productive when you would otherwise be wasting time (waiting in a line, during the commute to work, waiting for meetings to start, etc.) I actually booked the trip with Expedia on the Treo, had the confirmation emailed to the Treo and then entered the itinerary into DateBk 4. I was quite impressed with myself that I'd booked the trip entirely with a phone and I kept boasting to everyone about what I'd done, but most people just looked at me kinda funny...

After arriving, I was able to use the Palm Zagat app to find a decent local restaurant and then used the Directory Assistant app mentioned above in Gekko's post to find a local bank + used an online map service for directions to the bank + restaurant. A friend had emailed me about a (clothing optional!) beach, so I then headed out that afternoon with a beach towel, sunscreen, a bottle of water and my Treo. The beach was in a VERY secluded area and was only accessible by going down a steep, unmarked trail by a cliff. The beach turned out to be one of the nicest I've ever seen and besides a couple of topless co-eds frolicking together in the surf, there was no one to be seen along what was probably over a mile long perfect stretch of sand. Eventually the perky Sappho Girls tired of frolicking on the beach and headed back to (I assume) frolic in private. So then it was just me and the beach. What a rough life. I dozed off to the sound of the waves and woke up a couple hours later as the sun was setting. I was reluctant to leave this perfect beach, even though it was getting dark. Eventually I headed back to my car. As I walked down the beach, suddenly the clouds came out and it was pitch black. The tide also had risen, wiping out the pathway around some sets of rocks that came out from the cliff dividing the beach into sections. Great. I literally had to feel my way over the rocks. "Perfect Beach" had suddenly become "The Beach From He11". Eventually I came to the end of the beach and realized I must have passed the place where the trail back to the road started. The trail had been almost impossible to find in daylight and now I was having to find it in the dark! I realized I was probably going to have to find somewhere on the beach to sleep until sunrise and hope high tide didn't wipe out the beach (and me along with it). Then I remembered I had my Treo with me. If you ever owned a Treo 600, you'll know it probably has the brightest backlight ever put on a PDA. (It's bright enough for cops to use to blind people in roadside checks...) I turned the Treo on and within 10 minutes I found the trail. With the Treo lighting the was I was (barely) able to follow the narrow trail back to the road.

Sure you can use a Treo to do everything a desktop computer does. But most importantly, it also makes a GREAT $500 flashlight!

TVoR

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
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The Palm eCONomy = Communism™

The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823

A few weeks ago I was travelling home on a Sunday from a wedding. Having left my laptop at home to travel lightly, I was carrying only my Treo and Dell Axim (yes...I have both!). I saw a report that one of my best fantasy football players was determined to be too injured to play for the day, and winning the matchup that week was essential to keep my hopes alive for some money at the end of the year! The site I use for my team is not quite compatible with the Blazer browser, so I wanted to use my Axim's Pocket IE, but the airport had no wifi! Step in the amazing Treo 650 with its BT dialup networking. I quickly set up the dialup connection, got online, changed my roster, and made my flight! I ended up winning the week by a few points, keeping my hopes alive. The fact that the Treo allowed me to do that in a pinch saved me big time!

Back in '98 shortly after landing my new big IT consulting job, I upgraded my Palm Pilot Pro with the Palm III upgrade card (remember the one with more RAM and the IR port?). I'd been out of college for less then a year. I promptly added business cards so that I could use the new beaming functionality (wasn't 1998 a cool year for PDAs?).

As was often the case, when a consultant wasn't on an assignment, I went on a sales call with one of our business development people to help out with some short term configuration management work.

The sales meeting went fine (I was still learning the art of "consultant speak"; you know, lying, without really lying) and we had managed to almost convince the client that we were the right firm for the job. As we were nearing the end of the meeting, Ellen (the sales woman) reached into her pocket to get a business card and was shocked to find that she didn't have any.

I pulled out my Palm and said, "Does anyone have a PDA I can beam the information to?"

Lucky for us, the client (decision maker) had just purchased a shiny new Palm III the day before and was excited to use it (his first PDA). As he pulled out his PIII (with the nifty new form factor and flip lid) he told me that this would be his first beam!

The beaming went smoothly, I was able to give him both mine, and Ellen's information, and the next day we were informed that we had won the project.

I'm at least a little convinced that his excitement at having his first beaming experience swayed him to pick us for the project.

-Mike
miknny AT yahoo DOT com

So I was at an academic conference in downtown Chicago last winter, and this large group (~10 of us or so) I was with decided they wanted some authentic deep-dish pizza. One of the guys, who used to work in Chicago several years ago, said he knew where a Giordano's was, so we all hopped into cabs and met up at a street corner about 20 blocks away from the hotel.

That's when it got interesting. We wandered over a couple of blocks (his memory wasn't spot on) and found ourselves staring at an empty storefront with "CLOSED" sign in the window. That Giordano's was no more.

Chaos erupted. There we were, 10 strangers in a strange land huddling together in the sub-freezing night with nary a cab around. Everyone got out their cellphones and then stopped, realizing they didn't know anyone to call for directions to the nearest pizza joint.

Then I pulled out my Treo 650, fired up Handmark Pocket Express, and searched for "pizza" near the address we were standing. I found a Giordano's a few blocks away, pulled up the map of it (one tap), and off we went. 20 minutes later, we were feasting on hot 'za.

Whenever I see people from that group, they always mention my "amazing, magical phone" and tell others about how it saved our lives...or at least our evening. :-)

Last year after Christmas (got a TREO650 and a GPS from Santa!), we drove from Dallas to New Mexico to go snow boarding at Angel Fire (they got a great board park there!). I got a GPS and Mapopolis to route us there. Well, Mapopolis claimed some tiny road off the interstate and directly through the mountains would be the quickest route. 2/3's of the way into this road, it became one lane. Next we saw a sign that we are traveling through a natural game preserve. Had to stop for Moose, wolves, etc. that would occasionally be in the road. I looked at my car's Miles Till Empty display and saw 32 miles. Uh Oh. No gas stations around here, do we turn back or go for it? I looked at the Mapopolis miles to go readout and it claimed there was 28 miles left. We decided what the heck, might as well add some excitement to the trip. Will the gas display be right, will Mapopolis be right. If both are right, we should make it to Angel Fire and a gas station. If not, we're sleeping with the moose! Well, the gas display was wrong (due to altitude affecting combustion?), but Mapopolis was spot on. We made it with 2 miles to spare on the gas readout. Whew! Thank goodness my Mapopolis/TREO 650 combo worked!

A few years ago when I was working for a NASA contractor I took a trip to Indiana to do some radiation testing on a computer system we were evaluating for use in a Shuttle payload. For me, the Treo was just simply an integral part of not only getting there, but getting the job done.

Sure I did all the boring but essential stuff via the personal organizer functions: Packing list via HandDbase, flight scheduling on the calendar (checkout FlightStatus for checking your flight's status on the road).

But a lot of folks don't know how much real computer stuff a Palm can do if you know a little hackery... I made a homebuilt powered serial cable and was actually able to log into the serial console on our test bed system while they were setting up in the particle accelerator. The portability of the Treo serial rig was really handy to run into the chamber between tests and make sure the system was still functional between bombardments. You know you are a serious geek when you impress the guys running a particle accelerator :).

David

A few years ago I went on an international trip for 10 days. I loaded my m505 & SD to the hilt with all documents and data that I would possibly need. It was all in order for each days events.

On the flight from NY to Columbia, I put the thin m505 in my back pocket for the ride. I must have been sitting on one of the buttons for the 4 or 5 hours because before we landed I pulled it out and it was dead. Charged it in the hotel and it was totally dead and had to be hard reset. I had no backup and almost all my data on the card was accessed by 3rd party apps that got lost in the drain.

Needless to say, that was a loooong week with basic PIMS and no data. The word "backup" became part of my vocabulary after that.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

A good friend of mine was able to take a vacation in Sao Paulo, Brazil recently. I could not. I was in Washington, D.C. visiting family, freezing in the first taste of winter.

Now, while it is always wonderful to be with family, there are times when it is preferable to be on a warm beach with a cocktail chasing the ladies.

My friend was chilling on the beaches of Bahia, doing just that. Since I could not join him or his friends, he snapped several photos with his Treo 650 camera and sent them to me via MMS, including a quick video of everyone wishing me well.

I felt that I was transported thousands of miles from our Nation's capital to the warmth of Brazil.

I responded in kind, snapping a few pictures of the Capital Building in the crisp November light of late afternoon, along with a video of me bundled up in fleece.

Global communications via a handheld device such as the Treo 650 brought friends and strangers closer together, wirelessly.

I use my Palm Treo 650 everyday. But I never expected it to be such a versatile tool. My wife and I were traveling in the carribean. We did not speak the language but as any tourist destination it is not a requirement. Luckily as we arrived my wife asked if I could take pictures of the hotel and the surrounding area to send to our kids later via email. I did as I was told. We decided to go sight seeing and got separated from our tour. With not speaking the language and having no idea where we were the Treo came to teh resque. We flagged down a cab and showed him the pictures of the Hotel and surrounding area. He was able to identify the facility and take us back home. That evening the power went out in the Hotel. Dark and unaware were anything was we used the Treo's light to help find our way in the dark. Needless to say my wife and I are sold on our Treo. Which is a good thing when it comes to convincing here to purchase the next generation Treo.

Ever been lost in a country where you not only dont speak the language, but can't read the signs?

Tokyo is a fun place to visit, but can be daunting for a westerner. I was over there for business, and decided I would try to find the Sony store in Ginza, and visit Akihabra (Electric City) to find a Clie NX70V to replace my Visor Deluxe. The irony is that:
1. The only way I had to navigate the subway system was using an english version of subway maps I downloaded.
2. Translation dictionaries and pointing at the screen a lot (icons, Romanjii, and really bad pronounciation guides).
3. I could only find Japanese versions of the Clie.

At the end of the day it highlighted just how critical a device like this is for international travellers -
* Translation dictionaries (I have also used Italian and French in my travels)
* Maps (subways maps in particular)
* Currency conversions (update before travelling)
* Expense tracking (one thing I really miss form the Visor).

~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~

My husband recently started using a Treo 650 for his work and was all excited to get it. He had a business trip to go no the following day and didn't take the manual with him. I tried calling him several times with no success. It turned out he couldn't figure out how to make the thing ring so he didn't know anyone was calling.
We quickly figured it out and he has been loving it ever since.
LOL :)

Some years ago, my wife and I traveled to a Christmas white elephant exchange at a distant relative’s house.

When my wife started unwrapping her “gift”, I noticed that the giver used a Palm IIIxe box for it (the top of the line model at that time). I managed to whisper to her to go along with me, pulled my own IIIx out of my pocket, turned it on and somehow passed it to her unnoticed to slip into the box as she was finishing unwrapping it.

You should have seen the look on the face of the gift giver when my wife pulled a functional Palm out of the box instead of the white elephant. Her agitated declaration of "I can't believe you left the Palm in the box..." to her husband alerted the rest of the guests that this was not what was intended to be given and was a very expensive mistake.

Sensing a quickly growing discord between the couple, my wife pulled the real “gift” out of the box and I confessed to the trickery, to the great relief of the gift giver and much laughter from the rest of the guests.

I've often griped about my Treo's lack of stability and buggy behavior over the year that I've owned it, but all I have to do is look back three years ago, and my Treo becomes my best, most trusted friend all over again.

Back in 2002, I was preparing to take my first trip overseas with my new girlfriend. We were headed to London for a week-long getaway that I wanted to document and share with everyone back home (I was really proud of myself for finally crossing the "pond"). So my plan was this: I would take photos with my brand new Minolta DiMAGE F100 digital camera, pop the SD card into my Palm m505, download the pictures to SplashPhoto, then swap out the SD card with my Palm Bluetooth SD card, connect to my SE T68i, send the pics as attachments in the new version of Snappermail, pay ridiculous data roaming charges, and share my joy with everyone. Even though it sounds absurdly confusing now, I determined after testing this setup several times stateside, my cobbled together solution would work just dandy.

Well, on day one in London after visiting the National Gallery and the British Museum, I figured I was going to give the system a go with my own works of art. After downloading the pictures and doing the SD card dance, I connected to the internet only to find that my version of Snappermail was only good for 30 days!! I had bought the damn thing a month before, but in the early days of the program, they had these weird forced upgrade periods. Don't ask me why.

Needless to say I was freaking on the inside while trying to keep cool in front of my girlfriend, who was already figuring out that the guy she was dating was in fact a really big closet nerd. I hunted down an internet cafe to download the latest version of the software, but remembered I had no way to get the program onto my Palm. The whole plan was foiled. Foiled by a thirty dollar piece of software.

Now did the rest of the world cry out in protest at the lack of photos of me pointing at various crap in England? No. But I was certainly quietly bummed out the rest of the time.

Moral of this story is, I'll take buggy hardware that does everything in one place most of the time, over four things that work perfectly apart but might not play together because of a minor glitch any day of the week.

I've taken my Treo 650 traveling many times, and it's always a great tool to have around. However, my favorite travel story happens to involve somebody else traveling -- I was actually out at a park near my home playing bacce ball. A friend called in a panic, having just reached an unfamiliar city and lost the directions to her destination. I calmly looked up the directions using Mapquest on my Treo, called her back, and relayed them, thus saving the day.

So, it's a travel story, but it's somebody else's travel. I hope that still counts.

We drove from Ohio to Florida- yes, crazy I know; with a 4 year old and a 12 year old- The MP3 player and The Core Pocket Movie Player on our Zire 71 and Zire 72 made it a just a bit more bearable- the usb car charger was a must have as well.

This summer we went on a family trip to the east coast. One day before we left I thought it was time to upgrade to a treo 650. I dreamt of having email and internet access for our 4 weeks away. Well, I got the treo, synced my contacts, and we left to Boston the next morning. Everything went great... for a while. Internet, email, text messaging, checking the weather reports, etc.. It really came in handy. Then we got to the main part of our trip which happened to be in Canada. Verizon failed to mention that none of those functions work there. So that's my story. For most of the trip my treo 650 was just an expensive cell-phone. Hopefully, next time we go to Canada the internet will work. I hear they might.

Probably my most favorite story to tell would be the most recent,

When I went to see Elizabeth Town with a couple of my friends, my good friend Hilary dropped her ring onto the floor. Of course this is a movie theatre and so it was nearly pitch black. I pulled out my trusty Zodiac and turned the backlight all the way to max. I then started scanning the floor in hopes of finding her class ring. I kept trying to find it, but I had no luck. Then I saw a little flash of light coming from the row in front of us (the theatre had stadium seating). I stuck my hand down the crack between the seats and I got her ring back!

The world will end in 2006. Just as it was predicted in the bible along with the release of Microsoft Longhorn.... :p

I am in the process of selling my house and traveling in my van and by air. My current treo is my main link to the electronic world. A few weeks ago I got an email from the ship's captain that my mother had collapsed while in Tunis, Tunisia. The ship's doctor had chosen to leave my mother at the local hospital and continue on without her. I am the only other family member with a passport so I had to arrange a flight to Tunisia, communicate with the American Embassy in Tunis, arrange travel back to the United States, translate French, email my sister, the insurance company & my mother' doctor while in Tunis...all in 72 hours and all on my Treo. I did, however get a Tunisian stamp on my passport for the effort...oh, and a big thanks from Mom. Treos Rock!

Cutler Ferchaud

I had the opportunity to go to Sicily on business and decide to bring my Tripnav GPS with me. I used it with Handmap to get to Mt Etna and then decide that wasn't good enough to see it from the base and decided to climb up a local climing trail to the mouth of the crater. I used pathaway to find my way back. What a view.

I've gone to several trip with my PDA and my usage has grown each and every time

First trip was with my Handspring where I used it to keep a journal of my travels. It worked quite well but grafitti is very slow.

next trip, i had upgraded to an M505 and had a stowaway keyboard too. This was awesome. Journal entries were a snap. Plus metro made travelling a bit easier in HK and LA.

I had the m505 for a while. It made a good adhoc photo album, street finder, and journal book. I wish i got a travel charger cause lugging the stock cradle was a nightmare!

When my m505 drowned, I started travelling with an ipaq1910. Oh man, that was fun.. dismal battery life, unreliable alarms, no keyboard again, The only thing it was good for was mapopolis. Too bad it was SLOOOW..

Now I have my h4150. Wow.. what an improvement. Mapopolis works great, metro got be through the subways of paris, excel kept track of my money, calculator helped convert euros, and the built in wifi let me send a few emails here and there through unsecured hotspots! Woot. I dunno howmany times I checked for free wifi in europe.. but it was great. net-addicts rejoice!

I had to drive from Milwaukee to Chicago for a business meeting. Unfortunately, I was having car problems, so my boss loaned my his Buick Park Avenue for the trip. His car had all the bells and whistles including a feature that when you park the car and turn it off, the driver's seat automatically lowers all of the way and backs up all of the way so that you can get in and out easier. On the trip, I was using my Palm to reference phone numbers and my calendar while making phone calls. While using my Palm, it slipped out of my hand and underneath the seat. I couldn't reach it so decided to wait until I got to my destination to retrieve it. Upon reaching my destination, I turned the car off and listened in horror as my seat lowered and literally crushed my Palm.

Back in college, my friends and I took a road trip up through canada down into michigan to visit someone's family. We knew we'd be crammed into a car on and off for four days, and it would be tough to keep track of directions to all the places we needed to go.
We used my trusty old palm m100 to track all the directions using mapquest and such. We had a very successful trip (minus a seriously weird speeding ticket).

So, I'm in the 122nd Ohio Army Band, based out of Columbus, OH. This past Veterans day we were scheduled for a Veteran's Day parade up in Maumee, OH, 150 miles north on an old military bus that couldn't go faster than 55 miles an hour. We were prepping to depart when somebody checked the Weather Channel and discovered a rather nasty storm front was sweeping down from Canada at a diagonal and would be pounding Maumee 'round time we were due to step off. So, we called the parade coordinator in Maumee and asked if the parade was still on. It was still set for 11 am, if anything were to change, they'd send us an email and give us a call.

We departed Rickenbacker ANG Base at 7 AM and started north. Even 100 miles out, we could see the massive storm front looming. I busted out my snazzy two-week old Treo 650 and browsed to weather.com. The storm wasn't to Maumee yet, but there was a nice thick swath of red just to the north in Toledo. An hour out, it started to pour rain on the highway. Whip out the Treo, and see that Maumee is getting drenched, and it doesn't look like the nasty weather will be stopping any time soon. So, the Commander pulls out his cell phone to call the parade coordinator and discovers that his phone's battery has died. Insert panicking here.

The phone number is back on base, but there's nobody there that can get into his locked office. And while he carries a car charger in his briefcase, the old beaten Army bus doesn't have a car outlet (we've been issued buses without gas pedals - just a stick sticking out of the deck). But... if it was cancelled, there was an email out there in cyberspace screaming to be read. I remember that the commander's email is a Yahoo account. I pull up Yahoo Email on my Treo and approach him, asking him to put his info in. He gives me that "What the hell is this thing?" look.

I tell him that it's a Palm Pilot cell phone. More weird looks. "It has internet."

"Can you go to Yahoo on here?"

"It's already there."

"Wow."

I prompted him again to enter his username and password and he realizes what I'm saying. Check your email because your phone isn't working. So, he logs in and finds an email saying that the parade has been canceled. He announces the cancellation to the bus full of half-drunk Army bandsmen and is met with cheers.

The driver pipes up, "Where do we turn around?" Again, Treo comes to the rescue. Within a few minutes I've pulled up a map showing an exit where we can stop and get breakfast and start on the two hour trip back to Columbus.

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
"My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
President John F. Kennedy, Inagural Address, January 20th, 1961

Was going out on a daily bike ride and had just downloaded the MP3 of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the day before so I threw my Palm in my gearbag behide my seat and put on the headphones (I dont normally take my palm on rides). I rode out to a new area which were very twisty hilly roads. Next thing I knew I was 25 miles out and completely at a loss to where I was (which was a shock as I have never got lost on a bike ride before). I looked at my watch and realized that I had to pick up my kids in an hour and a half and Im 25 miles out and lost and no phone service! Then it hit me, I pulled out my Palm, loaded up Mapopolis and within minutes I was back on track. Needless to say that I always carry my Palm with me on bicycle rides now.

I've been traveling for a long time now . . . almost 5 years . . . ok, maybe this is stretching the definition of travel!

When I first moved to China I had a difficult time of it, perhaps the most depressing year of my life! The main problem? Communication! Not knowing how to say 'lightbulb,' much less being able to order food or make friends can really take it out of you.

Now I'm not one for a lot of studying, so the language thing was coming along slowly until I began to hear/ read about this interesting device called a Palm and this dictionary program 'Plecodict' (then called 'Oxford Dict'). A trip to Hong Kong to pick up a 2nd-hand Clie and a bit of downloading later I was a new man! No more scrawling pictures in busy markets or flipping pages during conversation, with my trusty b/w Clie I was a one-man translating machine! Unfamiliar road sign? No problem, just scribble in the character with the built-in handwriting recognition. Never heard that word before? Hah! Writing on the palm was so much faster then a paper dictionary, not to mention lighter and smaller! I could even save words into the flashcard file to practice later.

When the Clie's screen went funny it was followed by a Tungsten W (a mistake- took a half a year of searching to cobble together enough programs to read Chinese SMS. Though I did enjoy being able to type words into the dictionary while biking through traffic! ) then my current T|E, which is hard at work every day. Besides translating my Palms have gotten me through Hong Kong's labyrinth of subways (MetrO), entertained me on 24 hour train rides (Handstory and Palmreader), helped me introduce my life to strangers and friends (Photobase) and stored all the little bits of information that I can't live without.

When I first bought a Palm it was a cool gadget- now I'm studying TCM at a University here and I can't imagine what I would do without it!

Years ago we were stuck on a DC9 in the back, next to the engines. Talk about loud! My wife and I beamed messages back and forth for 2 hours because we had no other means of communication!

Last April, we went to visit our daughter in Japan. Not knowing Japanese, I bought the Beiks English-Japanese lexicon to add to my Palm Tungsten T3. It worked great (although our menu choices were limited to Japanese words spelled with English characters.)

One of our stops was to a traditional Japanese hotel--a ryokan. While there, we met a French family that spoke neither Japanese nor English. Luckily, we had the French-English lexicon, too, and we acted as "translators" for the other family. (OK, so maybe I remembered a few words of French from high school, too.)

Having also loaded up with the Metro subway maps, the Japan Rail schedules and a few e-books (for the train rides), I didn't miss my computer at all. I even used my WiFi card in Tokyo (which seems to have hot spots just about everywhere) to keep in touch by e-mail with our son back home. (Now, if someone could just create a VoIP application for the Palm, I'd be all set!)

My T3--don't leave home without it.

We were vacationing in St. Maarten for a week. One day, we decided to hike up the mountain that has a terrific view of the eastern side of the island. We parked the rental car, hiked for about an hour, then headed back to the car. Little did we realize that someone went through my backpack in the trunk and specifically stole my T3. What was interesting was the fact that we couldn't figure out how the person opened the trunk since the car was locked and there wasn't any indication of a struggle to open the locks. Also, the thief was very discriminating. He or she only took the T3 and my cell phone, and did not take the other stuff we had in the back.

Oh well, that gave me an opportunity to upgrade to a Treo 650. Good things come in unexpected places.

My favourite story ever, because it's the only time anything like it has ever happened in my 21 years of existence.

Ever since Schoolies, my friends and I have made an annual tradition of renting a big house somewhere, splitting the bill ten ways and having a week of drunken madness in a new place. This year we picked Runaway Bay, Queensland. One night we decided to drive over to Surfer's Paradise and check out our old Schoolies stomping grounds. We wound up in a bar watching a *hideously* ugly man (think the love child of John Candy and Michael Jackson) and one of the most stunning girls I had ever seen covering a bunch of old pop songs from the 80's. I wasn't the only one who'd noticed - every other guy in the bar (young crowd, as always in Surfer's) was doing their best impression of a cartoon character; eyes bugging out and tongue unfurling onto the tables in front of them. My friends included.

After about half an hour, their set was over. Count Ugula went to the bar to get drinks, and the girl was sitting on her own at a table near the stage. I couldn't help myself, and I knew I didn't have much time before someone else tried it. I stood up, walked over, and sat down next to her. I was greeted with a faint look of disdain.

"Excuse me," I said, "but if you let me sit here and talk to you for just five minutes, my friends are going to be insanely jealous. May I?"

That got me a laugh. I was in! Or so I thought. The conversation very quickly started to splutter and die, and I could tell I was about to crash and burn, when she received a message on her phone (some old-model Nokia). She tried to send a reply as we were talking (a *really* bad sign) and wound up cursing at it.

"I've got no credit left. Can I use your phone?" she asked.

Uh-oh, I thought. This is it - the point where I show how much of a nerd I actually am and get written off, like so many times before....

"Sure", I reply, and tentatively pull out my Treo.

"Oh my god," she laughs as she takes it in, "What the hell is that? Like a mini laptop or something?"

"Kinda, yeah," I reply. Then I remember one of the more useless but crowd-pleasing PalmOS apps I'd installed recently - minordemon's Gaydar. "Actually, it's my Gaydar."

"Your what?"

"I'll show you..." I pass the Treo. "Point it at your mate there." Count Ugula is leering at a barmaid. "And press the button on the screen."

The result of this "scan", of course, always comes up Gay. Anyway, I thought it was kinda amusing, but she thinks it's one of the most hilarious things she's ever seen. She wants to try it on everybody. After we've "scanned" everyone in the bar, she demands to know what other stuff the Treo can do. I give her a quick rundown. She insisted I stay for a couple of drinks. I mock-grudingly accepted while the voices in my head clapped, cheered and rioted in the stadium.

We wound up getting very drunk, taking pictures of other people in the bar and then defacing them with the stylus (Media lets you draw on pictures). I invited her back to the house... and she said yes.

My Treo got me laid.

Beat that.

Tim Carroll
Your friendly customer service robot
(and big Treo fan)

One of my favorite uses for my Treo on business trips is to browse the web using Blazer. I love to check and catch up on the latest news using my treo. In one particularly boring training, I used my Treo to catch up on Treo related news.

I also love listening to podcasts on my Treo when traveling.

My story is not exceptional, but my old Palm Tungsten T amazed my brothers in August 2003 during our trip to England. We went from Italy to London and after a week we decided to spend a day visiting Stonehenge. On our way back to London, we stopped in Salisbury, a beautiful city with medieval art and architecture. We visited the magnificent Cathedral and took some pictures outside with our digital camera.
We were resting on the garden in front of the Cathedral, it was a warm sunny afternoon. A friend from Italy called my brother on his mobile phone and we described him the marvellous place. He was so interested that my brother asked if he could send him a picture. At that time we had no camera-phone, but I had a solution: I took the SecureDigital card from the digital camera and inserted it in my Tungsten T, then we wrote a greeting message, attached the picture and sent it with the GPRS connection of my SonyEricsson T68i, through Bluetooth link with the Tungsten T.
My brothers already knew the versatility of Palm handhelds, which I have been using since 1999 for study and all my personal activities, but that time they were really impressed.

When we left New Orleans the day before Katrina hit, past experience with New Orleans' many, almost unbelievable near-misses with fate in the shape of a major hurricane lead us to believe that in all likelihood, we'd be back in the city within the week. So beyond the 2 cats, 2 dogs, a small assortment of shorts, tshirts and underwear, we didn't truly pack for what will have been a 4-month exile by the time we get home at Christmas. Though we'd shared frantic calls with our circle of friends the day we packed to leave ("Are you leaving? Where are you going? There are no hotels open ... what are you doing?" etc ...) we found ourselves, after the storm and the levee breaks and all the devastation, with no clue where many of our friends, family, and coworkers landed and how they fared. Cellphone service was basically gone in the city, leaving the lifeline connection we'd all assumed would be there - cell phones - useless. Discovering that we could still text-message those who were otherwise unreachable by cellphone (the protocol is different) was a godsend. The treo allowed me to research hotels on the evacuation route, keep track of everybody's location (I added a new menu label - "PK" - for everyone's Post-Katrina contact number) - even work on my client's websites while on the road. I had audiobooks on mp3 to keep listen to on the driveÑour odyssey would take us from New Orleans to Texas to MassachusettsÑand the list goes on and on. Some crises call for a Swiss Army Knife; this one called for a Treo.

Sometimes it's the simple things that get you. The other night I was just getting home from a long day and I pulled into my garage - and it was pitch black.

I whipped out my Zire and used the backlight to guide me out of the garage.

A Palm is - Life in the Palm of Your Hand

I was out of town and had to leave my laptop behind. I got a frantic call from my office needing some revisions for a document that had to be filed before I would be back. My office e-mailed the document, I made the revisions and e-mailed it back. Since this was a place that was lucky to have cell coverage, much less a Kinkos or even a wi-fi hotspot, the Bluetooth connectivity was a lifesaver.

"Many men stumble across the truth, but most manage to pick themselves up
and continue as if nothing had happened."
- Winston Churchill

I've been a Palm user for years, and I've used a Treo 600 smartphone about one year, but more recently, when it appeared (due to a job change) that I couldn't carry one laptop 50% of the time and my smartphone 99% of the time, I (reluctantly) chose to sacrifice both and get a half-laptop, half-PDA device with which I could do (part of) both uses. That's when I purchased a Zaurus. It's a marvelous device, but nothing close to a true PDA when it comes to PIM applications, so I only carry it with me, well, about 85 to 90% of the time.

Last Tuesday, though, I was planning a 1600 km trip with a rental van, in 48 hours, so I knew that I may need it, and decided to take my Zaurus along. Of course, I could have used only that device, with the built-in 4Gb microdrive to store music, but I didn't want to carry the car adapter to recharge it on the way (I would need the plug to power my Tom Tom GPS anyway), so I also took my 1Gb MP3 player and a couple of spare AAA batteries.

Knowing that the rental van are _never_ equipped with a car audio system featuring a connector for an external MP3 player, I took my tape-to-3.5mm-jack adapter with me, and (just in case) an unamplified, simple add-on speaker with a 3.5mm jack connector.

Yeah, I know, this ends up to a fairly bulky combo, but I'd hate to drive 16 hours or so without music. This would be boring, and a bored driver is more likely to fall asleep or pay less attention to what's on the road... ;-)

This trip didn't start very well, as far as electronic is concerned. My MP3 player simply refused to start. Back home, later, I was to discover a tiny screw (which shouldn't have been present at all to start with in this MP3 player, given that there wasn't any missing in there) loose in the battery compartment, so there was no way I could have powered the device up "normally" before fixing this. The evening before my trip, though, I had been able to upload dozens of MP3 tracks on it, so I knew that at least when powered by the mini-USB port, the device was working properly. All I needed was a way to power it via the USB port...

That's when the Zaurus proved a life-saver. This marvel of technology features a USB-host port, which means that I could plug my MP3 player to the Zaurus and access to it's content like I would on any other mounted drive. At least in theory... You know, Linux stuff like compiling a new kernel every now and then, well, I had recently reflashed a new ROM on the device, and not reinstalled everything, so accessing the MP3 player content while driving was out of question! (Yeah, I admit, I tried to type a couple of commands while stopped at a red traffic light, but that was hopeless). I had to wait until my first lunch stop, listening to uninteresting radio programs, until I was able to hack my way to the solution, and finally type a "mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/usbstorage" command in the terminal application, and access to the content of the MP3 player.

Copying the music to the Zaurus was easy (if not particularly fast, there was 1 Gigabyte of data!), and the good battery life of the Zaurus (you can switch off the screen while listening to music with the built-in MP3 player) helped a lot to make the end of the trip more pleasant!

Of course, as was to be expected, the car's audio was broken and my tape adapter useless, so I ended up listening to my tunes using the tiny speaker. Needless to say that a Mercedes van motor, on a highway, is rather noisy, so the whole thing wasn't particularly a HiFi experience, but still it made the trip bearable, and helped a lot to make it safely through the end!

Do I miss my Treo smartphone? Definitely! But even a not-so-smart PDA can save your day in unexpected ways... :-)

Patrick Robbe
http://euroclie.free.fr

So, being the nerd I am... I'm on vacation in the Pocanoes attempting to find WiFi locations with my little Palm T|X. I tried several places, the first being in the condo. Somehow or another I found two locked WiFi networks, one apparently coming from beneath the surface of the road, and the other from the trash area. Perhaps there was some kind of government conspiracy, I'm not sure. But in any case, both were secure and I moved on to the game room at the club house. Here, instead of finding WiFi hotspots, all I found were girls that wore all black and spikey belts. I pointed the Palm T|X at them to see if they had any hotspots. They weren't impressed, and apparently were unable to function as a WiFi antenna. I left my vacation disappointed, for not only was there no accessible WiFi, there were also no normal girls :(

I just got back from a business trip to Houston, a city I have not visited before. I brought my GPS with me, but I had forgotten to bring the card with the maps for Texas, so it was useless for me. I had also brought along some directions from Google, however these also proved useless as there are several major construction projects on my path and roads that Google was sending me on were closed.

I was also given some "misleading" advise by the rental check out person who advised me to head for the "8" beltway and the Toll Road that parallels it. What I heard him say was "Be sure NOT to take the freeway." To me, a Californian, a freeway means a limited access highway, so I got onto the "8" beltway instead of getting on the toll road. Those who have driven those roads know that the 8 beltway is just a frontage road (with many signals and intersections) that parallels the toll road.

I later found out that he was telling me not to get on the "free way" that is, that he expected me to take the toll road.

Finally, due to all these factors I finally got to a place where a road I was supposed to turn on was blocked by construction.

At this point I was feeling pretty frustrated. The map that I got on the rental car desk was not detailed enough to help me either. Then I realized -- I have my Palm Treo with me and it has the Express software on it (which includes maps), plus a web browser. Using downloaded maps on my Treo 650 I was able to figure out an alternate route successfully. Now I want everyone in my company to have one!

I hope you didn't draw the winner by the quality of the story since it is too subjective.

Last week I went to a lab for an interview, I was so nervous that I missed two easy questions. For some unknown reason, the PI (principle inverstigator) took out his treo 650 and an old and small address book ($2 in walmart) at the same time. He went through the small paper address book quickly and dialed a number in his treo 650 by tapping slowly with his big fingers, I was shocked.

I was flying coach from Tokyo to Seattle on a cold Winter's morning. I had just done all my Christmas shopping. Went all over the city using "Metro" a freeware subway program that just can't be beat. I was digesting a four-cheese mushroom salad procured at Spago's in the Ropongi district which my Zagat program found for me. It was a pretty good find, tucked behind the Hard-Rock Cafe. But I digress. Flying over Tokyo Bay alerted me to the presence of a strange fishing vessel. Moments later saw a thick white rocket shooting upwards in a hyperbolic arc that would intersect the airacrft 30 seconds! My mind raced to the story last week in the Tokyo Times where seven IR guided Stinger missiles were lost by American forces in Yokota. Knowing that I had little time to react, I whipped out the ol' z-72 and quickly tapped open onmi remote. I aimed it at the exhaust of the 2 engines on my side. I retrained the button for"input" on my plasma tv to become the infrared signature of the two port engines when pressed. I picked a large chunk dried gun off the bottom of the seat and applied ti right over the correct button. The Mavarick was getting closer. I ran to the head and tied the sock around my palm securing the gum to the button and the IR port began running the engine secuences. Just as that supersonic phone pole was nearing I flushed my Paln down the loo and made sure it was out. The 747 veered slightly to the left to line up with it'd vector. My crazy palm flipped and wagged with it'd gum/sock/omniremote/ IR decoy. At the moment when Thor's hammer was about to bump on my noggin (in the words of the late Hunter S.) it was going to hit me like a million pound ****-hammer, or whatever else a phone pole would do flying at nach+. Seems it got a whiff of my cracked version of Omni Remote PRO with the marmoset upgrade. It veered strait down like a bent bolt of lighting and put a whupping on my Z72 like you read about. I casually strolled back to my seat. The pilot put on the seatbelt signs for the enexpected turbulence the blast caused. I was amazed that nobody else saw what transpired. I looked through the window with my binoculars to see the three gentlemen fighting and yelling out what I made to be Ala Ala Ala. There was some grabassing and trying to martyr each other, but overall such good clean fun. Thank God for Palm and Omni remote!!

I will be flying near YOU soon, evil ones!

El Kabong!!

Last summer we were in Grece on hollyday and after 3 days of beautifull weather our luck suddenly changed and patches of iritating clouds were all over the sky. So after contemplating the clouds for half a day I pulled out my Treo650, connected through GPRS to weatherunderground.com and found out that on the other side of the peninsula we were located there was clear sky. So we jumped in the car, drove for about 40 minutes and saved the day. From then on that became a daily routine: check the weather and choose a different location every day. That was a beautifull hollyday! Needles to say about all the great pictures I took with the camera...

Handspring Visor -> m505 -> Zire71 -> Zire72 -> Treo650

Wherever I travel around and people encounter me using my PDA, a Tapwave Zodiac, they always mistake it for a PSP. Even though a PSP has far better graphics and games for those who like action, I wind up impressing them by showing them saved webpages (iSilo), photos, music, movies (TCPMP), my scheduling tools (Agendus Pro), my address book (again, Agendus Pro), and my bus and train maps and schedules (BART QuickPlanner, and, again, iSilo). I make sure I keep all my schedules and maps with me on my PDA when I travel.

And then, I top it off by showing the games.

This usually helps blow people away. :)

Bay Area Palm maps at www.stevenchan.us

I have a sad story to tell.

So, the first PDA I had the pleasure of owning was a Compaq IPAQ, circa 2001. I was a freshman in college, and my father, in his great wisdom, sent me off to school with a shiny new PDA. It was a God-send. I have always been a very forgetful individual, and it was getting pretty impossible to keep track of my schedule, with it being filled with classes, extracurriculars, hanging out with friends, and once in a while, sleep. The IPAQ he gave me was actually a gift he had received from a friend, who had gotten it at discount in Taiwan directly from the manufacturer. While the IPAQ package was mostly identical to the ones sold in the US, the one major difference was that it came with a traveler's AC adapter, the type with a switch to adjust voltage settings.

So, the IPAQ turned out to be very useful for me -- very helpful in keeping track of my schedule, as well as providing a nice distraction during boring lectures. Unfortunately, it died within a month. In fact, it went out with a bang, literally. For fall break, I decided to fly out to Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to visit a good friend of mine. It was a cheap, red-eye flight (the only type most college students can afford), and when I finally got to his dorm room in the middle of the night/early morning, I was more than ready for bed. Since I had drained the battery listening to music on the plane, I decided to plug it into the wall to charge it. Well, unbeknownst to me, the voltage setting on the AC adapter had accidentally been switched while it was stuffed in my luggage. Immediately upon plugging it in, I heard a small pop, and smoke started coming out of the PDA. It wasn't pretty at all. The IPAQ was never repaired, and that ended my first rendevous with handhelds.

There is, however, a silver lining to the story. Later that year, I got my first Palm device, a Kyrocera smart phone. It was later replaced with a Treo 270, and now I'm a proud owner of the Treo 600. And hopefully, this post will just be the one that wins me my next upgrade!

This story was originally generated (maybe with a few embelishments) based on a PPC user referring to Palm PDAs as toys. Palm PDAs are like any other tool. They are as useful as you are willing to make them.

The Day (ok several days) in the life of my T3.

Early last year, an international customer called to report a problem with a recently installed Navigation System. After talking to a European co-developer, a problem related to receiver firmware was suspected. I verified the installed firmware revision using Smartlist ToGo, Version 3.0. The information is kept on a Network PC using Access but I sync it to SmartList so it is always at my finger tips. We both decided the problem could be resolved with a receiver update but an update would also be required to the components in the system manufactured by us. The plan was to get to the site while they worked on the required modifications.

Travel to Saudi Arabia from the US requires a Visa and I would need to obtain one quickly. Living in Boston with no local consulate, I would have to utilize an expeditor in the Washington DC area. The paperwork was not completed until after hours so I drove to the local Fed Ex box to make the 6:00 pm drop, which true to form, I missed. I used Verichat linked via Bluetooth and my Verizon MV710 and the Buddy Bot "AOLYellowpages" to find the closest office address. I entered that address into Street Atlas 2005 and used my Delorme USB GPS w/bluettooth Powerpack to navigate there. I made it by the 8:00 pm cutoff.

After getting the visa and making the flight reservations (sorry the Palm was not involved here) it was off to Saudi Arabia. During the long flight and London stopover, I was able to watch movies using MMPlayer, listen to mp3s using Pocket Tunes and review contract documentation using DTG 7.6. I also generated a trip timeline using Natara's Proj@Hand. The T3 lasted the entire trip thanks to two PTG Battery sleds.

During a one night stay in Riyadh, I downloaded the initial code update in my hotel room using the Palm Wifi Card and a 3Com 11g Pocket Access Point (this works in some hotel setups but not all). I also reviewed the Proj@Hand timeline with the local rep.

After a five hour drive to Afif, the update was installed on the system from my Palm's PNY 1 Gbyte SD card using a Kingmax SD/MMC Card Reader Pro. The update process was controlled from my Palm via bluetooth using the Palm UWK, pTelnet (the only one taht seems to work well with bluetooth) and a Free2Move RS232/bluetooth adapter. A cable from www.thesupplynet.com is carried as a backup just in case.

Analysis performed on site indicated further updates were required. My Palm and Delorme GPS were even used used to verify satellite coverage and compare it to the system operation (no maps required). Since the only internet access was via dialup, I used my Palm Modem with a local access card (good old Zajoul) to get the latest update and finally install it.

I just don't understand why people carry laptops (well, at least now that we have native *.pdf's working). OK, and I guess once I add the weight of all the gizmos I carry, it might as well be a laptop.

This is the question that I've been asked from my friends and colleagues whenever I show them my Palm handheld and explain excitedly what I can do with it. My wife, who had used to complain that I played with a PDA too much, became a power user of T2 now. My sons also want PDAs for their next birthday presents.

Palm handheld has been my first belonging wherever I go since I started using Palm IIIe in 1999. It is a real Personal Digital Assistant which reminds me my schedule, tasks and gives me information what I need such as phone numbers or meaning of new words. In fact as English is my second language, looking up dictionaries is one of the frequent usage of the PDA.

Reading e-books and web-clipped news during more than two-hour long everyday transit also my favorite things to do with my PDA.

Another cool thing I show people is a map software which show me driving direction when I drive to a new place using Bluetooth connected GPS unit. Actually this map software and GPS unit helped me to find near restaurants when I traveled in Ottawa last spring for the first time.

I'm writing this story with stylus (well, I need a keyboard :-) on my Zire72 on my way home and will post this to the PalmInfoCenter tonight.

Travel story with PDA? No matter how long or short travel, there is always a story with my Zire72.

Jin-Seok Jeon

Very soon after I bought my TH55, I went on the hunt for utilities and applications for it, and among the things I found was a tool to enable video recording. I didn't think I'd ever use it, but hey - it was cool, and it was there, so onto the TH55 it went.

Fast forward to about 10 months ago, when my partner and I arranged to go on a camping trip with a couple of friends of ours. We'd never been on a trip with them before, and we were looking forward to a few days of damper and toasted marshmallows, as far away from work as possible. We put everything, including my TH55 (to pass the time on the way there) in the car, and set off on the 3-hour trip to the camping site.

We arrived and set up the large tent that the four of us would be sleeping in. We had a great day, and in the wee hours of the next morning, finally decided that we should turn in. We'd all had a little bit to drink, so getting to sleep shouldn't have been a problem. And it wasn't - for one of our friends, who was out like a light only a few minutes after we'd said goodnight. On the other hand, the rest of us were lying with our eyes wide open because he was snoring. Not quite tent-raising stuff, but certainly not a little snuffle, either.

The three of us eventually managed a couple of hours' sleep, but in the morning we were bleary-eyed and feeling a little under the weather. Captain Snore woke up, and said how wretched we all looked. We sweetly said that we too would have looked as refreshed as he did if we hadn't been kept awake most of the night with his snoring.

"I wasn't snoring!" came his predictable reply.

We just nodded and smiled while he was insisting that it wasn't his fault that we'd been kept awake, and amused ourselves during the day by having little digs at him, enjoying watching him get a little annoyed.

That night we got some more sleep, but at around 5am I was awoken with a huge snort. Yes, he was at it again. I looked around but it seemed I was the only one awake. 5:30 crawled by, then 6am and he was still snoring. By this time, my partner and our other friend were also awake, and we debated giving him a swift kick to snap him out of his reverie.

But then I hit on an idea. I quietly reached into my bag and got out my TH55, while the others looked on in interest. I opened the video recording app, made sure the sound recording was set to high, and videoed our snoring friend in all his splendour. I only videoed 10 seconds or so, motioning for the others to be quiet when they asked what I was doing.

We crept out of the tent and I showed them the video. We erupted into laughter, and a few minutes later we heard some rustling in the tent, and then The Snoring One emerged.

"What's going on?"

We told him that we had something to show him, and I played back the video. Unfortunately he didn't share our sense of humour, and stomped back into the tent. We just burst into laughter again.

This is a story from back when I was using a Visor Prism. I bought a Springboard module to use CF cards and always did many backups. Now I was on that flight from Tokio to Bangkok and sure enough, when I got the Prism out to play a few games, it hard reset as soon as I turned it on. Well, within a couple minutes, I was back up and running because of the backup on the CF card. So I was able to actually use the device during vacation :)

My Palm PDA is one of my most prized personal possessions. I normally would not let anyone else use it -- afraid they might accidentally edit an important setting, appointment or contact. Nonetheless, the unit has come in handy in a way I hadn't expected. On a tremendously long car trip, after exhausting two dvd movies and having no more interest in anything else but whining the words, "Are we there yet?" every two minutes, my child seemed impossible to quiet down. The journey to our destination was taking way longer than any of us had expected due to bad weather and horrible traffic. With my nerves on their final strands of strength, I decided to try a once-in-a-lifetime strategy to calm and quiet down my 8 year old son. "Hey buddy," I said, as I reached back with my Palm PDA in my hand. "Would you like to play with this for a while?" My son's face instantly lit up. "You bet!" he said. And three hours later (8 hours in all), we arrived at our destination --- not a word uttered from my son's mouth since the now historic "hand off."

I'm a private pilot, and had the AOPA airport directory loaded on my Treo 90. On one occasion, having that directory at my fingertips saved me from thumbing through my airport/facility directory looking for a frequency for an airport I didn't expect to be landing at. A couple screen taps was all I needed, and I hardly had to take my eyes off the skies to do it.

When you're in a pinch, and you already have a hundred things running through your mind, it's nice to know the information you need is so easy to get to.

Hey, it's technically a travel story... I was traveling!

http://www.aopa.org/members/airports/edirectory.cfm

I was very glad to have my Treo 650 handy following Hurricane Katrina. I'm from Louisiana but was able to make to Atlanta, GA after the storm. Using my Treo, I was able to contact family and friends to let them know my family was ok. I wouldn't trade my Treo for the world.
J.H.

Hello - my story is very simple.

A long-time palm user until the last 2 years. I have used many Palm OS organizers - from Plam (way back) and Sony. I then made a huge mistake - I switched to Windows OS and then to a Blackberry phone.

I need to come home to Palm and a Treo...but if I show up at home with another new device, my wife is going to kill me...and that is no way to spend the holidays!

Lost in Blackberry Fields...

My daughter and I, along with a hundred or so other father/daughter pairs participate in Native Sons and Daughters program here in the Huntsville/Madison area. Twice a year we have a camp out with various competitions. Through out the year we participate in events and track these in a score sheet. At the camp out the award for Most Active Tribe is given based upon these scores. Well, the dads were gathered around the camp fire when we realized our score sheet was not up to date and worse, it was in a spreadsheet on one of the dads home computers. So, I grabbed my Treo and we called his wife. She found the spread sheet and attached it to an email. I picked up the email with my Treo and we opened the spreadsheet and made the changes. The girls were happy. However, we didn't win the award, so we went lizard hunting instead, and again, the Treo came in handy as you can see here. http://www.keithford.com/blog/archives/66/

Recently I was called by some friends to conduct a graveside memorial service over 800 miles away from my home. I downloaded the maps to my Tungsten T3, and packed the car. My bluetooth GPS and the T3 guided me all the way there and back. I had also downloaded the whole service to my T3. This included all the poems, songs, scripture passages, eulogy, etc. But I figured the people didn't really want to see the pastor reading from a Palm Pilot. So I opened my Bible with the T3 hidden inside, and conducted the whole service.

Rstogy

I have been using Treo's since the days of the Treo 300, and have a long list of stories where my Treo saved the day. Most of them are pretty common, but one I believe is pretty unique.

I had just moved to a new city, leaving my old car behind and needing a new car pretty quickly. I had already decided the make and model I wanted, and proceeded to the dealership. Unfortunately, when you go to a car dealership with the mindset "I must buy a car", they can smell that as you drive on the lot.

After the discussions, and the test drive, came the entire "let me just pass these figures by the sales manager" portion of the show. Of course, they came back with a monthly payment that i considered too high (of course, they are always reluctant to tell you what you are actually paying in the end.) I said "too high", and he went back.

When he came back in the office, he had a lower monthly payment, but had juggled the interest rates, down payment, etc. Luckily, I had an application called "Loan Pro" by Infinity Software installed on my Treo, and plugged in the numbers to find that they had actually just raised the price by $1000!. I showed this to the salesman, and he ran back, again to talk to his Sales Manager.

I wanted a sanity check on the sales price of the car, so, while sitting there in the sales guys office, I visited the web site CarsDirect.com. There, I found the price of the car being around $1500 under MSRP, which was about $2500 less than what I had been qouted. When the poor sales guy came back in with a (once again) revised quote, it was still over MSRP. I showed him the price on my Treo, and he ran back out again to talk to his Manager again. In the mean time, I hit the submit button on my Treo and asked for an official quote from CarsDirect.

The Sales Manager now came in himself and tried to patiently tell me that there was no way that an online retailer could actually meet that price, and that this was a bait and switch. I would be better off just forgetting about them and just buying the car from him. Frustrated, I told him that I needed to sleep on it, and would get back to him tomorrow.

On my way back to work, I got a phone call from CarsDirect. They quoted the price, secured the loan, and settled everything over the phone. Only one obstical was left. In order to "agree" to the terms, I had to respond back to an email agreeing to the terms. He said "It sounds like you are on the road, when can you get back to your desk so we can complete this?" "No need. I'll call you back in a minute after I send it out." I hung up the phone, downloaded and responded to the email, and called him back. Done and Done.

I have known many people to buy things on their phone. Most of them brag about the $2.99 ringtone that they downloaded. As far as I know, I am the only person to buy a car over the phone, thanks to it's web browser, email and telephone abilities. And I did it mostly from the waiting room of another car dealership. I can even thank the Treo for letting me know just how bad the other deal was.

The epilogue to the story is that I picked up the car two days later, and $2500 cheaper. Thanks Treo!!

The biggest way my Palms have saved me on business trips is from boredom. On my last trip I went with RSS updates from Sunrise Desktop on Plucker, a few new-for-me free ebooks from Memoware, and a then-recent download of Doom and never got close to enjoying all of it. Layovers in airports, sleepless nights, and time alone are now almost welcome.

It was also nice when I needed to call a number back home that I normally would never call, but I happened to have it stored in a spreadsheet synched to my T3.

My wife and I were given Palm V's for wedding presents. Being a gadget freak, I immediately set them up and used them to keep track of wedding related items. Alarms for appointments, names and phone numbers, beam information to my fiancés Palm V, etc. The first time the Palm V truly saved me was just before the ceremony. I had to arrive early, since I had been late for the rehearsal, but I was not allowed out of a coat closet since they were taking photos with my lovely bride in them. Luckily I had just downloaded TealDoc and some eBooks, which kept me company.

After the reception, we were whisked away to the airport for a vacation in Fargo, North Dakota. My wife had slept 4 hours the entire week before the wedding. Upon arriving at Fargo, she immediately went to sleep and slept for the next 48 hours with short breaks for food, conversation and Independence day fireworks. This left me with long stretches of empty time. Not knowing when my new bride would wake up, I did not want to go far, so I learned what exactly my Palm V PIMs could do, and read more eBooks.

Finally, a few months later, we flew to Disney World for our honeymoon. The Palm V's were very helpful for planning the next day's excursions, writing down merchant phone numbers, wish lists, keeping track of money spent, keeping my wife's diary, reminders to contact the airline about the return flight, etc.

In fact, on our fifth anniversary, we returned to Disney World and all the information from our first visit (such as our favorite restaurant and stores) was still easily accessible in my Palm m500, having been transferred from my Palm V.

William

wjbagaria3.tins30849@zoemail.net
or
www.zoemail.net/?wjbagaria3

copyright 2005 William Bagaria 3rd 1968-

I have been using a palm for 5 years to find my way around while working as a paramedic. I use my zire 72 and mapopolis to find my way to emergencies that I am dispatched to. I have used it to take video and pics of car accidents. I have recorded signatures for run reports, recorded voice memos of the address when I didn't have a piece of paper handy. The look on a doctor's face is priceless when you show him a pic of the wrecked car that it took an hour to extricate someone from. I write letters and pay bills at work on my downtime using the address book that I sync with my mac at home. I listen to mp3's on the sd card and look up drug doses, medical abbreviations and anatomy on mobile ems. I would still be a paramedic without my palm but it definitely gives me an edge. Oh wait there goes my alarm reminding me of my shift tomorrow. Stay safe!

On Tuesday, November 29th (yes, of this year), I was awakened by a phone call at 11:30pm on my Treo 650. My daughter Diana was on the other end of the call, hysterically telling me that she had just been in an accident just outside of Elko, NV. She had hit a patch of black ice, and had spun and flipped the van she was driving. After hitting the ice, it continued to spin, hit the median, and dug into the ground of the median. The van continued into the median backward. The left-side tires were ripped off the rims. As the van came to a stop, it was on the two left rims, and fell over onto the driver's side. She and her fiance' had to climb out of the passenger side doors to get out. Diana is 14 weeks pregnant.

I was able, after a few moments (and asking her 3 times if she was ok), to get her to tell me that she and her fiance' were not hurt. I asked her how long ago the accident happened, and if anyone had called for the Nevada Highway Patrol, and an ambulance. She said a trucker was helping. Then the line went dead.

I used my Treo immediately to look up the NHP's Elko office phone number, and called them. I wanted to make sure that my daughter and future son-in-law would get the help they needed desperately at that time. I was, you see, over 400 miles from my daughter... and worried like you can't believe. My kids are my life. I called the NHP, and spoke with the dispatcher. She relayed information to the NHP officer, who was now on scene, including that my daughter was pregnant. He made sure that she stayed warm in his patrol rig, while he conducted an investigation of the accident, and arranged for a tow truck to get the van out of the median. Information was relayed back to me that helped me stay relatively calm (Well... As calm as you can be knowing your kid was in an accident out in the middle of a frozen intermountain desert region).

I was on the road first thing in the morning, heading for Elko. My Treo kept me informed of road conditions, which were not the greatest due to storms, kept me in touch with my daughter, allowed me to talk with the towyard holding the van, and allayed many of my fears while I drove out to help my daughter.

Once there, my Treo was my communication with everyone. The hotel charges for everything, including local calls. I used my Treo for web access, for Google via SMS (nice way to get things from Google, BTW), for receiving and making calls to family, who by now knew about the accident. It gave me that ability to line up the repairs on the van, so we could get my daughter and her fiance' home to Salt Lake City. It allowed me, during more "sane" times, to update my blog, so family knew what was happening. It allowed me to take some initial pictures, to have all of us on a call in speakerphone mode. And it gave me a bit of security, knowing that I could reach my daughter, if not by voice, then by SMS.

I am so grateful my daughter wasn't injured! Not my idea for fun travel, but this is definitely a great use of a Treo for keeping in touch in an emergency.

Renee Roberts
www.portable-essentials.com

Our family was on our way to Disney World (from Cleveland) and was going t