Comments on: PalmInfocenter LifeDrive and Pilot 1000 Giveaway

Only story entries posted here in this article will be considered. Please create a new comment for your story.

One entry per person in each drawing (you can enter both contests), replies are allowed but will not count towards the contest so please keep off-topic comments or discussions to a minimum in this article for the giveaway. Accidental duplicate posts will be removed.

Pilot 1000 entries belong here - http://www.palminfocenter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30465

Thanks and good luck.

My Dear Ol' Ex said she wanted an organizer. I looked around and bought two PALM IIIs for no particularly well-researched reason. She proceeded to keep her PALM III in her purse and I proceeded to keep my PALM III in my briefcase. Within a year we both got tired of replacing batteries in the unused PALM IIIs and retired them to a bookshelf in the home office.

Fairly recently, however, I pulled mine out, stuck a couple batteries in it, powered that sucker up, took one look at the horrendously unreadable no-contrast dark screen, and said:

== Gack!

then pulled the batteries out, put the device back up on the shelf, and went about my other business.

======

Those suckers cost something like $360 each at the time, I think.

Total nerd, I am. Since Junior High school I have carried around a pocket diary with assignments, classes, then when working part time, my schedule, etc.

Eventually, having survived college and law school using the same method, I discovered 'Day Timers' and was carrying around a fat looseleaf Daytimer with me...together with their pocket addressbook.

When my wife's cousin got married, the groom gave to the ushers a little Seiko 'phone card' which stored, I think 50 to 250 numbers and data. I started carrying that in addition to the Daytimer, and found myself referring to the Seiko first, then the Daytimer.

I then saw a Sharp Wizard OZ-6300 (I think) sitting at my Mom's house, asked her what she was doing with it, and she said she didn't have a clue. Within 2 weeks I was completely up on the Sharp, which I gradually upgraded to a 9800 (first backlit unit I ever owned, back in the early 90's).

I was frustrated, however, by the fact that I had to enter data twice, first on my PC and then on my Wizard. It didn't make sense to have 2 to-do lists, 2 contact lists, 2 datebooks.

In '98, I discovered the Palm III and it's been love since then.

Palm III --> Palm IIIx --> Palm Vx (Millenium Blue! I loved that unit...) --> m515 --> Tungsten T|2 --> Tungsten T|3.

Truth is, there isn't anything better than a T|3 right now IMHO, so I don't mind sharing --- but I also don't mind losing.... The 1000 would be cool, though. The Lifedrive is just a poorly designed iPod.

Harold

Ah, I must of been 11 when my Mom got an m500 from her work. I loved the device. I'd always be playing with it in the cradle while I was on the computer or when we were out at a resturant. Of course I wanted one so much. hehe. Then later that Christmas, my older brother got a Palm m100. So life went on... I played with some old simple organisers in the past. So the next Christmas when I was 12, I finally got what I've been asking for! A Palm m125 at $125 and a GameBoy Advance. The perfect combo for a mobile organiser and mobile gaming. This was the era that Palm OS 5 devices were just coming out and OS 4 was being faded out.

Oh I loved my m125. I used it throughout 8th and half of 9th grade. But tradgedy has occured. One faithful night, there was going to be a lunar eclipse. So I being me, went on my PC and downloaded all the astronomy Palm freeware I could find and jammed up the hotsync manager with some software. So it was nearing time for the eclipse and hotsync was still going. As soon as it finished I yanked off my m125 and started to run down the stairs. Oh that was a bad idea. :-( I ran down and suddenly I tripped a bit and my precios Palm flew into the air! In a split second I jumped leaning my arm out and hit it up back into the air like a beanbag. Though my attempt to keep it in the air gave me a bit more time, it went down and slammed into the wall on the ground floor knocking out the stylus, batteries, dictionary card, and flip cover. I hurry down to check the damages. Gahhh! The bottom right corner of the screen was cracked. I just sit there on the ground panicing in shock. WTF!?!? :'-( My eyes were watering of course just in shock. But I kept a positive attitude realising it wasn't too bad of a crack and didn't make it unusable. I showed my mom and she was like "oh well." My fault so I can accept that. I kept using the device for months later. Anyway, I did get to see that lunar eclipse.

The lesson of the story is, get a Palm device that does wireless hotsyncing and save some time :-)

Palm m125 > Palm Zire 71 > Tapwave Zodiac 1 > Palm Zire 72 > Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000
So long Palm OS.

10 year wow! I bought one of those Pilot 1000 at Staples 10 years ago and have been a Palm Devotee ever since. I have owned a 1000, 5000, III, IIIxe, IIIc, Vx, 515, T, T3 and a TX. If you remember the company TRG and their modules then your there with me.

I got a Pilot Professional soon after they came out. I eventually upgraded to a Palm III and then a Vx. Around that time, a friend of mine was interested in getting a Palm, and asked me to sell him my old one. So I did.

I missed it immediately, even though the Pro hadn't left my closet in years.

Eventually, the digitizer and screen went bad on the Pilot Pro, and he gave it back to me when he bought an m125. I took it apart, reseated the display ribbon, and everything was peachy.

Eventually, I even found an OS3/IR upgrade card on eBay, and even though I didn't use it, I upgraded my original handheld.

Every once in a while, I come across the Pilot Pro in the closet when I'm looking for something else, and I always stop and look at it for a minute. I remember how great a gadget it was when I got it. It immediately replaced my paper day-planner, and I was hooked.

Even though I've got an m515 now, and I'm keeping up with the new models, I can't help but think that things were better back then.

--
PalmPilot Pro (1997) -> III (1998) -> Vx (1999) -> m500 (2001) -> m515 (2002) -> ???

(Somewhat long story warning)

When I was in middle school I attended an after school computer class. During the course of this class the instructor obtained a few Handspring Edge organizers (the metalic blue to be specific) and I spent at least an hour and a half tinkering with it and learning Grafiti. A helper also came in and he had a Handspring Visor.

I eventually went out an got a cheapo $20 Royal organizer (which I still have, somewhere, up in the closet, amidst a bunch of other computer junk). This lasted me for a year.

Once I entered high school, my ROP Intro. to Telecommunications teacher had a m500 handheld and a "busted" Palm IIIc. The first day or two he showed off his m500 and asked the class if any knew how they could connect it to the Internet. He also showed us his "busted" IIIc.

A few weeks later I was looking at the IIIc and trying to figure out why it would not work. My friend (who didn't know much about it) figured that the screen was cracked because it was completely black (we both didn't know that it was a color device and color LCDs do this). I asked my teacher if I could have it (if I could fix it). He said sure and was happy for my enthusiasm.

I took the device home, but could not do anything with it because I had no charger. He eventually gave it to me (with the wrong charger, DOH!!) and I took it with me for the Thanksgiving '02 week to my grandparents (I had already ordered a new LCD I believe) and plugged it in. I began to charge (and did so). 3 hours later it powered on (no backlight, I acidentally busted it, ooops), but would charge no more (this is why you never apply a 12v 1.5amp or so current to your beloved Palm Handhelds).

Well, I eventually go a new battery, motherboard and screen (spent more then I needed to, all I had to try was a cradle reset...) and got it working. :) By Christams '03 I had gotten a Palm Tungsten T3. The T3 was my faithful companion for 3 years. Just last Christmas I received a TX from my parents (i still use the T3 and it still works just as good as it did 2 years ago, with a few minor scratchs).

All three of my devices (when being used) were always with me. Just like Linus's security blanket, I couldn't go anywhere without my Palm Handheld (yes, I never owned a palmOne handheld, just the good ol' Palm).

My Palm IIIc experience also jumpstarted my love for Palm programming (and that will be the basis of my business that I plan on starting soon).

Well, thats my story (sorry if it was somewhat long). Thanks for reading :)

-Donald Kirker

I first had a sharp organiser, and thought I was pretty special, I always had everyones phone numbers at hand, everyone would ask me for the phone numbers. Over-worked and tired I left my bag in my work van (locked inside a substation) overnight, of course this was the night some thieves broke into the substation, and into my work van, found my bag and hence my sharp organiser.
All of a sudden I am not so special and no longer can provide all the phone numbers. I needed to make up for this, and quickly. I filed an insurance claim, so together with that and some money of my own, I found a Davinci organiser in a Tandy store. WELL, do you think I was super special now. I could not only provide phone numbers, I had a graphical calander with appointments on it, I had photos (albeit mono coloured), calculator, memo applications, AND how novel, I could write on the screen. This was the start of a new relationship, and a new hobby. Then I saw a Palm 111xe, WOW, superior screen writing ability, memory (how could I ever fill all that), sharp fonts(ha ha) alarms, I had it all. Then came along the Palm Vx. Now this is a very sleek piece of kit, all of the above and sexy. What more could a recently developed 'gadget' man want. Colour did say, are you serious, I can now have my photo's coloured, my calander, some blue in my contacts. This is just all to much, the m505, oh yes this is surely gadget heaven.
Then of course came along the TUNGSTEN T, this is a real gadget it slides closed, WHAT?? Colour, sounds mic sexy and slides closed. I am now fully and totaly addicted to these PDA's. I am PDA man. T2 was the only logical next step, the day that baby arrived in Australia, I had one, more colours, faster, GET OUT OF HERE. Albeit a little dissapointment sunk in this time because I was starting to expect more than what Palm could supply. The Tungsten T3 was an absolute must, 320x480 of yeah full screen graphics, now this is what I had waited for a hoped for, for some time now. No doubt, even years later, the T3 was a superb machine. Then to my dissapointment Palm was really winding down its implementation of technology, to the point I had to have more, so I went to visit the dark side. Hewlett Packard HX4700, this is the best screen I have ever had to date in a PDA, I was showing off left right and center, photo's, video's, super sharp fonts. But where has all my memory gone, why does this crash all the time, why has microsoft and or HP not fixed these issues, whats all this double the button pressing to achieve the same. It didn't take me long to get my courage up to applogise to Palm for ever leaving, I got out that old T3 and could not believe how reliable and fast it was. So along came the Tx. WiFi in a Palm, oh yeah bring it on. Instant application launch. Yep I like this. It does lack a few features, but hey with a little guts and threads on the web, I soon had a microphone installed into that baby. PDA and creative MP3 player in my bag take up too much room, if only I could combine the two, with enough room for plenty of MP3's???????????

I fell in love with PDAs when I started using my father's Palm IIIxe. He would let me play with the device when we were on trips and I found it to be the best addition to ones life!

Now in my PDA lineup I own a Zodiac 2 with a PalmOne Wifi SDIO card. Now this little wifi card can do much more then just surf the web. I use it almost exclusivly to spot check my website and update it via Wifile Pro.

Also at the school I attend there is a very large wireless network that we the students are allowed to use. I quickly realized that I could set up a network printer over WiFile Pro and use Printboy to connect and print to it. In my Language Arts class I decided to type my in class essay. My teacher promptly told me ," Adam, you know i'm not going to let you print that in the computer lab." I then quickly pushed the wifi card into the top of my PDA and found my teacher's network printer. I set up all of the needed information in Print Boy and in a little less then two minutes I printed my assignment to his printer. He looked at me with this dumbfounded look as I gave him my assignment. For the record I recieved 40/40 on it ;-)

My favorite handheld story.
-Adam

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

My first handheld device was the venerable Palm IIIxe. At the time, i was 13. I was nearing my Bar Mitzvah and seeing as my older brother had wasted $300 (ish) on a telescope around the time of his i decided to waste some money of my own. Seeing as i had been messing with (damaging, fixing, damaging further) computer equipment since i was around 6 i figured a handheld computer would be fun to mess with... and so i did some research (that is, about two weeks worth). Then i worked up the nerve to ask for it, as only a semi-obsessive teenage boy can. When i finally did ask for it, i was answered with a verdent No. Well, as any self-respecting child would i continued to ask for it (and nag about it) for about two more weeks during which time my bar-mitzvah came and went. Finally, after all was done (and my nagging and religious chanting basically destroyed my voice for a while) i was greeted one night with a small glossy box... what was in the box? the IIIxe. Needless to say, i spent the next 6 hours figuring out everything i could about it (and how to use it). This included but was not limited to actually reading the manual. Over the next year and 1/2 i would end up having to send my dear ol' IIIxe in for repairs twice (once because my brother broke it, and once because the replacement was defective). I eventually replaced it with a Zire71, but when i had it it was perhaps the most entertaining technological i'd ever had... and it was actually useful too (once i figured out how to remember how to use it without forgetting to do my homework).

Corey

I remember when I got my first Palm.

I bought it back in '97 when the Palm Professional with 1MB of memory came out. It was one of those things that I didn't realize I couldn't live without until I had it.

I was working at the library when someone turned it into the lost and found. I played with it for a couple minutes until the owner came searching for it, and while it was in my hands, I admit...I got hooked.

It was perfection in the palm of my hand, if you'll pardon the pun.

I had it for awhile, and got the 2MB upgrade, but that wasn't enough. I wanted more, and then the Palm IIIc entered my world. Originally, I was skeptical. Color? On the Palm? Why would I need that? Grayscale is fine. This is my datebook, my phone book, my grocery list. Why do I need color?

Foolish mortal asking a foolish question.

From the Palm IIIc to the M130. Nice, but not much of an upgrade.

Then the Tungsten series hit, and I waited until the T3 dropped. That was my handheld of choice, and still is until today.

It even helped me meet a lady who, although we're no longer together, still remains a wonderful friend and a big part of my life. My innate shyness would've kept me from talking to her, save for the fact that, knowing she was a geek same as I, would enjoy seeing it. We played with it (the Tungsten...ger yer minds out of the gutter, ya perverts), and we talked, we walked, we held hands...it was magical.

The Palm changed my life in so many ways. It truly is one of those devices that I can't live without...and with any luck, this will net me a Lifedrive.

One by one, the penguins are stealing my sanity.

After fooling around with various Casio and Sharp organizers, I finally got myself an m100 in the Spring of 2002. I didn't even know how to set the date! lol. Soon afterwards, though, I had that little guy loaded up to the gills with email and AvantGo, and suffered immediately from memory management problems...which would have been ok, if the digitiser didn't die fairly early on...I acquired an m105 shortly thereafter, so both problems were solved. Once my father-in-law saw me beaming something to a buddy's Vx, he ran out and got himself a Clie s360 and now has a TJ25.

I just had to try colour, so I bought a Visor Prism on eBay, which still works well to this day. Then I had to try a Treo, so I got a 180, which was quite an experience with the broken wire to the speaker, and the constant, terrifying feeling of hoping not to lose one's data with the weak battery and no sd backup!

So thankfully, the Treo 600 emerged, which is my present PDA, tweaked as much as I can, with TCPMP, Pocket Tunes, video and sound recorders, LauncherX, and rock solid quality and stability...even fixed it once after dropping and have replaced the cracked PalmOne case with a shiny new Handspring case. :)

In any case, my wife started using the Prism, which she liked, but found a little bulky, so she's moved to a Z22. Of course now she's starting to wonder that it would be nice to combine her phone and Palm, lol. So I just waved my Treo at her...

I first saw a Palm when working on the Gore campaign in Connecticut in March 2000. I saw two, actually. The two main ground operatives in the state, I forget their titles, had old-school Palms--a Palm III and a IIIx. I was completely blown away. I had been using a REX for a while (remember those?), which I thought was pretty cool, but it didn't compare at all with those grey/green screens! I wanted one, but, as a college student, certainly didn't have the funds to get one of those multi-hundred dollar toys. Fast forward to the Summer of 2000. I was interning at the White House (yeah, yeah, crack all the jokes you want--I've heard them all) and two people in the department I worked in had Palms (one had a ice blue Visor that he told me not to get because everyone thought it was a Game Boy). The other had a Palm III. At some point I expressed envy for a Palm to the woman who who had the Palm III. A few weeks later she called me into her office and told me that she had found a Palm III lying around her house that she figured had been left there after a cocktail party. The AAA batteries in it had died and when she emailed all of her guests, no one claimed it. So she offered it to me. I was completely overjoyed. Sure, it barely worked--every now and then I had to unscrew the back and realign the screen because it kept falling out of alignment--but I was the happiest little intern around. I mean, the thing had no value at all--PDAs that need weekly disassembly aren't exactly considered in working condition. But since a new one was so out of my price-range, it was perfect. And I've had one ever since (though I did eventually scrape together the funds to get one with no disassembly required!).

I was a Hindu monk living in an Ashram and I wandered into Staples to make some copies for the local Swami, and saw the first Pilot and went 'ah!' I had a Mac SE/30 so a Palm Pilot was fairly close in look and feel. I really wanted one! But I was a poor monk, begging for a living essentially, and it was impossible to even think of getting one.

I eventually left the temple and got a job testing software and guess what my first client was? Palm! So I tested Palms, fell in love wiith them, bought a Handspring Visor Deluxe and a bunch of modules and have been a Palm fan ever since.

--
It would be really cool to compare the two devices side by side. The only original Pilots I've seen have been damaged goods.

I was about nine years old when I discovered I loved handheld gadgets, My mother bought me a 10 dollar Sharp Organizer, which I found to love. I then bought many other organizers all ranging in price from 5-20 dollars. We didn't have much money, and I never knew there were color, blacklit, organizers. Nevertheless, I was at best buy when they were having a sale for dvd's, It was close to my birthday, I asked my mother How much we could spend, She said 150 for my whole birthday, nothing more. I showed her a Sony Clie PegSj22 and she said, "No, It's too much money, how about another sharp organizer?" I thought I was going to die, I remember lieing in my room crying and crying for ages, my grades fell, tremendously, for my birthday was about two weeks away. When my birthday came, I saw a shoe box, My mother told me that I would really like what was in there...The box was rather large, (my father has huge feet, I did not know this was one of his old shoeboxes from the past)..I looked and there was a cross necklace wrapped in all this tissue. I said thank you and loved that gift..I almost threw the box (not out of anger, just throwing it on the floor) and my mother said.."Hey There's a little something in there" I saw a case, with a hand on it, I did not know that was palm's logo, it might not have been, but it was that case's logo. She said "Here, this is for your sharp, and these are too (handing me box that had a cd in it, and it said "Palm os 4 games and applications" I told her.."Mom, thats really sweet, but I don't have a Palm" and there it was, she pulled out That box that said "Sony Clie Pegsj22, I used that thing All through middle school, Until I received a ppc that could do mp3's but I hated that..So I went back to my Sony..The battery still works to this date, there is hardly any blemishes at all...I currently use a Zire 72..

That's my palm story.

I picked up a computer magazine the day I was leaving for my honeymoon, something to read on the flight. Was back in 1997, at least I think it was (dont tell my wife). There was a small article about the PalmPilot Pro and how you could play games, interactive fiction, like Zork on it. I had never heard of such a thing as the PalmPilot and it really got me excited. We came back from the honey moon on a Sunday and after unpacking I went to the computer store to check them out and of course came back with one. Nine years later I still always have one with me. Holy cow, Ive been married 9 years!

Well mine is an easy one. It was given to me by my wife for a Birthday present;

the Palm Professional and I soon purchased the memory upgrade. Hated the screen but loved the device! So I was on my way to the palm world with the following device; I think I also purchased the Rom manager to allow me to place programs in upper memory; so the beat goes on

Palm Professional
Palm V
Palm 500
Palm 505
Palm was it the 515?

Left Palm OS for one year with the HP 1910 (good device)

Treo 600 in February 2003

Then I got the Palm Treo 650 in Nov of 2004

Still waiting for the Treo 700P (May 28, 2006)?

I remember walking into Radio Shack when the Palm first came out, and drooling over them. I wanted one so much I could taste it - it tasted like a nine-volt battery stuck to my tongue. In 1996 I was 33 years old. But, I was newly married and newly broke. My wife wouldn't have taken kindly to my blowing $300 on a little electronic gadget, and she would have had the rest of my family on her side! No one really understood...

It took until 2001 for me to get my hands on an about to be discontinued Handspring Visor Prism for that same $300 (plus $50 for the extended warranty.) I had saved up a few rebate checks and my dad pitched in the rest. It was glorious! Full color, and and expansion slot! My next purchase was a modem at Compusmart. I guess they didn't believe in that beautiful expansion slot, and I got it for a mere $25!

I turned out in the end that no one else believe in that expansion slot either. After three years, and an inordinate amount of mocking from family and friends (How original: pull out your pen and your left hand and say, "Let me write that on my palm!") my PDA, now a Zire 71, has slowly become a part of my life, and has earned its place in my family. My kids play on it, and it keeps them quiet in the car. My wife became so addicted to Sudoku, that the moment she said something about having addresses handy I bought her an M100 on eBay, just to get mine back!

I think I will still have to mumble about getting a new one, just to prepare them for the purchase. But this time, my daughter will get the M100 and my wife will graduate to color. Perhaps after years of subversive Palm usage and abuse from loved ones, I will be able to upgrade to a new model out in the open, and make everyone else smile too. But the biggest smile will be mine - because I was right: just try it, and you'll to love it. Hey! Get your hands off my new Palm....!

Gordon

From the Great White North
Kudzu62

Working one summer (dissertation), I had a bit of an impulse buy/birthday present to myself--found a Handspring Visor on sale. What a device. Very simple, especially by today's standards, but it did what it had to do, and did it so, so elegantly. Remember the first time you realized the true power of the simple Calendar application?

And then, to return to my story, within a week or two, my summer plans, which were going to be a little bit of side teaching for Princeton Review at three different campuses around the Bay Area, changed quite a bit: I ended up assisting in an eight-hour-per-day intensive Ancient Greek language course, some days on, some days off, still doing the Princeton Review appointments in the evenings--there is absolutely no way I would have known up from down without my Visor beeping at me, telling me where to go and what to take with me.

I still love that original Handspring device, as simple as it was. That's the point of a killer app, isn't it? Can't live without it. Now I've upgraded all the way to T3--still the best Palm ever made--and I've got wonderful wedding photos I can show people (only those who ask, don't worry!), great music for BART, even Ogg Theora movies on there. And I've got that beautiful Calendar still beeping (or, now, buzzing) at me and telling me where to go and what to take. Thanks, Palm.

I fept a Franklin Planner but I immediately saw the possibilities offered by the Palm. My Dad got one, a Palm 1000, and I was convinced very quickly that I needed one. But I waited until our company finally switched to MS Outlook which cleared the way for a solid synch option. By that time the "top of the line" was a Palm IIIx...I was fully committed to making the most of it. My boss and I were at odds about me using it in meetings, he was convinced I was playing games all the time...until I started to use it as a weapon to win "discussions" with our software vendor. Nothing like having the our contracts and design requirements all on one little device...fully searchable and ready to rock.

I think my first digital organizer that actually looks like an organizer was the Sharp OZ-9000. But my first PDA was the very first "PDA", the Newton MessagePad. I bought it in 1993 on the first or second day of release by driving 4 hours to NYC to buy it at J&R Music World, for $700.

Since then I've had multiple Palm's, Clie's, Pocket PC's, currently I use a Nokia 6630. It might seem low powered compared to modern PDA's or PDA phones, but I use it for everything. The past couple of weeks I've been looking at buying something new though, bigger screen, wi-fi, mmm...

That's right. I wanted an Everex "Palm PC" because I didn't think even a Palm III would meet my needs.

But the Everex couldn't sync with my Mac, so I got the III.

I have been Palm's ulcer ever since.

Fat chance of me snagging a free LifeDrive!

I did get that Everex. Off ebay for about $25. What a rip, even at that price!

Take your Pepto-Bismol now, Colligan.

And RETIRE that ludicrous Heatherbot that posts stupidity everywhere!

>kissing free Lifedrive goodbye<

I bought my first Palm Pilot 10 years ago when they first came out. I purchased it at Office Max and then went ahead and registered it. I was contacted shortly thereafter by Palm about being a beta tester. They stated, that I was the first person in LA County to register a device. I signed the NDA and started a long beta testing program.

They used to send out 128K memory cards, 256K memory cards and I think we got all the way up to 512K memory cards which later became the Palm 5000. Most communication was via email and the benefit to being a beta tester was that you got to purchase the new units for 50% of the normal retail. And you also had conversations with the folks at US Robotics that were part of the beta advisory team.

I've had nearly every Palm device from the Pilot to the Professional to the III, IIIc, V, Vx (also became a beta tester for Omnisky with that unit), Handspring Visors, Edge, Platinum, then back to Palm with an M505, M515, Tungsten T, T3, Zire 71, Treo 600, LifeDrive, T5, Treo 650. I also had a couple of Sony color OS4 units (655 and 665). I've also dabbled with various MS devices from CE to current editions.

Before Palm it was Sharp Zaurus. And before that it was a Daytimer. The main reason for using Palm is the flexibility of the Tasks (formerly ToDo Lists) and contacts; much better than paper.

I've also been a part of the Palm community at various forums and beta software sights. Agendus is the longest software that I've used on nearly all of my Palm devices.

It's been a fun 10 years and here's looking at you, Palm. :)

A Palm wannabe fanatic

I bought my first palm 6 years ago. I was on a business travel in the USA and the Vx had been released. I bought it, wonderful little toy. THe one i had was one of the first, i think - it does not have the little x next to the V.
Anyway, i bought it - with a full load of accessories - pens, screen protector, the leather custody. And it still works.

But now i own a Tungsten E - thinking about moving to a T|X. How do i use it? like a PDA. What i miss? A GPS/3G sleeve with phone functionlity.

The Vx is still always near - you never know.

----
Luca Botti
Palm User since 1999

background
hi, everyone i'm a long time reader, first time posting on palminfocenter. i've been posting on brighthand's forum for nearly 1 year now in both the TE and Z72.
now i got my first palm when i was in year 7, its was a tungsten E
with hi res screen and small form factor. the reason i got the palm is because my grades in high school keep on splipping due to the fact that i'm always forgetting to hand in assignments when they are due. paper planning or a diary would be no-go zone for me cause i consider it to be a nerdy thing to have. now i got the TE it is cool looking, plays music and video and organise my life. when i first got it my friend was so impressed with its ability to do anything (well somthing that fits in your pocket will do) and the bright colour screen that they all when out and got TE for thenself. last year i got myslef a new Z72 and havent looked back on it despite the low battery life and camera issue because its a multimedia device, its need to drain the juice. want somthing with low battery usage. i sugest getting a sharp organiser.
my TE is still going strong after 2years with the battery displaying 20% after 3 hours of music playback. i'll upgrade my palm when a ALP comes out.
also check out my blog
z-master.blogspot.com

I was stationed in Overton, Nevada just northeast of Las Vegas. In January of 1999 I had been on my mission for about 6 months. As missionaries we weren't allowed to have computers in our apartment which was kinda driving me crazy (because I'm a techo-geek sort of person). So one day we get a catalogue for Franklin-Covey planners in the mail and I noticed that they were selling a Franklin version of the Palm III. It cost more than a missionary usually has to spend but luckilly I has a bit of extra money that had been intended for a bike. I figured I could justify purchasing this distraction from missionary work because I could load the scriptures (the Bible AND the BoM) onto it. So I ordered it and spent that whole night playing the 4 or 5 games that came with it. Then I spent the next 18 months still playing games etc during my meetings and 'study' time.

About a year after my initial purchase I had been transferred to Las Vegas and I went to the Franklin Covey store and saw that they were selling an 8MB RAM card for the Palm III. So I bought it and loaded a whole bunch more games onto my Palm.

As I mentioned earlier I wasn't allowed to have a computer in my apartment, so I relied on the charity of local rogue Mormons to let me use their computers to HotSync and so forth. (yes I did lose all my data to a crash more than once because of being transferred away from the area where my info was synced)

Sometimes we had to attend the sunday church services for up to 3 congragations. My trusty Palm made those drawn out days much more bearable. (I did spend a fortune of my grocery money on AAA bateries though)

I used my Palm III (a lot) for nearly 5 years. In January of 2004 I got a Tungsten T3. I was blown away by the amazingness of it. I loaded tons of apps onto it and found ways to use it to replace many of my other devices. I now use it for: reading books, remote control, MP3 player, movie player, flashlight, mirror, calculator, dictionary, web portal, game boy, word processor, guitar tuner, Pascal compiler, alarm clock, organizer, notepad, reference library etc. I'm sure many of you have your own lists of uses. Lately I use it mostly as a way to read at night without having the light on, and for showing off pictures of my two daughters.

My two year old is addicted to 'Sketcher'. She asks my every day if she can "paint pictures on daddy's Palm?" She likes picking the colors. She also LOVES watching home movies of herself on the Palm. I usually keep about 10 to 15 movie clips on there for her to watch (with TCPMP of course).

Anyway, 'please pick me!' and all that crap. Thanks for the excuse to relive my Palm memories. I've enjoyed reading the other stories too.

Jarom Olsen

/Now palmified for over 6 years.

I had always been in love with small electronics. I too had a sharp organizer and even those casio calculator watches which I used religiously. When I was a younger I remember ogling my dad's apple newton and see how 'professional' he looked. As I became old enough, I got a job at an electronic retail store where I worked in the mobile electronics department. What a dream come true! It was then where I discovered handheld organizers. I was at first very torn between the old casio casseopeia 500 (WinMOB...what was I thinking?!) and the palm V. I opted for the palm V becuase of it's sleek design and pocket-ability. Immediately I was hooked. I bought myself the portable keyboard (remember the big silver one that folded up accordian like?) and I also got an aluminum case for it. Then a short time later, the palm Vx millenium blue edition came out...and I had to have it. So I picked one up and got a blue aluminum case to match. From then on, there has been no turning back. I anxiously awaited the M505 along with many other people on this very forum, and got the first one at my store. I held on to that one for a long time...until the T3 came out, which gave me my first taste of landscape. I went through 2 of those before finally moving up to a TX. Now I can pretty much do anything on that. I love it at school when I'm sitting somewhere using the wifi to check websites while typing a paper all while listening to mp3's and having everyone who walks by take a second look. I also love using my tomttom GPS while driving, or when Im away from a hot spot, downloading my email by pairing my palm to my razr. I love my palm and would most certainly be lost without it.

Computers don't make mistakes, people do.

First comment on this great site! I read this site through Plucker or online nearly everyday. Keep up the great work. I love the cantankerous banter of the comments and forums.

I am not new to Palms, but I an certainly not too adventurous. I still am using a M130. It is my first Palm and I am fairly happy with it. I am contemplating a new Palm and this drawing inspired me to get on board.

I was first turned on to Palm when it was still US Robotics. I (being the geek that I am) still have an ad I saved to drool over from way back. It just says 'Palm Pilot' and 'USRobotics' on the top. The date on the sample display says 'Apr 10, 97' I still hold this to be my 'first Palm' even though it was only in my dreams. The picture of the Palm 1000 brought me back to the day...

I bought my first actual Palm about 3 - 4 years ago. My basic Cassiopia had died due to weather exposure (in my pocket mind you) and I was lost without it. The M130 was the latest and greatest pda accepted at my work for syncing to the network. I convinced my wife (not easy) that I needed it for my new position at work (all true).

I am an extreme freeware junkie (which some may frown upon). I have scoured the Internet looking for apps. Some of them are in Japanese! Fun, but hard to read. Zlauncher has made my puny M130 a lot more useful.

I am also a tech news addict and using Plucker on my Palm has been a lifesaver. This site has opened my eyes to the bigger world of Palm and I look here for the latest Palm news. I get so much out of the articles, comments and forums. Thanks a ton.

'No! I'm not playing on my Palm! I'm reeea-ding.'

.....

Well, I'm not sure what the point of a Palm 1000 would be; to hang on the wall? A life drive would be interesting, but we'll see

My first a color Prism!

My first Palm was a Zire. I was so thrileld to see its ease of use with a Mac and installed PCam and PCine on it. Soon I wante to instal more apps on it. But it onlyhad a memory of 2MB. So I decided to upgrade, but I also wanted to integrate it with a camera. The Treo 600 was the only option available at teh time and it didnt support EDGE. I waited for the Treo 650 releasem but in India, its so damn expensive, I can buy an entry level laptop at that price. So i have been waiting for a secoind Palm device that can offer me all that I want.
Meanwhile I gopt myself a Kyocera 7135. Unfortunately it runs on a CDMA network, and I prefer to have GSM so I am not dependent on the Cellular Service provider for newer handsets!
Maybe I will pick up the Palm Treo 700p!

2000: I returned from a service mission to St. Petersburg Russia. While there, I handled hundreds of contacts with a traditional paper contact book. Once I returned I looked for something that might make managing all of those contacts easier in the future. I purchased my first Palm, a Palm III, from a Franklin Covey retailer. I soon discovered that there are great applications for the Palm and not enough space on the Palm III, so I upgraded to the Palm IIIxe.

2002: My Palm started behaving strangely (losing data) so I upgraded to the Tungsten E. I really loved this palm. It was sleek and fast compared to the Palm IIIxe.

2003: I became very interested in the idea of a convergent device, so I sold my Tungsten E to my friend and bought a Treo 600. I loved having everything in the same place but hated the screen (160x160) and the reception with AT&T.

2003: Couldn’t tolerate the Treo 600 so I returned it to Amazon, canceled with AT&T, and purchased the Tungsten C. I had always wanted a thumb keyboard. I found the construction on the Tungsten C to be very poor (stylus kept coming out) and there was no backlight for the keys so I quickly returned the Tungsten C.

2003: After returning the Tungsten C, I purchased the Tungsten T3. I really loved this handheld. It was what I had been looking for. It was sturdy, stylish and small. While small, it also had a huge high resolution screen.

2004: My Tungsten T3 served me well but developed a very annoying high pitch whine. I started looking for a good replacement for what I considered my dying T3. I saw the T5 come out with mixed reviews. I was disappointed so I held off upgrading. Eventually, I determined that Palm wasn’t going to release a new PDA for a while so gave my T3 to my brother and broke down and got the T5. I had mixed feelings about the T5 it was definitely a temporary replacement for me. I really did like the drive feature though, and having all that memory was great.

2005: The Life Drive came out and I was very excited. I read in the reviews that there were some speed issues when switching between applications. I decided to hold on to my T5 and try the Life Drive out. If I liked it, I would sell my T5. At first I really loved the Life Drive. The design was beautiful to me. I didn’t mind that it was a little big. It felt so solid and still looked sleek. The lag issues however were very real. In addition, it reset a lot. The killer for me was MP3 playback. The songs paused every time the hard drive was accessed. I grudgingly decided to part with my life drive. (Returned to Amazon)

2005: When the Palm TX came out, I decided to sell my T5 and get the TX. The WiFi was appealing to me. I had used it a little on my Tungsten C and liked it. The TX was really a disappointment. The design looks good but feels cheap. The power button is hard to press sometimes, and applications that had worked on my T5 didn’t work on my TX (supermemo).

2006: I started to look around again and even considered trying a Windows Mobile device. I had used my dad’s pocket PC before and hated it, but I heard they had improved the operating system a lot. I began to notice that the only device not routinely bashed on Palm Infocenter was the Treo 650. In fact, some of the big critics even seemed to be satisfied. So, the first week in January I bought a new Treo 650 and began service with Cingular. Over the past 2 and a half months I have been very pleased. The screen is really great (320x320), the reception and audio quality has been great (sometimes a little quite, but they have apps to fix that), all of my information is in one place, one-handed navigation is a real joy, and all of the applications that I use work perfectly (about 10 add on apps). My only gripe is that they didn’t include more memory. That is my story. I love Palm and hope they continue to innovate with their smartphone line. I think the standard PDA line is suffering, but I have heard that the updates to the Life Drive have made it quite usable.

palm vx--my old friend's old friend be my friend now

a friend of mine give it to me when he leave,there's a only one photo which includ both of us--a white photo in it,he said it was his best good friend except me,now it is the only link to our old memory, my best old friend just like his owner.

I got my first Palm, when my father brought a new Palm V from work and he had no use for his old Palm III anymore. Ha gave it to me as he was totally amazed by Palms at that time.

I must admit that I hated it, first. I didn't saw a reason why I would need such an organizer. At that time I was a university student and my life hadn't to be very organized... But as I got more and more involved into research my life had to be more and more organized. And I slowly felt in love with my Palm III. In the beginning I mostly used the calendar and contacts apps, but after a while more other applications - I rememer a great Yahtzee game - were installed on my Palm and I even conencted to the internet with my mobile phone - quite expensive at that time.

So I wanted more and I got myself a Tungsten C, as my university had WLAN and it was nice to have internet access all around the campus. With the help of a ssh client - TuSSH - I was able to connect to our computer lab. As a computer scientist I began to write small apps (e.g. a dialer for my AirPort basestation at home), I got a GPS for car navigation and I was quite happy. The only thing I was missing were stereo headphones.

Meanwhile I have left university and I work at a research lab. As I travell a lot, I got a Treo 650 and I am really happy. Finally I have a mobile, which I don't forget somewhere. I have internet access everywhere, my contacts and my calendar is available, I can listen to music in stereo and last but not least it works very well with my PowerBook.

Unfortunately my father has switched to Windows Mobile (no, not to a Treo 700w), as he has a new job and they use Windows Mobile there...

Got my 1st Palm in 01 or 02 - a Handspring Visor Deluxe after a friend of mine got himself the M130. Soon his Palm had led me to get me a M100, then a few weeks later I bought a M105. Then I bought me a Vx - I was hooked, if it wasn't for the MDS! After that I got me a M505 for my birthday in 03 - my 1st colour Palm! But the downside of buying yourself a birthday gift - you might get something better! In my case - a Tungsten T! Now this was great! I had all my notes (I'm an aspiring writer) and my scripts, as well as Olive Tree's BibleReader with the Afrikaans Bible on there... And finally last year, I got a great deal on a T5... I also have a Treo650, but just use the phone and sms functions - I like writing on my T5!!!

Groete/Greetings

Christo van Wyk

My first PDA was the Treo 270, in 2004. I had always resisted getting a mobile phone, hating the idea of being always on call. Eventually, social pressure - like missing out on parties ("Didn't you get the txt? Oh, right...") - became too much and I caved in.

But I still wanted to raise a big finger to the whole "oh-wow-it's-so-tiny-and-plays-kewl-ringtones-of-50-cent" craze. I'd always wanted a Palm, and remembered how much I liked the look of Handspring's Treo 270 when I'd first seen it on the net a few years before. Plugging Treo into ebay, I was aghast at the prices of $400 and upward, and even more for the Treo 600. Then I saw one that was broken - going for 100 bucks. The owner reported that it "didn't power up when connected".

I figured that even with the cost of repair, it would still be cheaper to buy this one and get it fixed than buying one of the more expensive working ones. So I bid in and wound up getting it for $130. When it arrived a few days later, I decided to test it anyway, and plugged in the A/C power cord... and it powered up perfectly!

I still don't know how the ebay seller hadn't been able to accomplish this - I figure he must have been plugging in the USB cable instead and not realising he needed to use the A/C plug. Either way, I lucked out and got a very cheap PDA/phone.

I wasn't so lucky with my 650, a year later, when the backlight died on the 270. I miss my $1000...

This sig is a placeholder till I come up with something good

My story is very simple, nothing special about it except the protagonist, my old Palm IIIx.
In 1999, my family decided to buy me a present for high marks I had in my last-but-one high school year. At that time, I had no particular desire, even if I have always been keen on computers. So I say I didn't want anything, but they insisted. This 'negotiation' went on for many weeks that summer, and was becoming nearly embarrassing for me.
Then, in the desperation to find anything that could turn up to be good choice, I remembered an article I had read some months before on a computer magazine about Palm handhelds. That article hit my curiosity especially because of Graffiti: at that time I thought that real-time handwriting recognition was science fiction. So I searched some more about Palm handhelds and had the sensation that it could really be useful to me. I had tried an electronic databank before, but they were so clumsy that after a short time I abandoned them. Palm handhelds seemed different, and were apparently able to free me from the task to copy my address book in each new year's calendar (I have always been thinking that it was a waste of time and that technology help).
I told my family with a sense of shame, because I realized they were quite costly. At that time in Italy Palm handhelds were almost utterly unknown in shops and online, and we found just one Italian Internet store that sold Palm models. But my parents agreed (I found something at last!). We had to choose the model: we preferred Palm IIIx over Palm V because of larger memory.
So I had a Palm IIIx and got more and more involved with it. I started copying my address book to learn Graffiti (it really worked! Amazing...) and then I discovered many programs that enabled me to do useful things (read ebooks, manage lists and simple databases, record appointments) and have fun too. My enthusiasm never wore off and my family was surprised to find this little thing useful in so many ways.
In 2002 I switched to a Tungsten T (huge Christmas gift), started to learn programming for the Palm platform and felt even more involved. I produced two little freeware games, 100 Boxes and SolPok (formerly known as Solitaire Poker) that made me, my family and friends share a lot of fun. I also appreciate very much all the email messages people send me with comments and excellent suggestions.
Now I am happy with my new Palm TX, that has more memory than I can use and the WiFi connection. I can surf the Web and access my PC from anywhere in my house (thanks to JWakeME, a Wake On LAN MIDlet I wrote, and to formidable PalmVNC). It may seem stupid, but it is really precious for me.
Perhaps I wrote too much here, but a Palm handheld remind me memories of people I love and things I have done. A tool for the present and a piece of my past at the same time. I gave my Tungsten T to my best friend, while my old Palm IIIx still lies in my drawer in perfect conditions: a pair of AAA batteries will make it revive any time.

Just my $.02 worth.

I'm sure all these stories are many, varied and interesting, given that many people regularly read PalmInfoCenter. My own story is simple, given that I got it from my father.

It was in 2001(?, just before T|T release). I had done very well academically in the years before, and I had heard of a Palm, since 1998(?). I remember seeing Palm III and V variants in a shopping centre in Singapore, where I live, and I asked for one. After waiting for a while, the m500 came up on offer, for like SGD150 if we bought a printer. So coincidentally, my printer had just failed. Out of warranty (it was like 3 years old). So, my father bought it. During the first two years, he pretty much used it. In 2004, I started actually using it for like taking notes and basic PIM. In October, I saw the T5 and fell in love. In 2005, my m500 entered mainstream use for my studies, like taking notes and such. On my birthday this year, my father bought a LifeDrive from his friend for me, second hand. Right now, the only problem I'm facing with it is that I'm using the Slim Leather Case for LifeDrive, and the raised logo thingy caused my screen to crack. Palm Singapore is insisting that I foot the OOW (out of warranty) bill as my poor LifeDrive screen is not covered.

Any opinions?

I bought my first Palm (a 1000) on ebay, which was the first thing I ever bought on ebay. In the excitement of things I ended up paying way too much for it. To add insult to injury I ended up dropping within a few weeks, forcing a upgrade to the next version of Pilot (the 2000? don't recall). Since then I owned several versions of PalmOS computers including the IIIx, Prism and Sony CLIE. I "upgraded" to most of them after I broke the Palm that I had at the time, keeping each model for a year or two. Currently I have a T3 which I have managed to own longer than any other Palm (and did have to replace a broken screen). I'm looking to upgrade to a TX sometime in the future mainly for the WiFi capabilities, but a LifeDrive would do quite nice too!

http://homepage.mac.com/gregjsmith

How I got into mobile computing was with the pilot1000. As the name suggests (no i did not register this name for the contest, i have been a user for years). My Dad bought a Pilot1000 when I was in Middle School and it was too complex for him. He couldn't get it to work and I was INSTANTLY drawn to it! He gave it to me and it was like a technological calling was born. I have used a palm device eversince. I remember waiting for the pilot1000/5000 pager card to come out that had a memory upgrade to 250k or so. I got that and upgraded my device. I really enjoyed working with them. I then upgraded to a palm iii, 7x and then I went to Clie ux50.

My fondest memory of the Pilot1000 was how industractable it was and how it still works today. I remember one day in Gym clas I had it in my pocket and i went up to spike the ball in volleyball and hte pilot 1000 went down to the floor. The memory door, memory card, batteries and battery door all flew out. I quickly put it back together and not only was nothing broken but no data was lost.

As you can see my current PDA is aged and i could use an upgrade! Thanks for a great contest

COMMUNICATION! That's what hit me with my first PDA, a Newton 110. It came with an AOL client, which I used to keep in touch with my friends, and with my boss while on business trips. The next step was the Palm IIIc with a modem. It did the trick, and I was able to use my own ISP. Now, with my E2, I go to a number of places, including the local "bread" store and use my wireless card to do my e-mail, and to surf the web. The E2 is the perfect form factor for me! At work, I synch my documents and spreadsheets so that I can work on them when I have time. I'm also having fun playing one of the many video's for my friends.

OMEGON

In 2000, I started working at my first real job after high school and I used my first real paycheck to pick up a Palm m100 just after they'd been released. I was hooked and soon filled the poor things meager 2MB of memory and upgraded to 8MB. After that I switched to the Sony Clie line for a few revisions, 710c, NR70/V, NX70/v, and I'm now back with alm and using a T5 I picked up in August last year, I absolutely love the Drive Mode / Internal Card that lets me store maps, music, etc locally while also letting my swap out SD cards from digital cameras and cell phones.

I’m a research engineer at a major chemical company. Our company switched to using Microsoft Outlook in 1995, but was still only providing Franklin Day Planners to the employees. Needless to say I found it very frustrating to continually keep the two of them in synchronization. In the Day Planner course they teach you to only keep one calendar and they were right. I spend a lot of time keeping things in sync and I was always making errors. When the Pilots were released I decided that it was the ideal solution to my problem. It was smaller than my Day Planner, would store everything my Day Planner did and it gave me audible alarms. I purchased a USRobotics Pilot 5000 with my own money to use at work. A year or two later the company decided they weren’t evil and officially allowed people to use them.

Since then, I’ve upgraded my 5000 first with the 1MB memory module, and then with the 2MB Palm III memory module. That is what I use today, a Pilot5000 with 2MB and the Palm III OS. Although like pretty much everyone, the plastic tab around the stylus port is broken. I gave up screen protectors about five years ago and haven’t had any problems. It still does what I bought it for, holding my calendar, contact list, and static information in Memos & Secret!. It’s my calculator (RPN), drawing pad (DiddleBug), and note pad. The addition of AvantGo and then Plucker is the only reason I got the upgrades, otherwise I’d probably be still using it in the original 512K size.

Hi all

My story is simple for all of you but living in Spain makes it all a little bit different :)

My first Palm was the Professional upgraded to 1 Mb... I still have it ... I still love it.

And the one I use is a 3com V (it was a Vx, but so new that the "Vx" sign was in the back of the pda).

I bought it in Canada when the "3Com Vx" was not able to export outside America... it sounds like a joke , isn´t it ? :P

I still use it everyday!

cheers from Spain!

My interest really became obsession with the Treo 600. It was so good - but just not quite right - and I couldn't bear it.

I started with an m105 which was great - but having numbers in my phone and palm annoyed me. Then I got the Treo270 - an OK palm and a terrible phone!

When the Treo 600 came along, I was so excited it wasn't decent. It was released first in the UK and I had it on day 3.

I loved it - but hated that the volume keys on the side were useless compared to my old rocker switch, and also that the LED kept flashing at night.

Eventually I decided to learn to program so I could fix it. That's when the obsession began...

Love, Frustration, and the Joy of an open operating system!

There once was a rabbi named Zach
Who needed to get things on track,
His Palm III was so nifty
And now it's the 650
And he never wants a "Berry" that's black!

My PDA usage started in University where I commuted a good 1.5 hours to get to campus. I knew I had to pass the time somehow and studying just wasn't preferred =). So the geeky self used that as an excuse to finally plop down a good 400+ CAD on a brand new handspring visor (white).

I took that thing *everywhere* with me. It went from a commuting time waster to game machine and eventually made it as a bathroom buddy (*you* know what i mean...).

I maxed out the ram on that little thing to the point where I was trimming down avantgo channels to gain a few scant kilobytes.

Let's not omit the fact that it was also an amazing organizer.

But for some reason i have NO idea where that PDA is. I moved from the visor to the visor edge, m505, TT, h1910, h1945, h4150, and I can tell you exactly what I did with each of these when I "retired" them... but the strangest thing is, the fate of the original visor escapes me.

Could it be that I held my "first" pda in such high regard that I won't allow myself to think it's broken or lying in a pile of junk? Did I pass it onto a relative? I *really* can't remember!

Hmm...

I've walking with Palm about 5 years ago, on earlier 2001, when a day in the morning, when I went to my job… I'm was going to college (and I'm still doing), open my old fashion agenda, and saw that I have a homework to do, a special work… Nobody remind me… no beeps, no rumbles… nothing… I decided to buy a PDA, a palm m515, it was great… work just as I want and more… but the really thing was that I used it just to play… but I want more… more power, more game experience so two years latter I bought a Zire 72… It have it all, mp3 player, a brilliant display, hi res, voice recorder and digital camera (well, it really helps on my meetings, when I get asleep, but that’s another story)….

But I want more, more space, more capabilities, so two years laters (December, last year) I bought a Palm T|X… Palm even get better.. hi res tft, larger display, huge of memory (plus a gig sd card) and of curse WI-FI … well it’s really helpful…

Here is the deal, I still have my not so old m515, my helpfully Zire 72 and my own assistant T|X… and who knows… maybe a new member will become part of this family soon…

E. Schosinsky E.

Well, it all started with a trip to Service Merchandise when I was but a lad. Computer-obsessed minigeek that I was (learned to program in LOGO when I was 3), I'd always wanted something to take with me, and today was the day. I left that day with a Sharp EL-6061H (why I remember the model number to this day, I'm not sure), and, at the time, couldn't be happier. Two-line display, could hold a hundred name and number pairs. As time went on, I upgraded. Most upgrades came from whatever happened to be on clearance at The Wiz. A Psion 3a, Newton 110 (one model before the handwriting recognition really worked), not to mention whatever I could raid RadioShack for. Until one day, the clearance bin threw me a bone that would prove to be my gateway drug; a device called the HP OmniGo 100. Though not a Palm in its own right, it was one of the first devices to use Graffiti, and was innovative in its own right (display rotates to be used as a tablet or clamshell, pre-installed apps more powerful than I'd ever seen). So, when that device was stolen from me some time later, I needed a Graffiti-capable device, but smaller (the OmniGo was a bit chunky).

Enter the Palm.

I ran to the local Circuit City, where they had a IIIe on sale. Shortly after that, I began employment at a Palm reseller, and my addiction was cemented. And the upgrades flowed from the heavens. I jumped to a TRGpro when I ran out of memory. The (real!) speaker was a feature I was crazy for, too, and one I didn't see until very recently. Picked up a Symbol SPT1540 next. While a step back in memory, the barcode scanner was a great feature, one I still miss (can't afford the SD scanner). Color was my next step, with the IIIc. Rechargeable battery and a bright, sharp display, it was everything I wanted.

Or so I thought.

I always liked the Palm V's design, but could never justify the cost without some added features. So, when the m505 arrived, that was that. It had everything I wanted (sleek casing, expansion, faster processor), and, despite the introductory price, I bought the first one in the store, and have been using it ever since.

Since then, I haven't upgraded (too dependent on Graffiti 1). However, I wouldn't be averse to finally jumping to a new LifeDrive...

I still have my original Pilot 5000 someplace, although it's in pretty dire shape. In some ways it doesn't seem like 10 years has passed, although I am on my sixth Palm device:

1. Pilot 5000 (still have)
2. PalmPilot Personal, later upgraded to Pro (given to Coworker)
3. Palm V (retired when hardware rocker key broke)
4. Tungsten T (stolen)
5. Tungsten T3 (broken)
6. Replacement T3

While I'm somewhat disappointed in how little the platform really developed (and in some ways backpedaled), I still find my T3 indispensable.

I had been a Franklin planner user for years, and when the first Palm Pilot came out I was enthusiastic about replacing the bulky planner with a compact little gadget. But after looking at the software available, I was disappointed--there was nothing that effectively replicated the information structure and processes that I had with the Franklin system. Even Franklin Covey's own software was inadeqate. I finally succumbed to gadget envy, however, and bought a Palm III, carrying it around inside the planner binder. For quite a while I used it almost exclusively to maintain my list of contacts and appointments--being able to set alarms for appointments was certainly a great step forward over the paper planner. And I began accumulating software: ToDo Plus, HanDBase, Bonsai, DayNotez, AllTime, and a double handful of others. When I found Life Balance I finally gave up the paper planner altogether. There is still a lot of scope for better integration of PIM information and functions on the Palm--for example, to cross-reference related bits of data in different applications, I still have to annotate the items with little codes, just like in the paper planner--but it's the software (almost all third party software) that makes the Palm the indispensable tool and companion that it has become for me.

Most of my friends in school at the time were early adopters of Palm ( one even went on to write the Doom clone for Palm, Dreadling ) and I became more and more intrigued at the power and versatility of the Palm organiser. Probably the thing that stood out the most was how palm had got the form factor just right. In the past I had tried other 'handhelds' like the Newton but they were too bulky. Adding to this the power of being able to sync a Palm Pilot to your PC and Palm had the market sewn up.

I actually held out on buying one ( despite several near misses ) until the IIIc came out. Despite moving on to more powerful and sophisticated palm, my LifeDrive for example, the IIIc remains one of my favourites. It was the first real colour device, had a decent amount of memory and despite what folks might say. It wasn't too bulky. It was a very useful addition to me while I did Electronic Engineering at University and in the end I was sad to give it up. I'm proud to say though that I replaced the internal battery and it's still going strong, ready to step in if my LifeDrive goes tits up.

Palm, I applaud you, you're a company that was willing to strike out with an innovative idea and break new ground in the mobile computing sector. I look forward to the next 10 years, whatever they might hold!

Back in high school, long ago, I got my first experience with handheld computing with a Tandy PC-5 programmable in BASIC. It wasn't until January 9, 1999, that I got my first Palm, the 3com Palm III for a whopping $395.83. I'd heard that it would play those classic Infocom text adventure games, which I thought was extraordinarily cool. But it didn't take long to discover that 2MB of storage space wasn't very much. Then came the IIIx with 4MB of space, followed by the color IIIc with 8MB, then the stylish m500 with a 32MB SD/MMC card, and finally the shiny T|E with 32MB and a 128MB SD card. I was impressed with the T|E's speed compared to the slow m500. Apps launched instantly. I haven't replaced the T|E even though the T|X looks good because of my concern with product quality and workmanship. The T|E has that horrible two-frequency annoying buzz and earsplitting whine that makes it impossible to use in quiet unless earplugs are employed. Also, the AC adapter has a flaky cord that has to be bent in just the right way or the device won't recharge! Then, the sound sometimes goes out until I give the T|E a good squeeze, and finally the power button only occasionally works, so I have to use the center D-pad button to turn it on, and let it time out to turn off! However, the LifeDrive looks interesting even though it's large and expensive and will soon be obsolete, so I'm posting my story here at PIC. I'll stay out of the Pilot 1000 to give real Palm Pilot collectors a better chance.

After a couple of real cheap electronic address books I bought an Apple Newton. I liked what it could do but it was just too large. I'm a Mac user. My next experience was with a Sony Clie. I forget the model number. I'm presently using a Clie TG50. At some point I'd like to get something that combines the functionality of a pda with a cellphone.

My Palm story begins with the visit of a friend of mine from Boston. He had come into town to see his folks and while here we got together. What made this visit really nice was this little device he pulled from his pocket, a Palm Handheld Organizer. As soon as I saw what he could do with it I knew that this was the future for all persons who liked to stay organized. I had to have one. Thus began “Project Sweetie Pie”.

“Project Sweetie Pie” was not hatched in a day. It took me weeks to configure the whole scenario in my head. It required deep thought, forward thinking and a measure of intrepidity on my part. You see, “Project Sweetie Pie” was code for “Honey? Did you see that Palm thing Don had? Pretty cool eh? Well if I had one, think of how much I could do in keeping up with phone numbers, addresses, the things around here you want me to work on and all my business stuff. I am thinking about getting one.” Of course my wife just gave me the eye and didn’t say much. But after a few weeks I bought my first Palm and then a few more

To say from here on out was smooth sailing would not be true. She dubbed it my “Little Baby Toy” and wouldn’t even try it out. This posed a real problem since part of the “Project Sweetie Pie” master plan was to migrate to the next new device Palm built and pass it along to her. There had to be a way to draw her attention to this wonderful little miracle of design. But what was it?

One day while surfing for new software I came across a program that jumped off the screen as the answer to my problems. “HandyShopper”. There it was, the one application I knew deep in my heart would win her over to at least pick up the Palm and try it out. And I was right. At dinner one night I was tinkering with my Palm and kept saying “Hmm, interesting” over and over. She couldn’t take it any longer. “Alright, what is so interesting that you can’t tear yourself away from your “Little Baby Toy”. “Well” I said, “It is this new program I have been trying out, they call it HandyShopper. Check it out”. I then began to show her how it worked. She didn’t flinch. She was captured by the idea of a shopping program that would replace the sheets of paper that contained the staples of life each week. Soon the Palm was in her hand and she was tinkering while I finished eating.

The next day was grocery day and I told her she could borrow my Palm and test drive the application for me since it probably would make more sense to her. She agreed. While she was gone, phase three of “Project Sweetie Pie” went into action. I had begun looking for the next Palm and had found it, the Palm IIIc. COLOR! Oh my word, could it be? Yes, YES, YESSSSSSSSSS. If only she would come home and say she liked my current Palm, then I could upgrade.

Time went so slowly that day. When she came through the door I knew I had to put away the excited puppy attitude and be cool. I helped bring in the groceries and then helped put them away. She did not say a word. Very strange. I thought she might say something, even toss the Palm back to me and say she didn’t like it. Nothing. The moment was killing me. I was about to open my mouth when she turned and said, “OK, this is pretty cool. Shopping was a breeze and did you know you can also do this and that.” I was blown away. This was going to be easy, but I still had to stay cool. Too excited though I jumped the gun, “Hey, if you like it, I can get another one and you can have this one.” Uh oh, the look I feared, stone cold contemplation of the question just tossed at her. No expression whatsoever. I waited, held my breath and she finally sighed, “OK, I’ll give it a try. What are you going to buy now?”. YAHOOOOOO, release the Hounds, daddy is getting a new pair of shoes.

From that day forward I went through migration to the next level like most people breath air. She knew that each time I upgraded it would mean a newer more powerful machine for her. She was absorbed by the need for more memory and power like I had been. We had both moved into the official Palm Techie World.

After that it wasn’t enough to own one. I had to tell everyone about the ability, the capacity, the flexibility, the sheer joy of owning a Palm. It did not stop there. I taught myself how to write Palm software since I could not find apps to fit my need. This is still a fun hobby. In all this time and fun I have helped hundreds of my friends and associates become Palm users, some individually and some on the business level. I rarely took any money for the services, unless it was forced on me, since it was fun just to watch the excitement in their eyes as they grew in the symbiotic relationship with their Palm. Most allowed me to have the package code so I code register at the Palm Pays Back program. Today I hold the title as the World Leader on the World Leader Board. It would be higher but Palms promotion company cut me off.

Today my closet is full of the previous models. Some work and some are for parts as I help friends rebuild broken devices. Each time I open the boxes, the memories of that model flood my mind. My Palm Pro remains on my desk as a constant reminder of where it all began. I often think of the brilliance of Jeff Hawkins as he walked around with a stick and wood block day dreaming the Palm into existence. To take a dream and turn it into a household name is what legends are made of. Just think, if you own a Palm OS device, you had a hand in building that legend. Now how cool is that.

So, there you have it, My story. It is just a brief glimpse into the detailed history of how it all began for me, but it shows you how devoted I am to the product and its function. I hope your story is just as exciting and rewarding too.

Kevinbgood

Addicted to Palm

I got interested in Palm's when I borrowed my boss's Palm V. I was going to try to learn some things about it to help her learn how to better use it. At this point, I had a 1 year old boy who had just learned to throw his trash away. Well, we praised him so much for throwing trash away that he started throwing away pretty much anything he could get his hands on. I'm fairly sure this is where my boss's PALM V ended up.

To replace her PALM I searched on ebay. I became so interested in what I found that I bought a Handspring Visor Deluxe. That hooked me. Since then I have owned 2 visor deluxe's, a visor prism and platinum, a pilot professional, an M105, Tungsten T, a Zire 71 and 72, a Tungsten E, and a T|X. I did buy one Pocket PC in that period, but I quickly went back to Palm OS.

I love to buy old Palms. My wife shops thrift stores and I ask her to buy any palm pda she finds.

I now use my T|X for my schedule, maps, remote control, watching movies, podcasting, ebooks, games and browsing the internet.

Throughout college, I was a Dayrunner user. I kept several iterations of a little black book to keep track of classes, assignments and ministry appointments. When I graduated from college I worked for a company where many people used Franklin Planners. I was a Franklin Planner devotee for about three years and then I saw it . . . the HP OmniGo 120. I did a lot of research and participated on many online discussions before I took the plunge and purchased it. Once I made the switch from paper to electronic, I knew that I could never go back. I loved how I didn't have to keep re-entering my unfinished tasks on each day, how I didn't need to recopy items to my monthly summary and how much smaller my OmniGo was than my bulky, but nice, pebble-leather skinned Franklin Planner.

I then switched companies and met a coworker that had recently switched from a Psion to a Pilot 1000. He said he missed his keyboard so we swapped my OmniGo for his Pilot 1000. I was pretty amazed at how useable it was and I thought the sync capabilities were fantastic. And then I discovered how many freeware apps people were writing for it back in 1996. It was amazing and I remember perusing PilotGear.com and a host of other now defunct/merged/expanded (but still well appreciated) software sites from that era.

Then I decided that I needed more memory which lead to a Pilot 5000 upgrade card. Which was followed by a PalmPilotPro upgrade card. Which was followed by the purchase of a Palm 3. Which was followed by the purchase of a Palm Vx -- still among the ultimate form factors for a handheld, IMHO. I used that for years even though I had a short stint where I switched to a Compaq Ipaq 3650 for a few months that my company provided for me. After nearly throwing that against the wall multiple times a day for months, I went back to my trusty ol' Vx and it was like coming home. :-)

I even switched vocations and became a high school youth pastor for a while. My fellow pastors were skeptically amazed when I'd make announcements and give benedictions from my Vx in the pulpit. What a hoot! I joked around that " was dragging our church into the 90's technology-wise"(even though it was 2001 at the time). Ministry doesn't move too quickly when it comes to techology, generally speaking.

After another vocation change and after breaking two of the buttons on my Vx (that darned asteroids clone game!) and holding it together with tape I finally decided it was time to upgrade. I got a great deal on a lightly used Tungsten C with a keyboard, modem sled, travel charger & folding keyboard just before the gentleman put it on eBay. Woot!

I've been a TC users for the last 2 years and am waiting to see a worthy successor to the fastest Palm that has ever been made to date. Still like the thumbboard, wi-fi & speed. Watching movies on my Palm, using the Opera web browser, doing email, keeping my library of guitar music in SongBook, Instant Messaging, managing projects, playing games . . . it's a long way from my old Franklin Planner!

Even though my first experience with the PDA was not exactly a typical road-warrior would have, I was intrigued by gadgets all the time since I was a pre-teen.

Back in the 1980's, Casio began to launch a line of gadgets called "Data Bank", which was basically the early form of electronic organizers and PDA. It stored phone numbers of people and simple memo. But, among all models before this one from other manufacturers, nothing was as revolutionary as the PF-8000 ( http://users.erols.com/rwservices/pens/images.html ). It was compact, it had a dot-matrix display but, the "coolest" thing was that it had no traditional keyboard - it rather used a heat-sensitive touch pad to recognize characters literally "written" by the user's finger - Not even needed a pen (or stylus)! To accurately recognize the characters, Casio has introduced a unique way of "writing" method for it. (Sound familiar with PalmPilot's Graffiti?)

When I watched a TV show about this cool gadget from Casio, I started begging my old man for buying me one. Some of you may ask if it was really useful for a kid?! "But, hey, my excuse was that I have got a lot of relatives and classmates. To store all their numbers in the PF-8000 could get me 'more organized' and it was the coolest thing on Earth to show off with my finger-strokes!" (In fact, I later bought the optional memory module to cope with my "long list of contacts"!) Well, my old man was also intrigued by the brilliant idea... no typing, just using a finger as a pen! Later, Casio implemented the same concept in some of its wrist watches too. Users simply "wrote" on the crystal of the watches with their fingers.

As I grow older, I see gadgets as such with a more sophisticated perspective and have a different, more demanding expectation... Not just toy or cool factor anymore, it gotta be functional and practical; Not necessarily a bargain, but gotta worth for what I have paid. In my opinion, an organizer or PDA should be simple to use, fast to retrieve information that is relevant and flexible for expandability. It needs not to replace a powerful personal computer on the desk or expensive laptop on the go, but it is better to be an "extension" to the computers.

So when I looked for another organizer in the 1990's, Apple's Newton-powered MessagePad was, of course, came to my attention. But, it was still not quite fit in. Do not get me wrong, Newton was quite revolutionary without any doubt - it did actually invent the term, PDA and its object-oriented database concept was . However, I would rather draw a parallel with "tablet PC", even it was supposedly a PDA because it was a scale-down computer of its own. It was relatively bulkier, expensive (MUCH more!) than other tried-and-true but unsophisticated electronic organizers around. The handwriting recognition was not perfect all the time. Another big problem the Newton had: Connectivity with other computers. There was not a simple, straight-forward answer for that. So it would hinder the flow of information or communicate with other computers.

Then USR released the Pilot 1000 and 5000 in 1996, it answered my wishes. It had got the promising features I particularly like: "HotSync" the information with computers by a single, simple press of the button; The "Graffiti" handwriting recognition that worked. However, without backlit as the Newton, it would not be practical in the low-light environment. Even I was so tempted to become an early adaptor by the first wave of Pilot, I wanted to read the buzzwords, comments, experiences, opinions and reviews more. The consensus was that "The Pilot Connected Organizer works as advertised."

So when PalmPilot Personal came, I picked one up. It was just in time for my Asian trip, which I could really find out how practical it was in the real-world on daily basis. And, I was not disappointed... It went beyond ordinary electronic organizers do, yet simple to use like an ordinary electronic organizer. The learning process of Graffiti was fun. There was game, Giraffe, for training the users on the “strange new” way of writing on the PalmPilot. In fact, I got familiarized with Graffiti by playing this game during my 13-hour flight to Hong Kong.

Today, Palm has gone through a lot of changes and added features. I have also gone through different models… PalmPilot Personal, Palm IIIc, IIIx, V, Vx, m500, m505, Tungsten E and currently the TX. Besides just taking notes, storing contact information, PalmPilot has since then opened the door for many possibilities with the PDA. There have been many different software applications written for PalmOS as well as hardware peripherals to expand its capabilities. It has added new ways of reading books, news and the Bible; It has added a way of watching photo albums; It has added anew way of listening to music, watching video on the go; It has added ways to access the internet. In a sense, PalmPilot has changed my life.