Comments on: Palm Treo 650 & Treo TripKit Giveaway

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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. :-)

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

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

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.

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 ~

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.

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.

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

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

Cutler Ferchaud

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!

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

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!

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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!

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 will be flying near YOU soon, evil ones!

El Kabong!!

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

This usually helps blow people away. :)

Bay Area Palm maps at www.stevenchan.us

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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!!

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.

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 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

We stopped to get gas about an hour north of the city. I called my brother and asked him to help us. What could he do? He couldn’t send us directions – or could he? He put together a series of e-mails and attachments and sent them to my phone. I transferred everything from the smart phone to my Tungsten C so I could read everything more clearly (and so my wife could see them easier).

We now had a map and complete directions to his home – all sent over networks and e-mail. Using my handheld to view everything was a plus. I was then able to talk with my brother, while my wife scanned the map information on the PDA. I was still on the phone with him as we pulled into his driveway.

I don't know if this worked better than a GPS system, but we were able to use smart phone and PDA technology to do the job.

Of course my Palm Vx was also used to keep track of our itinerary and to store contact details of friends we planned to meet along the way.

Now I have upgraded to a Tungsten T2 and Bluetooth makes it so much easier to get online with my phone. I use WebPro to check out places to visit, Splashblog and Versamail to keep in touch with home and MetrO to navigate the subways of the world.

It has been a companion in a number of ocasions, whether for work, study or leisure. I was amazed at the number of things you can do with such a small machine. Hungrily I have devoted quite a few hours searching the web for new applications. Now I use it for reading, managing my expenses, playing games, listening to music, remembering important dates, well... I think most readers here now what I mean.

Now I have a Lifedrive, but having observed some colleagues at work using the Treo I wonder if that's also my next step. Surely the convergence must be attractive.

This past summer, I went to a friend's bachelor party, Down the Shore (as we New Jerseyans refer to the beach). We were to meet at a dinner club in Spring Lake, then move onto a variety of clubs between Point Pleasant and Seaside Heights. Afterwards, I was to crash for the night with the groom-to-be (GTB), at his hotel. The following day, after the wedding, I was to meet my wife and kids at our beach rental on Long Beach Island.

It began promisingly enough: I took the email with the names of the various evening's destinations, and moved it into TravelTracker. Then, I used Directory Assistant to get the contact information, and move it into my Phonebook. Finally, I set up a special grouping of Favorites in Initiate, with all of the places & celphone #'s I'd need for the night's pleasures. After all, I am a professional man in his late 40's. I was waaaaaay past the age of juvenile misadventures.

I had to work late, and arranged to meet the GTB for dinner. I got the address from Initiate, plugged it into my GPS, and was off for the Shore! During dinner, the GTB regaled the others (with whom I was only mildly acquainted) about our hedonistic single-days, more then a decade earlier. This led to a determined effort by the (much-younger) others to find out how much 'stamina' I still had in me. This investigation initially took the form of a round of Jose Cuervo tequila shooters. Ah, if only I had handled them like Chevy Chase in "Caddyshack."
Instead, I waited for the feeling to come back to my fingers and toes. Eventually it did, and this seemed proof enough to me that I was still the same 'party guy' of (many) years past.

As we went from club-to-club, the toasts ran the gamut from more tequila, to kamikazis, to Long Island Iced Teas (6 liquors in each one). At the final stop, we were all rather pickled, but myself most of all. The GTB and the others were heading back to the hotel, but I insisted on having a 'nightcap'. I walked the GTB out to his car, and then tried to go back into the club. The bouncers informed me that I was in no condition to imbibe more alcohol, and offered to get me a cab.

Being a mature man, I got pissed off and said something classically New Jersey to them. I then went to see if the GTB had gone...he had. With that, my razor-keen mind hatched a brilliant plan: I would move my car around the corner, change my clothes (out of my suitcase), put on a hat...and the bouncers would NEVER recognize me. BRILLIANT!
Everything went fine until I got to the door. The bouncers started to laugh, and told me to 'go home'. Well, the shock of being recognized was so intense...that I forgot that I had moved my car (let alone where I had moved it). I decided to go to the hotel, and went to where I had previously parked my car. Guess what? t'wasn't there no mo'. I went back to the bouncers, and told them that it had been stolen, and to call the police.

When the police came, I could hardly remember my name, let alone the hotel, the church or the name of the bride (who was a local lass). The police were rather suspect, until one asked me why I didn't "...keep that kind of stuff on (my) Palm Pilot..." and pointed at the Treo hooked to my belt. UREKA! I opened TravelTracker, showed the police the information about the wedding, bride and GTB. I then went into Initiate, and showed them the GTB's hotel and cellphone #. They called him, and told him to come and get me.

The next morning, I was informed that the police hadn't found my car yet. My tux and all other possessions were in there. Without this items, I couldn't participate in the wedding.
Oh, boy!
After 2 hours, I ended up calling my wife on my Treo, explained the situation to her, and prayed she wouldn't divorce me. She called an old friend of ours, who lived on the Island, and he agreed to make the 1-hour trip to retrieve me. I used Directory Assistant to get driving directions from the Island to the hotel, saved them and emailed them to him with Snappermail. About 30 minutes later, one of the groomsmen came in, laughed at me and told me to come with him. When I asked why, he told me he was taking me to my car. I asked him how he found it, and it turned out he had a Treo, as well (actually, he had told me last night, but it was stored in some of the brain cells I later destroyed). He had used a map program (I was in too much pain to remember which one), and used it to look for likely places I might have parked my car. It seems the GTB had told them of the strange way my mind(?) worked when primed by the bartender, and they used that for context.

All's well, right? Uh-h. I suddenly remembered my friend...on his way up from Long Beach Island! Out came the Treo, up came his cellphone number, and I was able to reach him at about the half-way mark. Another test of friendship that I didn't need that particular day. Once I got my car, the GTB and his bride both felt it might be best if I went to see my wife, and take care of THAT marriage first. Out came the Treo, up came the address of the beach house and off I went to eat further meals of crow.

Well, thank gawd for my Treo and THANK GOD for my wife. She not only didn't throw me out on my hung-over ear, but managed to effect a rapproachment between my friend's new wife and myself.
Friends, it had been well over 20 years since I acted in such a bone-headed way, and I expect it will be twice that long before it happens again. I wonder what kind of Palm I'll be carrying when it does?

This summer I was in Shenyang, China, 8 hours north of Beijing, and found myself waiting at a department store while my wife and step-daughter went to get their pictures taken. Now these picture booths in China have a dizzying amount of background/foreground combinations and no doubt they explored them all, leaving me with a large chunk of time. I sat down on a bench at an arcade section and took out my Tungsten C and portable keyboard and proceeded to write some letters. I had crowds surrounding me, to the point where I could have sold tickets. PDAs are rare and I guess no one had seen such a small computing device. The portable keyboard and palm combo drew crowds whenever I took it out.

My Chinese software, pleco, came in handy when looking up or translating phrases.

That's all for now.

Last summer, my wife and I and some friends (another couple) decided to go camping together. The other guy knew of a remote lake with some good fishing that we could go to but it was a mile and a half hike to the lake after a couple mile drive up a crazy, un-graded, extremely bumpy road. (Anyone from Utah out there? Been to East Shingle Creek Lake? You know the road I'm talking about then. Four-wheel drive only.)

Anyway, we all decided that we guys would get the gear together and the ladies would prepare the food. Both being Eagle Scouts my buddy and I packed the essentials and had everything ready to go. Much to our suprise, our wifes ended up packing a cooler full of food. We hadn't realized that our wives had never gone on a hike-in camping trip and didn't know that you don't want to carry a 60 pound cooler when you're trying pack in. There wasn't much we could do at that point, (it was getting late) so we just decided we'd deal with it and left.

When we arrived at the trailhead we decided to leave the cooler in the truck, hike with our wives to our camping spot, and then we guys would run back and retrieve the cooler. We made it to our campsite in good time. Our wives who weren't used to hiking much did great. We took off our packs and my buddy and I got ready to head back to the truck. He grabbed his flashlight because we knew it would start getting dark soon. I grabbed my small lumbar pack that had my treo and a water bottle for the return trip. Our wives said they'd have the tent set up by the time we got back and so we headed back to get the cooler.

We made it back to the truck in great time but carrying that stupid cooler took forever. It was extremely hard going and we tried every way imaginable to carry it between us and taking turns carrying it individually. I think it took us two and a half hours to finally get back to our campsite. When we did we found the tent set up and our wives sitting around a nice little fire.

Now the part with the treo comes in...When my buddy and I had gone back to get the truck, he took his flashlight and I had forgotten that I had put our flashlight in my lumbar pack that I took with me back to the truck. So we had left our wives without flashlights! They had a little trouble setting up the tent and it was dark before they finished. My flashlight was no where to be found but instead my wife grabbed her treo and they used the screen for a light to finish setting up the tent. Then they took turns holding the treo while the other chopped up a small log and started a fire. They even tried calling me but mine was on vibrate and didn't feel it. Eventually, our wives passed the time playing games on the treo until we arrived where there was a small "discussion" on what took us so long, why we didn't leave them a flashlight, and what a good thing it was that my wife had her treo.

Yeah, I know that was long winded, but hey, wasn't this supposed to be story-time? ;)

I remember flying to a conference, and the GoType! was so new that everyone around me on the plane was curious and wanted to get a look at it.

Needless to say, I didn't get a spot of work done on that trip. But I felt pretty good to be leading the pack. A few of the passengers even said they were going to look into get their employers to buy them a Palm and keyboard combo.

Once, I was ahead of the pack. Now, I'm lagging behind.

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

m1961

It took a while, but now remembering a good enough story, I can write some.

In 2003, I had a m515 and was looking for an MP3 player to take on a wedding cruse that I was attending in early May. After checking the news here and other sites, I saw that the Zire 71 was about to release. I started thinking if it would have been a good buy, but then did the math. What I would have spent on a RCA Lyra, SD card, and batteries, I would be able to get a Z71 (provided I sell my m515).

I started thinking, and then found a willing buyer. I ended up selling my m515 for $200 and pitched the rest of the money from my mid-April birthday in getting the Zire71. For me, it was excellent. I was able to take some stunning pictures (with a 256MB SD card half filled with music) of San Juan, St. Thomas, and St. Marrten. But the best part was getting the picture of this family who said they were neighbors of Tim Duncan in San Antonio. Now, while I do admit, I took my share of pics of beautiful women, that had to be one of the best ones. Husband didnt mind a bit either (:shock:).

It was also during that trip that the Lakers were knocked out of the playoffs by the Spurs, and I used my Z71 to take pics of my roomate and his dejected face (Laker fan unfortunately) and those of others there. A couple people were so impressed with the ability of the Z71 as a camera and MP3 player that they looked to buy one on the next island we would stop at (St. Marrten); but they only found one marked up to about $330. It was at that point that my family started calling me a PDA evangelist because everywhere, whether people asked or not, they got a PDA show.

The best part of it all was that my mom got one, and became a palm addict just as bad as me (though she still waits for me to upgrade before she does).

mobileministrymagazine.com
antoinerjwright.com

Greg

Recently I was deployed to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a Red Cross volunteer. Although my team were issued phones to go with our roles in the field, the network coverage down there was devastated - so many towers were down, and so many people were trying to use the few remaining towers that it was near impossible to make calls. In many places land lines were just as bad. My role in logistics required constant communication with headquarters, so without working comms I was useless in the field.
Luckily I had ignored instructions not to take our personal phones with us, and had my Treo 600 with me. Because I live in Canada, my phone was roaming in the Gulf Coast, and thus was able to connect to whatever GSM network it could find. This meant it had much better coverage than the Red Cross issued phone - which was locked to one (heavily damaged) network. I also heavily used the text messaging to stay in touch with my team in the field and my family back home. Being able to easily load hundreds of contacts was a life saver. Texting was $0.40 a message, but still a whole lot cheaper than the $1 per minute I was paying for voice.
Speaking of cost - Red Cross eventually issued me with a satellite phone to try and deal with the major coverage problems we were having. At US$16/minute it was a brutal way to make a phone call. In the end I just used my Treo and soaked up the cost personally.
Maybe in the future disaster responders should be able to get automatic roaming - and Treo's to keep the thousands of phone numbers and contact details required on large operations.

Mike

I travel with my Treo 650 (I hadd a 600) and use a combination of DateBook5, AutoSlate and TravelTracker to track appointments, keep track of plane flights, car reservations and hotel arrangments. (Directory Assistant has also proved very useful.)

I no linger have to carry the paper acknowlegements from my Travel Agent. I even download directions and attach them as Notes to my calendar.

I use Docs to Go to carry importanat documents.

My Treo has partially replaced my lapyop for short trips.

I've used Palms since the first "Pilot" came out and the 650 is the best yet for travelers.

Dennis G. Esler
dennis_esler@comcast.net

Then I remember I had my Palm VIIx. I loaded up the map .pqa application (I forgot what it was called.. mapquest?), typed in the hotel address and it guided us there!

I miss my VIIx.... It was my first palm with an "internet" access.

***
Did you know it is impossible to lick your elbows?

My grandmother died in Texas on a Friday night. The funeral was to be Sunday at 4pm and we had to leave Saturday at 10am. It is about a 1400 miles trip from Charlotte. We were worried about the trip especially around Baton Rouge because of the hurricane damage still.

We decided not to chance it, and headed for an alternate (ie: Longer) route to avoid the area. We got as far as Jackson, Mississippi and found out at a rest area that I-12 and I-10 had been open about a week. We instantly checked the GPS and found it would still be over an hour shorter to take the other route, so we rerouted via I-55 and then into and through Houston on past San Antonio.

Having the Lifedrive and the bluetooth GPS saved us important time and we made it to the funeral with a few hours to spare.

I used the Lifedrive in place of my powerbook while there and it took care of email and a number of other things.

Only thing it's missing is the phone. (Oh, well, I could still use a Treo.)

I had purchased a copy of Navman's GPS software and bluetooth GPS receiver for my T3 earlier that day specifically for this journey and installed it 1 hour prior to our departure. The installation was not as straight forward as I had hoped – in fact it was darn complicated with security measures that boarder on paranoia. None the less, it proved to be a life saver on this journey.

The traffic had extended our journey by an extra couple of hours. This gave me plenty of time to coach my wife on negotiating the GPS app. However, by the time we got out into the open road it was getting quite dark – this was not the plan. The further we got into the country the smaller the signs became – if they existed at all. We were surprised to find the Bunya turn off was a single lane track. If it wasn't for the bright red line of our plotted route and the reassuring flicker of the icon of our car showing we were still on track, we would have turned back at this point, or missed the turn-off entirely. Despite the continued insistence of the crisp British female voice emitted from my PDA, even I started to doubt the technology when the road disappeared and became a dirt track.

I slowed to a crawling pace again frightened of damaging my brand new sports hatch – definitely not an off road vehicle and would sure to come off second best in the case of a kangaroo collision. To make matters worse, we heard a coughing sound from the back. We turned to find my 2 year old daughter had emptied her stomach contents all over herself. We pulled over in the middle of the bush in pitch black with my daughter's screams echoing through the darkness. Having never been sick like this before, she had no idea what was happening. When she perked up for a minute she peered down at the mess all over her and declared cheerfully “SAUCE”.

This happened three or four times before Navman finally guided us to our destination – not a single wrong turn. We got to our cabin and settled her down for the night. When all was still and we were pretty sure she was half asleep, her tiny voice muttered “no more sauce, don't like it...” Breaks your heart. But I was comforted when I was able to identify and plot a route to the nearest hospital (just in case things got worse). Thankfully, this was not necessary.

Anyway, to cut the rest of the story short, my daughter recovered quickly only to pass the sickness to me. I spent the entire weekend oblivious to the spectacular scenery and various marsupials, bent over the railing on the deck of our cabin. I recovered just in time to pack up the car and re-route our journey home via a different route that went through Kingaroy. This was a long way back but it avoided dirt tracks. At least GPS didn't let me down that weekend.

It keeps me entertained with games and E-books.

It even helps on vacation:[list]
[*]I put my parking location into an appointment on the day I'm returning so I can find my car
[*]I have my PDF manuals for cameras and other electronics I carry
[*]It makes a great alarm clock (love Bigclock app)
[*]With GPS it helps me so I am never "lost"
[*]With mobile phone I can get E-mail almost anywhere
[*]It helps with currency rates[/list]

Damn! It won again. 30 minutes into the flight, and I decide to have another go at Mazera. I think I have been through over 30 worlds and solved a hundred puzzles. I have no idea where I am going but it does keep you occupied. Currently I am being attacked by a giant worm!

Sixty minutes into the flight and I have enough time to catch up on the latest news as I have subscribed to AvantGo. Seventy minutes into the flight and we are told to turn off all electronic devices. Yes another boring plane trip saved by my Palm Tungsten E.

I had just purchased the iQue 3600, a PDA/GPS combination device running Palm OS 5. Myself and some co-workers were attending training at a facility we had never been to before, so I was showing them how my new toy could find the best route for them to go home. After passing around the iQue, letting each of my buddies find a route home it was handed back to me. We all stood around chatting for some time and when it was time to go, I simply placed the iQue in my car cradle and followed the voice prompts home. Unfortunately, I forgot that I wasn't the last person to enter their address as the destination. So being new to the area, I proceded to drive to my co-worker's home instead of mine. Months later I still get "reminded" of my adventure.

MRH

Instead of waiting on the line, I went online by popping my Palm Wi-fi card into my Tungsten T3. (Luckily, the terminal had Wi-fi throughout.) I opened the Web browser and found an alternate flight that was not cancelled, called the airline from my cell phone and re-booked. My wife and I got the last two seats on the plane while everyone else was looking for a comfortable piece of floor on which to spend the night.

We arrived at our home airport five hours later than planned, but we (and our luggage!) arrived.

Luckily, the battery lasted the whole trip there (we did turn it off a few times). I had the Palm travel charger (still do even though the m130 is no more). It was much easier than hauling around the clunky charger. We continued to play the m130 once we got to Charlotte. Solitaire will do that to you.

A funny side note: we had brought a Game Boy Advance but it never got much play.

-- Fammy

As I got into the rental car I checked my Clie for directions. I had mapquested the directions to the hotel and the wedding chapel so I'd know the turn by turn directions and how long to stay on each road. I also downloaded a few pictures of the maps so I could get a visual of where I was going if I got lost. While I was in the car, a song came on the radio that I really liked. It was one I had never heard before. I quickly hit the record button on the Clie and began making an audio recording of the song. Once I checked in at the hotel I hopped on their wifi network with my Clie and googled some of the lyrics to the song I had heard. I of course had to play the song back a couple times to remember what the words were. I was able to find the artist and song name, which I wrote down in a document called "m|tunes," the name of my main library in iTunes. This little document is where I write down songs that I want to purchase on iTunes or get off a CD from ebay. Just then my wife called me on the cell phone. She wanted to call an old friend from college but couldn't find her number. I hit the Find button and typed the first name in. I got a hit in my address book (lucky for her!) and gave her the number.

I arrived at the wedding chapel a little early. While I was there I reviewed snapshots I had taken with my Clie's camera of some of the people in the wedding party. I attached these pictures to their names in the address book to help me remember them. I did a last run through to make sure I could call everyone by name once they arrived. As people started arriving I wanted to make sure my suit and hair were all in place (a little vain, I know). Fortunately, the hard plastic transluscent cover of the Clie functions really well as a mirror when the device is off. So I did one last glance in the "mirror" to make sure I was presentable.

The couple had chosen a Bible verse to be read, which I decided to read off of the MyBible program on the PDA. I figured, since I was using it for the rest of the service, might as well use it for this, too. Nobody seemed to phased about me using the device, and the wedding went famously. I even snuck a couple candid shots of them while they were exchanging their rings. I showed them later, and we all laughed about it. By the end of the day I was really glad I had a handheld like the TH55 with a "smart" CPU that could rate itself down depending on the usage. Some other handhelds I've owned wouldn't have lasted the day, and I could just imagine how horrible it would have been if the battery conked out 3/4 of the way through the wedding ceremony. The TH55 came through for me, though. It even had 18% left on the battery that night when I got back to the hotel. All in all it was a good day. And as I went to bed I mused to myself, "Not many couples can say they woulnd't have been able to get married if it weren't for the minister's PDA." (and I don't mean public display of affection!)

Lucky I equiped my self with Tungsten T3 and Metro software before arrived in KL. Metro database for KL city train network is very good. It is not only shows the station names but also have list of place of interest. I can easily find out how to get to the places we wanted to visit. So my friends consider me as an expert for KL city train network and asked for my guidance if they wanted to travel by city train (eventhough this is my first time in KL).

PS:
Witnessing how T3 and Metro works, one of my friend that had T2 cancel his intention to sell his T2. He did not know that Palm can be very powerful if you combine it with the right software.

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode][SIZE=5][color=RoyalBlue][b]
ImAd
[/b][/SIZE][/color][/font]
-----BEGIN PALM CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 1.1
PC(G) f h b p+ o+ m+
F- v+ g k r+ c++ n+ t+
a+ G+ E M DP{Treo650}
------END PALM CODE BLOCK------

At the time I had a T3 and a Nokia 6210i, and I just couldn't bear the thought of lugging my Compaq laptop around the world - especially as I had to travel economy class. So I decided to travel with just a PDA set up that included the Palm, phone (with global roaming enabled), keyboard, travel charger kit, and a flash drive.

The system worked flawlessly and despite the hefty phone bill (mercifully paid for by work), I was completely sold on the practicality of travelling light. I haven't gone back and wouldn't dream of lugging a laptop around.

I was able to check my mail, browse the web, read my newspapers via Avantgo and work with my key documents. And play games while waiting in airport queues! While in Birmingham I was even able to respond to an urgent request from Auckland that I create a policy document from scratch. I was able to work in native Word format so that my Pal-sceptic boss could open the finished document without giving it a second thought. Of course I carried all my reference documents on the Palm so that I could answer any question my host(s) could think of.

The PDA and cell phone sat in my suit pockets throughout the trip with no need to use carry-on luggage. Now with my T5 I have a better screen and a built-in flash drive - and with a WiFi card I can often escape the expensive cell phone connection.

Now THAT is truly mobile computing.

Vx->m500->m505->m515->TT->T2->T3->T5

We arrived one day before the opening of the meeting, and decided to do something "touristy", so we rented a car and headed for the Niagara falls. It was pouring rain (which meant that we were almost the only visitors besides a few... Japanese people...) and the Falls were fantastic! I believe it's quite misty there even in sunshine, but we became soaked.

Before returning the car to the renting company we needed to fill it up with petrol. Not being used to Canadian brands for petrol stations, not being used to Canadian traffic etc, we did not manage to stop on the way back to Toronto.

Well back in Toronto City, we continued our search for a petrol station. As you may understand, there are more banks and insurance companies downtown-a-major-city-over-there, than there are places to buy petrol.
After an hour driving around, nothing! People on the street didn't know. The rain was pouring down, wind was very strong and we were almost out of petrol, and wet, hungry and miserable.

So, I got the brilliant idea to search Googles for "+Petrol +station +Toronto" using my phone and PDA (SE K700i + Palm T3). But after a day by the Niagara falls... electronics and humidity does not get along that well. The phone had given up but the Palm was still alive and kicking.

As we were getting desperate... suddenly the petrol station was there, RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!

In other words, Happy Ending!

(And my mobile phone dried up over night, and for fun I googled petrol stations in Toronto, there was one located on a neighbouring street from our hotel).

At the check-in counter in Manila on November 16, 2005, I took out my Treo 650 and opened my roster and checklist of my students (using DocsToGo)to make sure they have all the necessary travel documents with them. We took a flight to Hongkong connecting us to another flight to Beijing which is our final destination. Our plane was already airborne when one of my students approached me and said, "Sir, I think I lost my plane ticket". I called the attention of the flight attendant and informed her of our situation. Then, we have the flight purser informing us that she will notify both ground crews of Manila and Hongkong. Upon arrival in Hongkong, we were met by two ground crew to tell us that they have informed Manila but replied that there was no sign of the ticket. While on my Treo 650 phoning the parents of the student who were in Manila, the attendant came running towards us to inform us that the plane ticket has been found in Manila. My student was given a temporary boarding pass to complete our journey. Upon reaching Beijing, we proceeded to the festival venue and started rehearsals. While conducting rehearsals, I got a call on my Treo 650 from the Manila airline office after which Hongkong called and also the one in Beijing. I was experiencing teleconferencing on my Treo. Each one explaining how and where I can retrieve the ticket. I was told to access my email to get the flight code and did just that right away on my Treo. In fact, while in rehearsal, I have my baton on my right hand and my Treo on the other.

We still had a good time in Beijing after the concert. Thanks to my Treo 650!

Vernon Villapando
Orchestra Director
Brent String Orchestra
Brent International School Manila

Treo 650 is THE PDA/PHONE!!!

In preparation for the trip I had the memory upgraded from 2MB to 8MB and purchased Palm's external keyboard and travel charger. I found a handy piece of software called Abroad! Abroad! was a currency and units converter, world clock and mini fact database. For journaling, I had debating investing in a separate text app but NotePad seemed just fine. My individual entries rarely approached the limit for NotePad and since it was mostly stream of conscious jots, it worked fine. Prior to the trip, I made hard copy printouts of critical addresses and contact info in case of a power failure.

The trip date in May finally arrived and away we went. For the most part it worked great. I was actually able to write a decent travel log since I wasn't constrained by Grafitti slow down. In the major cities I referred to my friend's addresses. It was a handy alarm to remind my friend and me when we needed to get back to the bus. While in museums or historical sites, I made notes of many paintings, sculptures and buildings to research further after I returned home. My only complaint was that the portable keyboard was designed to only work on a hard surface and would constantly bend in the middle. Using a one of my thicker guide books solved the issue but still a bit annoying.

Anyways, the Palm V was a great second companion for the trip. Since then I've always been sure to have a Palm with me when travelling.

It did really relieve the fever. Since then i have always brought my palm with me for any emergency situation wherein i can look at the vast software palm offers.

Hobbywise, I have used my handheld for a number of years to help me with geocaching. Data files of many possible caches, street maps to try to get me as close as possible, and a spreadsheet of those caches that I have already found. I have been to the most interesting places with only a GPS and my PDA. Never was able to find most of these places without either "toy" even in the midst of some urban areas.

Never want to be without a PDA.

Earlier in the year, I had been working on an offer for a big project which was due to be finalized at any time. My client was out of the country and I was assured by his assistant that he would be away for the next 10 days. Later, I discovered the assistant was against me for his own ulterior motives.

Having completed all my paperwork for the project, I took this as an oppurtunity to accept an invitation from one of my suppliers in Germany to visit their offices and factory along with a colleague (all expenses paid by them). We were to be gone 3 days and would be back by the time my client would have returned.

While having dinner in a restaurant in an obscure location up one of the mountains, I had received a call from my client that, to my shock, he was back in the country and needed to finalize the order IMMEDIATELY. I explained that I was in Germany and did not have my files with me. He gave me an ultimatum to get my offer to him within an hour or else I would lose my chance at the project.

With all my files in the office and my colleague there with me in Germany, I had no way of accessing them, especially since we were in the middle of nowhere and not an internet connection in site.

I, then, remembered that I had installed the PC remote control software, PalmVNC, ages before and which I had used precisely once before for testing. Using the software, I was able to remotely connect to my office PC. It took me around half an hour, with the extremely slow dial-up connection speed through my mobile phone, to browse for the required files, make the small changes that were needed and to send the fax through my PC’s fax-modem.

Needless to say, I secured the order from the client. At the time, I was using the Tungsten T3 and the order more than covered for the cost of all my Palms, accessories, SD cards, add-ons, software, etc and my future purchase of my now beloved LifeDrive.

Now she got the lesson. She always packs her new Tx. "You never know!" - she says.

I'm sure I used the PDA for many other areas that isn't coming to mind at this time. It certainly was a "service saver" many times on the Dark Continent.

I am including links about this ministry and our second Ghana trip below. One of the links is a Flash presentation.

By the way, my first PDA was a Palm IIIx and I now use the Palm TX.

God bless you,

James Croft, Evangelist
www.jamescroft.org
www.evangelistjamescroft.blogspot.com

This article appeared on Sunday, October 19, 2003 in the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, Florida, about our second mission trip to Ghana, West Africa:

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/101903/dss_13818633.shtml

This is a Flash presentation that accompanied the Africa article:

http://www.jacksonville.com/special/jamesCroft/africa/

Are YOU in God's "palm"?
John 10:28-30

I was paralyzed with apprehension because I suddenly realized the foolishness of one very bad habit --- I always back-up to a SD card, but *I leave that SD card in the Palm!* So, if I lost the Palm, I lost the latest back-up, too.

I remembered precisely where I sat, but saw nothing on the floor. I went over to the very seat and saw it nestled there in the hinge in the seat. Phew!

From then on, my back-up SD card is always somewhere other than where my Palm is!

Harold

One weekend, a few friends and I decided to take a quick trip across the border to St. Petersburg in Russia ( well, not quick if you count getting your visa cecked about 4 times at the border ). We'd heard how beautiful it was and were keen to see the great architecture and enjoy the cheap food and drink.
Suffice to say we had a great time and as usual I carried my trusty Palm IIIc with me all the time. Not only using it for the usual PDA stuff but also to log a few memories of my trip. What we'd done, what we'd seen etc.
Then on the last day tragedy struck, I don't know where but I lost my little electronic buddy and arrived back in Finland devastated. Not only had I lost my PDA but also all the data that I had entered while I was away. Worst still, I didn't have a computer to hotsync with so it wasn't backed up!

The remainder of my time working in Finland went by a little less smoothly without my Palm but I made it through and soon the time came to come home. Arriving home after three months of being away I had a huge pile of mail waiting for me. Initally I couldn't be bothered touching it but after getting settled in at home again I started going through the many letters and came across a rather strange package with even stranger writing on it, it was Russian. 'It couldn't be', I thought, but ripping it open, what did I find inside but my Palm IIIc!!! Even better, it's data was still intact!!! Some kind kind honest soul in Russia must have found it and turning it on would have come across the owner screen as I have a password set. How many people would have then, using their own money, posted it back to me?!! Maybe the world isn't such a bad place afterall with people like that out there.

Oh, and yes, I still have the IIIc. In fact I'm using it right now as my LifeDrive is currently back at Palm getting repaired. Palms, they don't make them like they used to!

He asked me how I was so knowledgable about the Treo 650. I started singing the praises of PalmInfoCenter.com.

To make a short story long, we beamed our business cards to each other, and he offered to submit my resume at his company and give me a great recomendation. PalmInfoCenter also gained a new member.

That's about it for my entry - no "I was stuck on the side of Mt Everest in the dark being chased by a Yeti and the backlight kept the wolves at a distance until I could reach the safety of a small Tibetan village" adventures for me. Just the paces of every-day use with something that is as indispensable as food or clothing to me...

It was simple and clean and perfect. And then I got my Clie. And then my Tungsten T3. And now a Treo 650.

Nowadays, I find myself chuckling at all the cafes and locations promoting free Wifi. With my Treo and Sprint plan, I don't need Wifi. I have access whenever, wherever I have cell reception.

Finally! Enough memory for all the apps I use, *and* enough room for a few books to read on my vacation in the wilds of central BC. Camp set up. Begin relaxation. Read half of first book. Batteries low. Now, where did I pack those spares? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Expletives deleted. Two days back to civilization. Nope. No more reading. Got some photography and writing done, though.

Mike

Simply put, my E2 held the trip together, we would download maps off mapquest, store them on the device, watch movies off the card, check email, look at photos that I took off my digital camera, basically the works.

When we finally got to coachella I had put the entire Band/Artist Schedule on my E2, and when it got dark I was still able to read it while others clamoring for lights to read their paper schedules, I had my backlit E2 and was able to read the schedule the entire time we were there. As I said, the E2 made the trip the most enjoyable experience.... now i'm just saving my pennies for a treo, 2 devices has become a pain.

I use the address book feature to store all my travel directions. I simply press one of my hot buttons to access the address book and go to the name of the person or place we're visiting. In the "note" feature I have all of the turn-by-turn directions right in the palm of my hand (ha! ha! a little play on words!). Also, if they have recommended a restaurant or an area attraction that we might like I put that in the note also. It then becomes my own personal Fodor's guide.

Another travel use is that I have mp3's stored on my palm's memory stick. When flying I pop in my ShureE2 ear buds and happily listen to my favorite tunes without risking loss of hearing.

Also, I am the local 411 for most of my friends. Instead of getting out their phone books, looking on the internet or calling 411, they call me for addresses, phone numbers and even travel directions.

I love my pda and would think it a great kick to win and own a better pda than my son!!! (Honey, if you read this, be good, because Santa might be VERY good to YOU this year! - My fingers are crossed.)

I have just signed up with Sprint for cellphone service and hope to be able to use a Treo as a combined phone/PDA to lighten my load a bit...

Thanks for the chance!

To cut a very long assignment short, I wrote and compiled an entire a-star algorithm and knowledge base right there on the pda. I pasted the working code into a document and filled in the comments, then when I was entirely happy, I emailed it away to the tutor.

I was also sitting in an internet cafe, so I was able to google away when I got stuck via wifi. Plus, I could plug in to the wall so I had no concerns about battery life.

The best part of the story? I got an A+ :)

Several years ago when ThinkOutside was about to release their Palm V keyboard I got my hands on a pre-release demo keyboard. I was sitting in a PDX restaurant waiting for my flight and started typing some notes from the days’ meetings. Three Intel employees—the people who are usually just beyond the leading edge and very smug—came over to see the new gismo. This demo probably sold several keyboards before they were released and also made some new acquaintances.

A few years before that my flight was delayed because of weather—the inbound plane couldn’t get in. When this information was announced most of the waiting passengers got up and got in line for other transport. I checked the United schedule on my Palm, called UA and rebooked before the first 3 people were done at the counter.

The Zagat Guides and the UA Dining Out restaurant list have helped me in numerous cities: Dallas, Portland, even Tokyo. I have “found” restaurants the locals did not know about, impressed my Portland contact and his wife: now they have a new favorite restaurant.

Last year in Japan it was the first set of meetings, usually very slow and formal. I got out my Treo and keyboard to take notes, and had some polite stares and inquiries about what I could do with the Treo. I showed them the document I was typing in Word format, courtesy of Documents to Go, then took a few photos & emailed them to the subjects. This song-and-dance broke the ice and probably saved 2 or 3 additional meetings.

There’s more….it seems like every week there is something.

i am reading 'the art of unix programming' in pdf there.

Polyglott

I left the hotel that afternoon and returned to my house in Uptown, trying as best I could to get in touch with my friends and coworkers in the city; I wanted to make sure everyone had made it through OK.

My trusty Treo 600 was my only line of communication to the outside world at that point. Cell service was spotty at best, the few remaining towers were absolutely overloaded with calls coming into and out of the city. It also allowed me to document the goings-on around my town. The camera is unobtrusive, and while the quality of the shots weren't great, what they illustrate is pretty powerful.

Over the next couple of days it became apparent that things were only getting worse. My car had made it through the storm OK and my girlfriend had had the foresight to fill the tank up. Our biggest problem was that, as far as we and everyone we knew was aware, there was no way in or out of the city by road. Our radio was out, there was no TV, and the police and fire departments had no communication. I did have my Treo though. While voice service was practically non-existant, SMS in and out worked more or less flawlessly. A few text messages later, I had an answer, the one route out of New Orleans. Thanks to the built-in keyboard and some miraculous remaining service by T-Mobile, I was able to get messages out to everyone I knew still trapped in the city detailing how they could get out. My Treo's SMSs started getting forwarded to others, and before I knew it I had a few texts back from people I didn't even know thanking me for getting the info out.

Once we got out of the city my Treo continued to be a lifeline. Actually having access to me address book was probably the most important thing. A Palm can save you when the papers have all been washed away. Coupled with WebPro access to Mapquest and gaswatch.org and my Treo saved my bacon a couple of more times over the week after Katrina as we were in a desperate search for somewhere to resettle.

My Treo 600 has been a trusty companion and the most useful Palm I've ever owned.

All the pics and reports are still viewable on www.italianjobber.com

Phil

I can be a bit anal retentive about taking notes. I use my handheld to note just about every event and conversation during the course of a work day, so naturally had to take my PDA with me (currently an HP IPAQ 4355 - please don't shoot me). Staying in touch with home was also paramount, so I had to take my mobile phone. Lastly, I wanted to listen to my favorite tunes, so I packed my iPod. The downside of all this disparate gadget dependence is cord spagetti. I had AC adapters, charging cables, sync cables, and dongles to adapt power cables to sync ports everywhere. By the time I arrived in Belgium, the combination of airport baggage handlers and security inspections had turned my attempt at organized packing into a disaster. I was still trying to find my iPod AC adapter four days later.

Adding to my frustration, I had attempted to set up international roaming with my mobile carrier before leaving, but this wasn't possible because my US market triband phone wouldn't work on Belgium's 900 MHz networks. This meant that all the phone was good for was letting my wife know when I had arrived back into the states (yet I still had to take a charger so that it wouldn't be drained when I left Belgium).

The combination of the Treo 650 and TripKit would have been the perfect traveling companions for my trip. First, I could have reduced the number of devices by 1/3, thus reducing chords & dongles by at least 1/3. Second, the TripKit would have privided a single location for organizing all of my stuff. Finally, the quadband Treo would have allowed me to roam on Belgium's GSM networks without hassle.

Man, I want a 650!

We started from the lovely Dalacarlia that are the place of traditions in Sweden. My girlfriend are from there. For the trip we packed our car, a Subaru Forrester, with as much as we could, tent, sleeping bags, cooling bag and so on. Of course I didn´t forget my friend in all crisis, my PalmOne Treo 600 with mapping software. I thought that alltough there are not many roads beyond the arctic circle there still are some. I also brought with me a companion phone to my palm. It had GPS built in so I tought that it would be nice to bring with.

We started the trip an earlie saturday morning and headed towards the city Lulea. We drive beside the east coast line wich is a very beatyful coast line. Mountains and clear blue water. We used my Treo to make necessary calls and the other phone to map our path. In the city Lulea in north we stayed over the night by a couple of friends of ours. The trip to this nordic city was full of surprises for us, even if we have lived in this country all our lifes. The nicest coastlines to get a sun tan and bath in, nice weekend paradises and of course, the famous swedish ice breakers Hugin, Munin and Atle. I didn´t have a clue that it was so nice and beatifull in the north.

The second day we get up in the morning to continue our trip. We drive all the way to the city of Haparanda that are the boarder city between Sweden and Finland. The environmental diffrences was not so huge from Luela upwards but still beatyfull. The biggest difference was probably the calmness in the traffic. We decided to spend the night on a famous hotel in Haparanda. The hotel had a lineage (?) from the 1800:th century. Mostly it is known from the world war two when it was used as a meeting place for secret agents and spies from the countries in warfare. It was in fact a luxury hotel and we really felt it, old kind of luxury. We also discovered all the gnats we had heard about. Not much mosquitoes but gnats, and I can promise, you readers, that they were many, way to many. We went out for a walk in the evening and I can tell you that it was not a pleasure. But the bed at the hotel was nice :-)

The third day we had decided to drive around a bit in Finland and a bit in Sweden. It was now I discovered that the other mobile phone, the one with the GPS, malfunctioned. Well, I didn´t think we would need the GPS. By the way, my parents comes from Finland and especially my father are from the north of Finland. Unfortunately we had no time to visit his bithplace on this trip but I promised my self to make that trip another year. We drive up the country beside one of our famous rivers, "Torne alv". It was a nice river with rapids and small waterfalls. If someone are interested there are possibillities for riverdrafting, for those who dare. We did not dare. The roads in Finland are very nice and they are easy to drive on. It was this day we encountered our famous reindeers. We had to be careful on the roads because the reindeers didn´t cared a lot about vehicles. They just walked on the roads like they owned them, and maybe that´s the truth, they vere in fact in the nordic nature before humans. We drive over the border to Sweden again to visit a couple of famous places, like the city of Pajala, Lovikka and Korpilombolo. Pajala are known from the famous swedish writer named Mika Niemi who wrote the book "Popular music from Vittula". This day we also found the mosquitoes or maybe they found us, many, many and more. It was really a pain to be outside the car. And believe it or not, I got flat tire in the middle of nowhere. After the tire was changed and all the big flies was chased out from the care we rapidly took us away from the small forest road we had entered by misstake. It was now I was glad I had my PalmOne Treo 600 phone with me. I needed to find a new trip path to the city of Lovikka because we were lost. Lost in the middle of nowhere accompanied by mosquitoes and flies. Allthough it was very beatifull here, we entered the land of midnight sun, you know, the part of nordic where the sun never went down the horizon but shined all night and day. This felt very amazing I can tell. At last we found our way and could continue the trip to a place called Karesuando. Karesuando was the coldest place last winter, minus 58 degree Celsius and still there lived people. Are they hard core or not? We stayed over the night, or was it day, in Karesuando. It was strange to drive around up here in the north of sweden. Sun all hours and a lot of forests. The mileage didn´t feel so bad even if we drive more than ever. You never felt like it was a long trip up here, strange... In Karesuando we tried to take a walk around 12 o´clock PM but It was not possible, to many mosquitoes. The car started to get black instead of the silver gray that was it´s natural color. It was difficult to get some sleep because the bright night but in some way we managed it.

The fourth day I talked with a man from the Sami people and asked around for information of our comming trip, to the place where three countrys meet, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The place are called "Treriksroset". One could say that this was the goal of the trip, but of course, the man from the Sami people changed this goal, he recommended us to drive thru Norway on the north side back to sweden. Of course I had to listen to this man who should know the environmental elements up north. We took out the path to Treriksroset on my Treo phone and then we started our trip. The road to this, newely changed, second goal was quite uneventful and it didn´t take so long to drive there, just a couple of hours. We had to leave our car and take a boat trip and then a walk for about three kilometers before we was were the countrys meet. It felt fantastic and the nature, wow, it was really special. The trees was short and disformed and there grove a lot of flowers we never have seen before. We could also see the high mountains up in the north and they were covered with snow. Can you believe it, plus 25-30 degree Celsius and snow!!! It was really fantastic. After the trip to the borders we continued our travel to the country of Norway. And now I can tell, I didn´t regret at all that I had listened to the man from the Sami people. The mountains was huge and they rised straight up a couple of kilometers from the fjords of Norway. To discribe my feelings in a short way, mighty and beatiful. This was the most beatiful environment I ever have seen. I will never forget my feelings and the view that stroke me right in my heart. I was captivated and everything felt brethtaking. No way I would see anything like this on the trip anymore... We drive thru the landscape of northern Norway. The road twisted like a serpent between the high mountains and the deep fjords. Really amazing. Eventually we was closing the swedigh border again and there we found the next place that was pure pleasure, warm air, bright evening and of course snow, snow that I could put my hands on. It felt strange to have a change to make a snow ball and throw it away in the middle of the summer, facinating. We drive over the border to Sweden and stayed over the night on a place called Abisko. This place has snow almost all around the year and people travels here to ski on the Swedish holliday on midsommer evening. We put up our tent on a place we thought felt good. Hmm, I walked around a little to find out that we had put up our tent beside a deep ravine with a powerfull waterfall. One could almost feel the ground vibrating and it triggered the fantasies about how the ravines edges felt aparts a little bit at a time. But we stayed there anyway and got a good night sleep, ähum...

Next morning when I wake up I sat down near the edge and looked at the view, truly powerful and fantastic. At this moment I understod that we are living in a mysterious and a beatiful country, Sweden. I also knew that the magic would end here and that the rest of our trip would not give any more breathtaking views. I felt a kind of sadness to leave this arctic landscape and that had etched in to my mind and memory. Here I took a picture with my phone cam and promised my self to come back later on, when, I could not tell...

All I could do was make his trip as safe as possible. But how could I help protect him in a devastated place where food and water are hard to come by, much less electricity or anything else we take for granted?

I offered him two solutions, emergency evacuation insurance and a Treo 270. I loaded the Treo with every scrap of useful information I could think of: the US, British and French Embassy contact numbers, contacts for the nearest rural medical clinics, complete airline information, US State Department emergency numbers and complete instructions for an emergency evacuation.

I searched all over for a global SIM card that would work in Uganda. The only one available was Swiss and I installed it in the Treo before he left.

Matt flew to Uganda and spent 5 weeks, both at the orphanage and traveling around the countryside giving supplies to orphans, teaching AIDS classes in villages, and comforting people dying from AIDS. The Swiss SIM card never worked, but surprisingly, he found a Ugandan SIM card that did. Now he could use the Treo to communicate with his AIDS team and help them coordinate food, soap and medical deliveries. He also used it to set up meetings with local officials to arrange village AIDS education meetings.

At the end of his stay, the only ride the orphanage could give him to the Kampala airport broke down, and Matt was almost stuck there for another month. Somehow he made it back to the US by way of South Africa.

For Matt, the Treo was an indispensable tool. For me, knowing he had the Treo gave me some peace of mind as well. It proved itself to be a rugged, portable, high-tech solution that he could rely on in a ravaged corner of the world.

At the time of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, I was the project manager for a multi-million dollar computer infrastructure deployment project. Since I was on vacation, I didn't want to be interrupted, but I DID want to get occasional updates from my project team in case something went wrong with the project.

In 2002, there were no Treo 650s, so I bought myself a Palm i705 and the wireless service to give me email access to the world. It was a slow connection, but since I was just sending text back and forth it worked well. I also purchased a thumb keyboard for the i705 so I could type in replies to any emails that I received.

Once the Games were underway, I ended up using the i705 a lot. Not for work, mind you - although there were occasional notes from my staff. No, I was sending everyone I knew updates about the various events that we were attending! During one of the US Women's Hockey games I was sending score updates every few minutes (it was a high-scoring game) to my friends who were at work and couldn't watch the game on TV. I even posted updates to my blog through the i705, which allowed me to keep a running update of the things that were going on in SLC.

Four years later, I'm using a Palm Treo 650 running on Cingular's network. That Treo 650 will be with me when I go to the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy early next year. I'm sure I'll be sending a lot more than just text messages this time, like great color photos and videos! If I'm lucky enough to win the Treo 650 and TripKit, I'm going to give it to my wife so she can join in on the fun!

Steve

For a long time, much of our family travel was related to my daughter's gymnastics competitions. After using several of the pre-Documents To Go spreadsheets, I decided to write my own gymnastics scoring software for Palm, and I've been selling it at Handango for about five years. The neatest experience was sitting in the stands and seeing several folks around me keeping scores using my software! And when I stepped by the officials' scoring table, one of the organizers keeping (unofficial) scores with my program. That was fun.

My Palm has also kept setlists at nearly every concert I've attended for the past eight years. I've even posted the images straight from NotePad to Usenet groups.

I can't imagine functioning, much less traveling, without a Palm!

You see, I'm an American Red Cross http://tinyurl.com/9tkxj volunteer disaster team leader and an ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Services) http://www.arrl.org/pio/emergen1.html assistant emergency coordinator in the Pacific NW, but my feet were 'nailed to the floor' when Katrina hit. Classified as 'essential personnel' by my agency, I was not able to hop on a plane and fill my regular seat, which is operating the ECRV http://tinyurl.com/c3z75 (Emergency Communications Response Vehicle http://tinyurl.com/7tvhp) I trained for, bringing communications to wherever there are none. Would have been nice to head back Down South for some Red Beans, Rice, rain and skeeters; shucks, I was raised in 90 degree heat, 90 percent humidity, and I've been through a few good hurricanes before.

But, instead, Katrina came to me. Hundreds of folks from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas were stranded in the Northwest with no place to go home to, and hundreds more self-evacuated, spending their last dime (and sometimes hitchhiking!) to get Someplace Safe. Then, they needed our help, and my Treo 650 was a part of that help.

I'd get a page on my Treo, and call back on it to the Red Cross chapter answering service to pick up the calls. I had my disaster team contact information entered into the Treo's Contacts database, even listing when they were and were not available, so I could select who I needed and know they could respond before I called.

I also used SMS and e-mail from the Treo to alert my team of fires; for, disasters still happen at home, even when disasters happen elsewhere. When I get a call to respond at 0h-dark-thirty, the superb screen and backlit keys surpass every other PDA for convenience, and it sure is handy to be able to swap out the battery for a fresh one when needed.

When someone on my team advises they can't respond until they get some sleep, I update their entry in Documents To Go so I don't call them for a while, and move on to the next team member, without having to fuss with paperwork.

I hang my Bluetooth earset on one ear, leaving the other free for the amateur radio receiver, hop in the truck, and drive, talking to my team over the Treo's cellular radio en route to the scene. Mapopolis even routes me to the scene, so I don't have to fuss with maps.

The Treo's power radically cuts the time it takes me to respond. That empowerment sure makes people happy when they're standing around in the cold, wearing a blanket off a fire truck, waiting for me and my team to arrive.

When I do arrive, I've loaded the rules and guidelines into the Treo with Adobe Reader for PalmOS, so I've got all the documentation I need to make decisions.

We're still filling out paper forms, we don't have everything automated yet, but a lot has changed in Red Cross because we can automate some vital functions. For instance, once someone qualifies, I can use the Treo to link to the website we use to validate our value cards, and allow the client to get, on the spot, what looks like a MasterCard to pay for replacement shoes, coats, clothing, personal needs, medication, groceries and meals. You don't know what it means, until you've been there, to be able to hand a card to someone who just lost their home, so they can go and get diapers for their newborn, warm clothing for their kids, and dinner (or, likely breakfast; why do fires always seem to start at 0h-dark-thirty? I don't know....)

And, because I've got a Smartlist To Go database with every participating motel in the area on the Treo, I can quickly see which ones take pets (YOU just try to separate a traumatized kid from Rover) or are non-smoking (fire victims like non-smoking rooms, mostly), call up the motel and book them in for the night, or for the duration.

The mass transit system around here even has its schedules for every train and bus in a PalmOS program http://www.secondkiss.com/trimet/tour1.html, so I can help them plan tomorrow's trips without toting around several inches of schedules. I can tell non-drivers when their next bus is http://trimet.org/transittracker/wireless.htm if they don't want me to call them a cab from the Treo.

And, once it's over with, I got to sit down with my troops over a cup of coffee, and prepare the after action report with Documents To Go, then securely e-mail that back to the social worker at the chapter, so they've get data at hand first thing the next morning.

Of course, Treo envy's struck all the other team leaders... and I have to admit I don't want to give mine up when it's time to be reassigned.

So, my vacation came to me, instead of going away from home. Maybe all I did was drive around Oregon to help folks in need. But, the Treo 650 surely did help make sure those little trips made a big difference in people's lives.

One day, while at a new job in NE Tennessee in 1998, one of my vendors had a Phillips nino he was using to add my name to his address book. Intrigued I asked for a Nino that Christmas. Now I had an all in one organizer and could eliminate the pad and pencil. The Nino was great, but i did not like pocket pc and after trying to get accessories, such as a modem or flip case, the Nino went off the market. This promted me to look for a new organizer and I stumbled upon Handspring. New to the Palm OS market, I thought the Visor was a great concept, I was hooked. Handspring was growing so fast, that the fall of 1999 I purchased my first Palm OS device, the Visor Prism. Shortly after the new visor, I started to look for a new job. I traveled all across the east coast from Blyeville Arkansas to Philadelphia Pennsylvania. On these job interviews I would use my Nino to record notes about the course take pictures with a disposable camera. Once I finished my tour, would go back home, develope the pictures, write a report from my Nino recorded notes and add the pictures to accompany the notes. I would then make a report at Kinkos for every person on the interview committee. This was exhausting and expensive, plus I still carried two devices, the Nino for recording and the Prism for everything else. On one final interview I decided to try a new approach. I purchased the eyemodule springboard and the Targus voice recorder. This interview, I walked the course recording notes on the targus and taking pictures with the eyemodule. Preparing the report was much easier and took less time. I went back the next day for the interview and the committee was amazed that I took pictures and notes with a small palm device and they loved the report. As its result they offered me the job before I left that day.

Now at my new job, I purchsed my third springboard, the Visor Phone. I now have my all-in-one device with the visor phone. My fourth module, the Margi presenter-to-go, allows me to present to the committee’s and the membership powerpoint presentations on course conditions. I even used the presenter-to-go to run a looped slide show at a job fair to attract student help to my cousre. I also purchased the Minijam mp3 Player for listening to music. I have also use numerous software such as quickwork and quicksheet to carry budgets, chemical reports and other documents with me, daynotez as a daily journal, miles to go to log my fuel usage. I next graduated to the Sprint Airprime module, then came the Treo 300, but without the expansion so loved by the Visor. After a long wait, the Treo 600 was my next and current device. My wife uses theTreo 650. I am apprehensive about the Treo 700w, but have an open mind.

That's my story. Palm OS has changed my life personally and professionally back when I started to travel the country in search of a new job. I love my Palm os Treo 600 and would be lost without it. Thanks for reading.

Phillips Nino-Handspring Visor-Visor Phone-Sprint Airprime-Treo300-Treo 600-Treo650-Treo700w or 700p?

Rick Pagett-rpagett@msn.com

A unique ability of the Treo is the control I have over when/if I am alerted of updates. With the combination of CallFilter and Profiles, I've set up multiple alert priorities. Depending on the specific show the cels are from, some updates are allowed to wake me up, some only during the day, others have no alert (just go straight to the blinking asterisk). I can also dynamically shift these priorities or silence things completely with Profiles.

As you can imagine, my Treo has enabled me to snag many cels that I would have otherwise missed out on while away from home. Any one story of buying cels while travelling would be pretty short, so I'll list three:

While in a fairly boring meeting, I caught a favorite cel that went up for sale. The one handed operation of the Treo allowed me to view and purchase the cel pretty discretely so I never looked too distracted.

I lost an auction on eBay and the seller offered me a similar cel since I was the second highest bidder. I was able to reply to their email with a request for a picture, download the huge picture, carefully inspect it by zooming/panning with RescoViewer, and purchase it from them, all from my Treo. I inspected the cel and to my surprise I liked it more than the one I had bid on. The significant thing was that I felt really bad about losing the auction. Being able to receive the dealer's email and inspect the cel in detail just turned my otherwise terrible day around.

I was staying with family and was able to win a Japanese auction. Japanese auctions don't end until everyone stops bidding (the end time extends after every bid in the last 5 minutes) so I've found that manually bidding at the end to be very important for certain cels. This cel was not something the kids in the house should see, so the Treo was the best method for doing this, plus I wasn't tied to their computer. I was able to play with the kids and laugh with everyone, while fighting for a cel across with the world with one hand.

I was recently in Korea and the guy I was visiting picked me up from the airport. While we were driving into the city, his pocket started talking to him. He had a bluetooth GPS and navigation software with a subscription to a service in Korea which provides locality based info. His Palm was telling him where the speed cameras were so he could slow down and avoid the fines! And there sure are plenty of speed cameras in Korea!

Now I've got to get me one of those!

-Ryan

tim

if i win the palm 650 or buy one, and it works correctly, i'll give my pocket pc

I played games, watched videos, read books and copied my precious pictures taken during an emotional time at my late father-in-law's birthplace.

My lifedrive also kept my young children amused ( which as all parents know is the key to a great holiday!)and helped me when converting the local currency to good old sterling.

On our recent cruise to Mexico, we had these fantastic tablemates, I mean, the most amazing, nicest people we had ever met. We went on all of our shore excursions together, and took a ton of pictures in each port, as well as the activities on the ship.

My party and I had purchased a goodbye gift for our new found friends, but we wanted to make the final dinner unique. I wanted to make them a slideshow of all of our pictures, but I was only travelling with my Palm. All of my photos were on my SD card, so I loaded them all onto my Tungsten T3, and made a slideshow, complete with music and transitions, and showed it to them before presenting them with their gift. They loved the gift, but the slideshow of the week, they said, truly made the night a special one.

We are still friends with them to this day, having an anniversary cruise each year!

This setup also saved us from getting lost in downtown Boston. I heard that even locals get lost, so that's saying a lot!

Unfortunately, my m500+GPS setup got stolen on my last trip to San Diego :( I would love to get another PalmOS/GPS setup to replace it. [My Zodiac2 was stolen along with it, but that is a different sob story.]

Two years ago I was traveling on the Boston train from NYC to give a paper. I felt the paper required more work before I delivered it and expected to work on it during the ride. That was about the time my laptop decided to quit.

Enter my Vx and keyboard, with a starring role by Wordsmith. I completed my revisions and still had plenty of time to rest on the train. At the hotel, I managed to hotsync and print courtesy of a generous business center. Paper went well, I was happy, and enjoyed reading a novel on my Palm on the way home.

Dov (aka AxMax)

Just have to keep my boss from finding out I'm playing Bejeweled when there's nothing else going on!

My parents live on South Padre Island in Texas and I was visiting them this past summer while on break from school when my Palm's GPS quite possibly saved my life:

We own a couple of small catamarans and every once and a while I'll take a trip where I'll sail down the coast about 10 miles and my dad will pick me up in his truck at our regular spot (it'd take too long to tack and gybe back, furthermore I'm lazy.) Well this year for lord only knows what reason there was a great tailwind allowing me to fly down the coast... so great infact that our 32 year old cat's mainsail literally snapped off the mast leaving me stranded somewhere on a deserted part of Texas' coast. This is where GPS comes in EXTREMELY helpful... thanks to the awesome powers of GPS my father was able to locate me in less than 30 minutes and I was on my way home to mama's good cookin with a broken cat and a heck of a story. Had it not been for GPS that day might have ended much differently...