Handspring Treo died; time to accept Bill Gates as Personal Savior?

My Handspring Treo (review) died today, its 5th hardware failure in 18 months.  It is out of warranty so the $600 device heads for the trash can and I’m simultaneously deprived of calendar, address book, and mobile phone.  The preceding string of Handspring failures necessitated the purchase of a Motorola GSM phone as a backup so as soon as Margaret gives me back the Moto I can talk.  That leaves the question of replacing the Palm functions.  A year ago the cheapest Palm was $99.  With advances in technology and brilliant new engineering cleverness and Chinese labor the cheapest Palm today is… $99.


Is it time to accept Bill Gates as my personal savior and switch to PocketPC?  Theories in favor of PocketPC:



  • lots of aviation software, including things like in-flight weather radar and very good flight planners, for PocketPC
  • it is a Microsoft world so one might as well adapt now
  • better syncingwith Outlook (my primary desktop source of info)
  • can run Excel, which is the preferred programming environment for lots of everyday tasks, e.g., weight/balance for airplane

In favor of the Palm:



  • can get a simple slow device that will run for 2 weeks+ on disposable AAA batteries (no need to lug around charger and remember to charge up all the time)
  • simpler user interface (though I’d have to learn graffiti)

What do the gentle readers think?

67 thoughts on “Handspring Treo died; time to accept Bill Gates as Personal Savior?

  1. I think it’s a shame the only choice you as a consumer have left is “should I buy a handheld device with cheap, failure-prone parts and software from Palm” or “should I buy a handheld device with cheap, failure-prone parts and software from Microsoft.”

    Hardware failure throughout the consumer electronics industry is making me sick. The attitude seems to be, “we’ll outsource to tbe lowest bidder in Asia for our hardware, because product type X has become a commodity and the quality will be Good Enough.” Then industry players ignore mounting evidence that quality is not in fact Good Enough.

    My $200, year-old PlayStation 2 now gags on DVDs, including the brand new one I just inserted today, and video games, including one I was 75 percent finished with. The most cursory Internet research revealed that PlayStation 2 disc read errors are endemic, (more more more more) allegedly because Sony bought cheap lasers.

    I also went through two Nokia 8260s, both of which died within three months or warranty expiration due to the same problem, which is that the unit would randomly shut itself off and eventually refuse to turn on. So now I’ve switched to a different phone, a little Motorola number, which like the 8260 was reccomended by ATT Wireless. This one has either a puny battery or outsized power consumption, but at least it works for now and was only $50.

    On the other hand, the RAM, hard drive and CD burner I put into my PC seem to work fine, even though I pretty much bought the cheapest items. Sure, the TDK CD drive seems to operate much much more slowly than the advertised specs, but it works. The PC industry is quite mature — people have been mass producing hard drives and BIOS chips and microprocessors and bus architectures and memory cards for going on two decades now. Maybe Sony, Nokia, Handpsring et. al. have made the mistake of thinking they can get the same price/performance ratio on much newer product types.

    If cell phone makers and others want to try competing on hardware quality the way big iron computer makers used to, I for one would be happy to pay a significant premium. In industries where software is an overwhelming factor, like video game consoles, it would be nice if there was a better quality feedback loop for shoppers, so they know what risks they are taking.

  2. I have been using a palm all the time. Graffiti is actually quite easy to learn, I found it one of the few “intuitive” computer features that actually was intuitive. PocketPCs offer more fun stuff, but Palms also sync with Outlook pretty well through the standard HotSync Software that comes with it. And I use the cheapest Palm out there. Don’t underestimate the importance of being able to use AAA batteries! A great feature for anyone who travels. Without color, the batteries work for upwards of mone month.

    Docs to Go and QuickOffice both have Palm versions of Excel that work fine.

    Dave

  3. Constant hardware failures of Handspring products have driven me back to Franklin Covey paper organizers for keeping contacts and calendar. I do use Tablet PC for reading that I used to do on various Visors and later on Rocket ebook. Instead of Visor phone I use a Motorola phone. It looks like it’s back to 1990s for me.

  4. The latest Palm devices no longer use Graffiti; they use “Graffiti 2”, which is a relabeled “Jot”. It’s a bit jarring for users of the old Graffiti because of the un-learning needed, but the new design has essentially no learning curve – you write ordinary block print (including two strokes for I and T), and it does the right thing.

  5. As a Senior Software Engineer for my company, I’ve had the opportunity to write software for both the Palm and the Windows CE/Pocket PC world. My suggestion is… carry a laptop. A decently arrayed Pocket PC costs half of a decent laptop; you don’t have to synchronize; you can run full versions of your software and you only have to buy one license. If you need to carry a portable address book/appointments/etc., buy the least expensive Palm, a Zire, for 99$US and push your info to it on synchronization.

  6. I have to agree with the previous Chris on this one. If you really need to organize, get an ultraportable laptop. Something thats extremely light and can be carried around would make a better organizer (and be more reliable) than most of the palms or PocketPCs. Or, just buy a $99 Palm, make sure you backup your data frequently and toss it when it breaks. Who needs Color, Wireless internet, mp3 abilities, et al when all your doing is organizing your day?

  7. I am quite happy with my Sony Clié SJ-20, the low-end monochrome PalmOS PDA. It probably costs around $125 now. One of the reasons it offers better value for money than anything Palm makes is that it bundles “Documents to Go,” which lets you use Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel files under PalmOS. There is a color version (SJ-22) that has a very nice display, but its battery life is much shorter.

    I don’t care much for Graffiti. Instead, I use MessagEase, an 11-key keypad replacement specifically designed for text entry on PDAs and cellphones. It’s designed so that the most frequent letters in English are available by tapping one of the nine virtual keys. You enter other letters and punctuation by “stroking” rather than tapping. With some practice, it’s easier and faster than using Graffiti.

  8. a few months back I thought I’d probably be recommending Danger’s HipTop, but by all accounts they are even more unreliable than Palm’s and PocketPCs. So, its got to be a decent, small, non-Nokia, non-Siemens bluetooth phone (e.g. Ericsson T39m or T68i) and a 12 inch powerbook.

  9. I’ve used the Sony Ericsson P800 for a couple of months, and I love it. There’s a lot of software available for the Symbian OS (but less than Palm), although I don’t know about aviation software.

    Syncs relatively well with Outlook. Takes OK pictures (http://unicast.org/mblog/). In the United States you can buy the phone directly from Sony Ericsson, so you are not bound to any specific network.

  10. interesting entry; interesting comments. it seems there is a fundamental question that needs to be asked, the answer to which will guide you to the most appropriate purchase:

    what do you really need?

    countless people i know have bought gadgets from palms to clios to treos to laptops and very few of them actually ended up using them for what they intended. most languished in the corners of people’s lives, as they introduced functionality that was neither needed nor part of the person’s “habit” or “routine”.

    i went through this process with a plam.

    so my guess would be that you could look at getting gadgets that do, very well, purely what you want.

    example (from my perspective): solid nokia cellphone for voice, 12-inch ti-book for mobile functionality. bluetooth connects them, so you don’t need to type in your addressbook on your cellphone. when you need the laptop, you take that. if you’re just going to the beach, take the nokia. if you’re going to need voice and functionality, take them both. get spare batteries for each gadget.

  11. Let me get this straight: you’ve owned 5 Palm OS PDAs, but you haven’t gotten around to learning Graffiti?

  12. ChrisH: thanks for the laptop suggestion. I’m confused by the laptop market right now. You’d think that it would be possible to buy a $500 laptop that was similar in capabilities to a 3-year-old $2000 laptop. But instead the cheapest laptops are closer to $1000. Anyway they are kind of slow to start up and shut down, not to mention too cumbersome to carry in one’s pocket.

    Guan: that Symbian phone sounds neat. I am prejudiced against Symbian because I tried a huge Ericsson phone 2 years ago with the Symbian OS and never could get it to sync to anything.

    Lindsey: I have owned many Palm OS PDAs… all of them Handspring Treo 180s (they kept replacing them under warranty after they failed). The Treo 180 has a full, albeit small, QWERTY keyboard and does not, by default, accept Graffiti.

  13. I really like my Danger HipTop (T-Mobile Sidekick). I find it rugged and reliable. But it is currently a closed software system and you can’t add third party apps yet. It will be a long time before it runs any aviation software. Although it has what I think is the best web browser of any pocket device so if you can get your aviation software to run on a server with a web interface (and you’re in an area with cellular coverage) you might get by that way. A more complete review I wrote is here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/heydan/2003/06/27#a17

  14. At my previous employment I ran a team of programmers (and was lead programmer too) for a company that dealt with e-Learning. One day they decided we had to go mobile, so they bought a Handspring Visor and we tried to figure out how to make it work with what we had so far. I was working off a desktop emulator for Palm OS, but eventually convinced them to buy me a Palm III. It was just like you said, put batteries on it and pretty much forget about it for a couple weeks.

    Right after I figured out how to take advantage of Palm OS devices for our current offerings, some idiot at the company decided the thing was Pocket PC, bought one and we were sent back to square one.

    Again I got stuck with an emulator. One day I stormed into my project manager’s office to complain about it, he turned around, grabbed a white box from a stack of boxes on his desk and threw it at me: a Compaq iPaq!

    The PM was sitting on his desk with a stack of 20 (yes, TWENTY) Compaq iPaqs while we were programming on an emulator!

    2 weeks after my iPaq got out of warranty coverage, it died for good. It would have cost so much to fix it that we just threw it in a corner. Out of the 20 iPaqs at least 3 died, a 4th one had a broken LCD and of the other 16 probably 15 got pilfered as the layoffs started and later when the company got shut down.

    The iPaq was great, but the battery issue was annoying, and it always fell very delicate. The Palm III could bounce off a hard floor (did it a few times) but the iPaq would shatter if the same happened. Also, it was a bit too big. The Palm III was perfect.

    When I left the company I convinced them to issue me a surplus Handspring Visor that nobody wanted, since I was going to consult with them for a couple months after I left for my new job. The Visor was at least as good as the Palm. I guess it got stolen during the company shutdown once I mailed it back to them at the end of my consulting period.

    Now I have no use for a PDA. I carry my powerbook and my iPod everywhere. The iPod has calendar and address book, which works fine with me. The main use I had for the Palm, iPaq and Handspring was to remind me of meetings and to have contacts handy. I hardly ever used either of these three to take notes or enter new contacts.

  15. Just another data point: My wife got a color Sony Clie months ago, and it seems to be everything one could want in a Palm device (including a decent little keyboard).

  16. I would hightly recommend the Blackberry 7230: It has a color screen and push email is something you’ll never be able to live without. They keyboard is great, and the interface is truly optimized for keyboard use, while the Palm devices that have a keyboard still have an awkward mix of pen an keyboard (try typing while you’re holding the pen between your fingers).

    http://www.connectione.com/Products/BB7230.html

  17. My Kyocera smartphone recently died after ayear just out of warrenty. Died is a bit too harsh; the only problem with the phone is that the microphone completely failed. This one I had was a palm mated to the phone mechanics. Kyocera really did a nice job of providing APIs to push the abilities of the phone out to the palm os, and there were plenty of palm applications.

    One thing to note: don’t pay any $ for a cell phone. Call your provider, tell them you’re cancelling your service to take advantage of a “free phone” offer from a competitor, and they’ll fall all over themselves to get you to stay with them.

    My new phone is a Nokia 6350 w/ bluetooth. I don’t use Outlook, but I believe it has sync conduit. It runs the Symbian OS, plus java applications, but I haven’t gotten around to programming it yet.

  18. I lean towards having a real notebook instead of yet another gadget to carry and operating system in the form of Palm or PocketPC. If cost is the primary factor, then a cheap PC notebook or even iBook would do. Some of the PowerBooks have bluetooth for syncing with your phone, not sure if Windows XP notebooks are doing that yet, but my guess there are more flying-related apps and tools on the PC.

    If you can afford it, Sony, Toshiba, and others make very small notebooks like the Sony TR series and it is likely that you can get one with a screen that works even in bright sunlight. All your normal apps will work, you don’t have to compromise on the input method since it is a real keyboard, you’ll have wireless, etc. The real URL is long, so just start at http://www.sonystyle.com/ and click your way to the Sony TR series for more info.

    A PDA is just another compromise to carry around, so unless you like gadgets just go for a small notebook.

  19. I am a big fan of Handspring. I have the Treo 270, and find it to be invaluable. I can’t imagine using another device. The Blackberry may be good if you have a corporate it department to support it, but the phone one’s suck. I get great service from T-Mobile, and have gotten the $20 add on so that I can use my laptop at all their Hot-Spots. I would suggest the Treo 600 if you can wait for it. I have an Old Nokia as a back up, but it is painful to use after the Treo..

  20. Actualy the laptop startup time is not that bad if you use the suspend and hibernate features properly. The time to wakeup from hibernate depends on the amount of installed RAM and hdd speed but should be around 20 seconds; from suspend – it’s almost instant. Get one of the high end ThinkPads (I don’t remember the exact model, may be T30, the one that has reinforced frame and metal hinges). I can’t imagine using serious apps like the one you list on tiny pocketpc displays and no keyboard…

  21. As someone who has been into hardware design and marketing most of my career from Polaroid cameras to Apple Newtons to my recent founding of the company that invented and made the folding keyboard for Palm, I am very sympathetic to your plight. Most hardware until this last decade would have needs to have a defect rate of less than 2%, particularly Japanese products, but in recent years the relaibility has gone way down partially because of their increased complexity and rush to market. (Keyboard return rate is <1%.) In any event the problems you have are not related to the Palm OS. I have used the Tungsten T and now the Tungsten C and they are very reliable and great products. I have also used Pocket Pcs and have gone back to the Palm OS because of the simplicity and reliability. But I am waiting for the Treo 600.
    Phil

  22. If you’re secretly planning to take over the market for information for airplanes, I’d suggest looking at <a
    href=”http://www.antelopetech.com/op.html”>the Antelope. It’s got an x86 compatible Transmeta processor, and a 6.3inch 1024*768 touchscreen. It’s a spinoff from some IBM lab. Could be expensive unless you want thousands of them.

  23. If you’re secretly planning to take over the market for information for airplanes, I’d suggest looking at <a
    href=”http://www.antelopetech.com/op.html”>the Antelope. It’s got an x86 compatible Transmeta processor, and a 6.3inch 1024*768 touchscreen. It’s a spinoff from some IBM lab. Probably an expensive gadget unless you want thousands of them.

  24. I used to live and die by my Palm Vx, then I got a Fujitsu P series Lifebook. My Palm crashed, and it took me a month to get around to restoring it, because the notebook computer now goes everywhere with me.

    Yes, it’s a bit larger, but it’s small enough that the case does double-duty as a purse, letting me carry small personal items around without committing a fashion faux-pas. And it’s got a real screen, and a real keyboard, and I don’t have to convert HTML to something it can read before I download large online documents to it.

    If I was going to choose between PDA types I’d get a Palm, because I use it so seldom that I want something that’ll run for weeks between charges. But now that I have a really wonderfully usable laptop, I find my PDA use dropping to about nil.

    The Palm is back on the charger and restored, but I’m trying to figure out what I’d really want it to do. The dev kit is sitting on my Linux box, ready to go as soon as I figure out what that is.

  25. hmm.. I must hand it to Palm..besides the telephone, automobile, bicycle, plumbing, electricity, microchip, internet… I’d say my Palm V is one of the most useful things we humans have created. Addresses, datebook and memo help me unload my brain cells so they can work on other things. My Palm V has been going for 3 years now (2megs is all you need 🙂 . I think the Palm V was probably their most robust design. Too bad economics, politics and perhaps lack of advertising muscle have lead to the tapering off in demand, quality and utility. I don’t consider a laptop to be a suitable replacment. e.g. I’m not going to boot up my laptop while in a bookstore isle or supermarket to make a small reminder note or add to my “books to read” memo.

    I hope that when my Palm V sees it’s last day, there will be a suitable Palm OS device replacment.

  26. Another voice for getting rid of the PDA. I scarcely use my Palm. A 12″ powerbook and a bluetooth/gprs phone (Ericsson R520) does. The powerbook can sleep on a just a trickle of battery. It has a real keybooard, doesn’t weigh too much and does things no PDA can even dream of doing.

    No, I’m not going to open it in a bookstore aisle, but small reminder notes don’t need a device–paper works and transcribing a note from paper probably takes less time than synchronizing the PDA (and it’s less noisy, too).

  27. I’d also go with the palm. The assumption that active sync and pocket excel work better with your desktop than palm os software just because they are by microsoft is just wrong. Docs to go and hotsync are far superior than anything you can get for your pocketpc, imho.
    However, i’d also consider a decent smartphone. I stopped using a pda when i bought a 7650. It syncs quite well with outlook (not so well with macs), there’s a lot of third-party-software available and it’s much more comfortable to just carry one device rather than two. Of course i know that there’s no us-version of the 7650 available, but both sony ericsson p800 and nokia 3650 are great smartphones, though the nokia 3650 is definitely an ugly piece.

  28. I second Al’s comments on the Palm V, although I’ve also had better luck than Philip with my Treo 180 (graffiti model, which was being closed out at $100 a few months after I bought mine).
    I use my 40-month-old Palm V and its folding keyboard for text-entry when I know I’m going to be taking a lot of notes on the road, but traveling too light for a laptop. (There’s no such keyboard for the Treo, and I think its screen is too small to sit that far away anyhow.)
    I did think 2MB was plenty, but I’m surprised that I’m actually using a lot of that extra memory in the Treo — with iData (text database), MBTA bus schedules and document readers in a variety of formats, including PDF. Incidentally, iData isn’t perfect, but does let me carry around the same 600-record addressbook file that I created on a MacPlus in 1989. Unfortunately, its manufacturer (Casady & Greene) just went on the skids.
    As for the Treo, I even use the phone once in a while.

  29. For a long time, I used to lug a Franklin day planner around that contained all my contacts, notes, brainstorming output, blurbs of stuff I wanted to jot down so I would attain that state of “instant recall”. My manager showcased his new palm to me in 98 or so and I thought hmm, a search function to instantly recall a piece of data. In 2000, I took the plunge and purchased a Handspring visor.

    It was great, learning Grafitti was no problem and I wager I could outtype folks on a keyboard even using a stylus – I kept stacks of batteries @ home and @ office, and battery life was 2 weeks to a month, even under heavy use. After a year, the sync function stopped working – for a while, I had to jiggle the device to get sync to work but eventually I couldn’t get it to sync at all. I noticed an improved Handspring, a Platinum visor, was on sale at my local Fry’s Electronics, so I bought it. Faster machine, more storage, but after a month, the backlight stopped working. I got another one, but a few months later, I dropped it in a bathroom and the screen shattered, rendering the device inoperable.

    So I went back to the dayplanner but I just wasn’t efficient anymore with it – I got spoiled by the Search function in the PDA and leafing through pages of Franklin planner history volumes seemed woefully inefficient. So I got one of those new Sony CLIE PDAs. Color screen. Ooooh. But rechargeable batteries, bleh… needs to be charged every night just like a cell phone. But I was used to the old “keep a stack of batteries in the drawer” spiel with the Handspring and lost my data repeatedly where the device would lose power sitting and then when I turned it on it was reset to the default setting. Plus, I thought the Handspring served me much better than all of the “fluff” type stuff on the Sony CLIE (and a less featured datebook). Finally, I just gave the thing to my wife who puts it to use as a nurse – she has all the medical encyclopedic stuff on there plus pictures of the cats …

    I think the notebook computer is the best solution – though, my powerbook is a bit too large – I’ve been on the lookout for a cheap Apple Ibook – something just for note taking and addresses, but sturdy enough to take a beating.

  30. Greenspun is right.

    Palm is a Dead Man Walking. At best it will be the downmarket version of Apple in the PDA world. They’ve screwed up too many times and the management have consistently shown themselves to be small-minded and greedy.

    If you want something cheap to keep addresses in and run a few little applications, go with the bottom-end Palm. But if you’re thinking about this as a strategic decision, well, buying a Palm is like licensing Informix as a database.

    I would have a quick look at the Symbian devices, such as the new Sony.

    a.

  31. I’ve used Symbian based devices, and Palm based devices. I used to work for Ericsson so I’ve played with pretty much everything they make. The best solution I’ve found is this.

    Toshiba Portege 2010 – A4 sized notebook – 19mm thick. Light and fast to start up.

    Ericsson T39m Phone – Small and tough, it also syncs very well with Outlook. It means If I just need a number or calander etc I can get it from my phone (without it it being a stupid huge PDA phone). Otherwise I just use my laptop, it is light enough that I take it pretty much everywhere.

  32. Well, I’ve had the same Palm V for about four years now and never had any problems except that the point-and-click needs recalibrating about once every three months or so. It has the nifty internal rechargeable, which I find more convenient because I just toss it back in the cradle overnight once very week or two. On the other hand, I barely use it except as a shopping list. It doesn’t have USB and I’m inclined to just hold out for a cell phone that has Palm OS or something in a year or so. Actually, for addresses, I mostly rely on my iPod these days–you can’t enter them on the fly, but if all you need is something to call up Mom’s phone number or whatever once every couple weeks it’s perfectly serviceable and syncs nicely with Address Book in OS X… Like I said, eventually, I expect either a phone or a new improved mp3 player will win the battle to be the uber-portable device. Once more thing–one reason my Palm may have survived so long is that I splurged and bought the metal hard case for it, so it’s much less easily crushable. Best o’ luck!

  33. The Sharp Zaurus is a damn cool PDA. It runs linux. There are other CE pda’s you can hack linux onto also. The popular Qt PDA environment for linux, Opie, is quite good.

    You can pick up a zaurus on ebay for $199.

  34. I’d also recommend the Sharp Zaurus. I’ve carried it in my front pocket for almost a year now and that’s been hard on it (and worn out a couple pairs of pants!) but it keeps on chugging. The array of free software that the linux crowd creates for it is too much fun, and having a wireless compact flash card in there for net access always makes jaws drop. It also synchs with Outlook (which you should free yourself from promptly).

    A new one is right at $300 right now, but the Home Shopping Network of all places had it for $199 briefly in the recent past. Keep an eye out.

  35. PocketPCs sync only with Windows. Not Linux or MacOSX.
    You’re using Outlook so you’re a Windows user, but maybe sometime in the future you’ll change you’re OS.

    Palm and Zaurus work with linux (I think Palm also works with MacOSX).

  36. Has the issue of Zaurus running out of battery power rather quickly been resolved?

  37. I learned from my father to always carry a small fliptop pocket sized notebook ($0.49). I date the entries, and keep all the past notebooks.
    (when my Dad passed away, it was a great joy to read his notebooks)
    In my wallet I carry a tiny address notebook – always edited with a pencil( if you have not checked out a Japanese stationary store you are in for a world of joy – small elegant pads and address books – check out the one in San Francisco’s Japan Town) My cell phone accepts 100 phonenumbers. I do my real work at home, so these things work for me.

  38. Levenger sells their Matchbook Notebooks: small notebooks configured like giant books of matches. It’s a clever take on the notebook idea. I’ve owned one of their Shirt Pocket Briefcases for years; it’s a leather holder for 3×5-inch cards, and works fine for taking notes. And, it never crashes or breaks if you drop it!

    There was a
    thread
    on Metafilter a while back on the joys of the Moleskine</>, a notebook that’s been used by the likes of Vincent Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway–and Indiana Jones, if memory serves! 🙂

    I remember reading Arthur C. Clarke’s Imperial Earth as a kid, and marveling over his description of what would now be called a PDA, the first mention I’ve seen in science fiction of a small, hand-sized computer. I can’t get worked up about PDAs now, though, as the fragility and lack of reliability leaves me cold. It’d be nice to have something that can store ebooks and whatnot, but I don’t know if it’s worth the expense and hassle.

  39. I understand that most Pocket PC based so-called pda’s have a battery life measured in hours. How anyone could use one as an alternative to a diary amazes me. The Palm’s last 30 odd hours (1 month at 1 hour/day), so you can go away for a week and expect to use it rather than spend a week charging your gadgets. I’ve carried my Handspring Visor Deluxe every day for 2 1/2 years now and treated it with no more care than my wallet with no problems so far.

    If you still find you are breaking them, you could always carry 2. Together they’ll still be half the price of an iPaq, they’re smaller than an iPaq (+charger) and you can have one in your pocket and one in a briefcase in case one gets stolen.

    ‘Palm is dying’ is an old story. It’s been since the time when Microsoft was chanting “A Computer on Every Desktop.” Back then Psion was the king, Handspring didn’t exist and Sony weren’t in the PDA business. You don’t see adverts for hammers for the same reason: They Just Work.

  40. I have a box at home that’s labeled “boneyard” where all my old cell/pda gadgets eventually land. I usually get a new cellphone every new year, as I’m usually willing to sign a 1-year contract in return for the phone company subsidizing new hardware. Most of my PDAs found their way into the boneyard within a few weeks… none of them (over a dozen now, counting palms, wince, and varrious ppc’s) were ever useful enough to justify lugging them about. Well, my trusty old REX just hit the boneyard after 5+ years of use. My newest (and best ever) device is a windows smartphone. It’s first and foremost a phone in size and function, but it has a color diplay with calendar/contacts/email. the killer feature for me: it syncs with my home machine over the gsm network. They’re not generally available for sale in the US yet, and I’d highly recommend you wait for the 2003 version that’s to be released later this year (several hardward vendors have announced, including motorola, hp, dell and others). The one I have is from http://www.everlinkwireless.com; stop by and play with it sometime. The 2003 versions will support .NET (compact framework) and bluetooth.

  41. Holy crap, people actually write stuff worth reading here. Sorry to clutter up the beauty. I’ll move along now.

  42. The newest Sony Clie is looking interesting. It has bluetooth and wireless, as well as a camera and mp3 player. Costs as much as a low end Dell laptop, and very small form factor.

  43. Personally, I use a cheap Palm to fill in the info space between my laptop and my 4×6 index cards. It made real sense in ’98, still works for me. It seems like a PC-like pocket device wouldn’t be enough like a PC, and would frustrate. But I’m relatively Luddite.

  44. PocketPC battery life absolutely stinks. You’ll get maybe a day or two and then you’ll be back to that charger.
    I’ve tried many and think that a Palm Tungsten T is great – get yourself a Sony T68i phone too (both Bluetooth) and get them to talk to each other. Carry your contacts etc on your phone. Even simpler, buy an $1100 Apple iBook and sync all three of them together.
    Or try the new Blackberry, which does phone + checking any POP3 email box, and so on.

  45. I find it amusing that (a) right now this post has 46 comments – that is far more than I’ve seen you receive when you write about the war, your president, the American countryside, etc. If only people in the Middle East thought that which PDA to choose was the most important thing to discuss then America might not have to spend so much time and money invading them. (b) almost none of the comments have address your penchant for aviation software, they’ve just said Palm (or PPC) is best. What has worked for me, as a PPL-flyer, is a mobile phone with Bluetooth (much smaller than any of the PDA-phones) and a PPC with Bluetooth which can run AnywhereMap, Memory-map (a moving map program), plus all the usual PDA functions, plus it works very well with the phone over Bluetooth for GPRS emailing and download TAF/METARs etc. I do wish it had a real built-in keyboard though.

  46. I find it interesting that people have made 46 comments about this topic, which is considerably more than most of your posts about Iraq, Israel, corporate corruption, etc. If only those pesky people in the Middle East would worry more about which PDA to use then America wouldn’t have to keep going over there to invade.

    Not only that but most comments seem to be “the Palm (or PPC) is best” without regard to your penchant for aviation software.

    My own recommendation (who cares about the Middle East anyway?) is a bluetooth mobile phone (much smaller than a PDA-phone) and a Bluetooth PPC. I run a moving map product (Memory Map) and/or AnywhereMap when flying, plus can do email and read TAFs/METARs easily using the BT connection to the phone.

  47. I also find it amusing that the author of two books on dynamic web site creation uses a weblog that makes comments look like they’ve not been submitted so the dumb-arse user types them out again, re-submits and gets two.

  48. PREVIOUS POST

    W isn’t talking about Saddam anymore

    – – – Can we not find larger concerns?

    I guess you just have , Dr Phil. – – – no one ever went broke underestimating American taste.

  49. Well, people reading this obviously have more experienced knowledge about PDAs then they do the Middle East. So give them credit for talking about what they know rather then giving uninformed opinions.

  50. Although we cannot go back in time, I’ll mention that I use one very old tool – HP200LX. 🙂

    It’s Hewlett-Packard’s very old jewel which didn’t make it to the mainstream. It’s a palmtop from around 1995-1996 (!) and I still cannot find anything better in terms of battery life and functions it offers (small but usable keyboard with all keys, full MS-DOS etc.).

    Powered by Intel 80186, it’s a real computer with MS-DOS and other applications in ROM – it doesn’t need to boot every time. The processor, ROM and RAM (2MB) are powered by two AA batteries which is just enough for 2 weeks.

    It has address book, spreadsheet (Lotus123), and many other apps – graphical ones (http://www.palmtop.net/gem.html, http://www.faqs.org/faqs/hp/palmtops-faq/) or even Perl. The only problem was the price – some $700 (I got it for $6 as an HP employee when new HP Jornada came).

  51. I’ve owned 2 Handspring Visors and I busted both of them within a year of owning them. I will never buy another Handspring product since their cost cutting corners on the Visor make them too fragile for those occasional ‘oops I dropped it again’ moments.
    In my opinion go with the person who suggested getting a cheap Palm and just keep it synced up enough. Burning a few hundred dollars on either a Palm or a PocketPC everytime one of them breaks starts getting expensive unless you start trying to accomodate the technology rather than let the technology accomodate you. But I think that’s utterly ridiculous considering it is supposed to be a portable device.
    If you get a cheap Palm and just use it until it busts you’re not in the hole everytime it breaks. From what I’ve seen Palm makes much more rugged hardware than Handspring. Someone I know has had a Palm III for many years before it finally died.

  52. I had a Palm V. Bought a Samsung i300 Palm phone through Best Buy with a product guarantee. i300 died about 1.5 years later – since they didn’t carry the i300 anymore I was upgraded to an i330. Outlook synch works great, calendar reminders work great and I actually have used it on a day to day basis because of my reliance of Outlook. Sprint also has a mail client which is store-and-forward so I get all my corporate email. (Only caveat: leave a desktop running the forwarder) I have used RIM’s blackberries (OK) and Good Technology’s G100 (Excellent, but lack of apps)

    The reason people care more about a Palm is it impacts their daily life more than the Hussein family. I’m not worried about Saddam appearing behind a bush or stopping up traffic in my neighborhood. I’m not saying he’s less important in a larger scheme (because many of us have family at risk) …he’s just not large enough on my radar screen at the moment. Oh, it also helps when your posting gets sent to a site like http://www.linkswarm.com.

    Besides, this is a nice distraction.

    Cheers!

  53. Does Palm even make models that use AAA batteries anymore?

    I’ve used a Palm IIIxe since 2000 and I’d happily upgrade to a significantly faster Palm with more features if it ran on cheap batteries and if it had remotely comparable battery life.

  54. The only PDA I have found useful is the Handspring Visor Edge, which is in an all-metal case and has a rechargeable battery (Li-Ion). Charge lasts for 2 weeks or more, and the metal case protects from bents and bruises. Also it is much slimmer than the chunky plastic Visors.

  55. Palm Zires can be found for $50 if you check ebay. My biggest complaint is the low contrast screen.

  56. This looks to be the most commented blog entry yet. In comparison to the “high-falutin” moral discussions, people seem to love to talk with other enthusiasts about everyday items they own and have real experience with (thus photo.net).

  57. Don’t you just love when people bring the discussion down to their level and then beat you with experience?

  58. Hi Phil!

    I’ve had the Treo 300 for about a year and love it, once I got past the train wreck known as Sprint technical support (15+ phone calls to get data access set up!) Yes, it’s got shortcomings, so does everything else out there. No hardware problems yet (nor does my wife who bought one at the same time) so that’s luck of the draw, or perhaps lack of adventure.

    I tried the small laptop solution a while back and it didn’t work very well. Even a small laptop is too bulky to be your carry-everywhere device. If you’re roaming and want to be able to work on Excel files, great, bring your laptop. But if you want to go rollerblading and be able to make phone calls with calendar/address book integration from a gadget carried in your pocket, forget about the laptop.

    If you spot Saddam and want to whack him upside the head, the laptop is still a better choice. (Had to connnect that in somehow.)

    -Walter

  59. I use a small almanac and a pencil. It’s cheaper, doesn’t need batteries and never breaks.

    You could also use your own brain to memorize and calculate stuff. It only takes some training…

  60. Like you, my treo has failed me 6 times in 15 months.
    Yes!. I am on my 6th Treo and the warranty will expire in 2 weeks.
    You know they have 90 day warranty on any hardware they replaced, so I kind of got lucky there. Mine started failing in the 11th month and it has been like that. So I started doing some research on what I want to get next…

    My $0.02 on this.
    Since you mentioned you paid $600 for the Treo, I am going to use that as a ballpark and suggest a Sony Picturebook. (used obviously)
    You can find one on ebay for around $500.

    It is probably not as portable as a PocketPC or Palm, but should be reliable and run most of your aviation software.
    You might also be able to purchase a GPS PCMCIA card and use it as
    a NAV “aid”, if your DA 40 already does not have one. Even if you do, redundancy does not hurt.

    Much better than all the laptop alternatives that have been suggested.
    A cheap $50 phone, which is compatible with iSync or something else
    should complete the solution.
    –Raj

  61. I am the Mookah!

    That having been established, let me state how useless it is to carry a palm for contacts, a mobile phone loaded with… yes… contacts, and a blackberry to check stocks and… contacts….
    All these lame gadgets– you’ll buy all of this crap and then look back at their useless plastic carcasses in a few years and scoff at them.
    You can buy a tiny address book (the kind that comes from trees) for 99 cents and you’re good.

    Ort! Mookah!

    Thank you.

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