Palm PDA

[Tenacious]

Are there any Palm PDA users, devotees, collectors on this site?

[bloodline]

Are there any Palm PDA users, devotees, collectors on this site?

[Franko]

I picked up one about 5 years ago for £3.50 at a car boot sale, but decided to pull it apart to see if I could make use of the neat little screen it had, suffice to say I kinda broke it and had to bin it after that...

[mfilos]

Yeah I love my m505. I even got an TDK Bluetooth addon back then.
Just charging it and syncing it every once and a while but it's definitely a keeper

[Xanxi]

Still using my Sony Clié TH55 since 2004.
My android phone and google agenda are not good enough to replace Agendus Pro

[klx300r]

Hell ya! PalmOS rules & now that HP owns it expect a new HP smartphone powered by PalmOS soon :-)

[koshman]

I used to have the Tungsten T and C - the former a neat little machine with awesome build quality - magnesium.Tthe C OTOH had a pretty good keyboard - very portbale IF playing device. But the functionality was rather limited compared to more modern platforms like Maemo, Sharp Zaurus or even a Pocket PC. As a true PDA though it's hard to beat.
What I disliked was the constant worries about free heap RAM, which was generally very limited on the Palm platform - not good for game system emulation.

[LoadWB]

Hell ya! PalmOS rules & now that HP owns it expect a new HP smartphone powered by PalmOS soon :-)

PalmOS is dead.  We might see a new WebOS phone or two.

I went from a Palm III, which was great, to a Palm T|X, which was pretty neat, to a LifeDrive, which I got completely fecked over, IMNSHO.

The LifeDrive is great in terms of hardware spec, but Garnet is unstable, at best, and bug-ridden.  Not to mention support was dropped not six months after I bought mine, leaving me with a $500 paper weight.  I have never been able to rely on this device when I needed it most.  I would not keep it if not for two programs I use fairly regularly, though that is a moot point since it will not boot because of the battery (which I have replaced, but there is some other problem): a star chart and a mileage tracker.  Oh, and I do have a nice-looking PalmOS resistor calculator, and Frodo to play "Trolls and Tribulations."

I used to love my Palm.  I am surprised there are no hacking resources for the LifeDrive considering the hardware: 400MHz XScale, Bluetooth 2.0, WPA WiFi, 4GB hard drive, nice screen, etc.

[mpiva]

I have a Palm T/X.  I used to use it all the time but when my work switched the Wi-Fi to WPA2 I could no longer get the Palm to connect.  I still use the Palm occasionally but now that I have an eeePC I usually use that instead.  It doesn't fit as easily into my pocket but it's got a lot more functionality.  The T/X still makes a great e-book reader and its sketch pad is great for making quick notes.  Games for the Palm I found a little disappointing.  There were a few GREAT ones that really showed off the later Palms' potential and I always hoped more games like those would be made but most were pretty lame.  I think a lot of developers focused too much on supporting the older Palm models.

[Tenacious]

I started with a IIIc and moved up to a Zire 72 soon after they came out.

I no longer sync to a desktop.  With a program called RFbackup, the entire handheld can be saved to SD cards (2 Gig limit), pretty cool.

There are a number of software repositories, but, I haven't found a forum site like Amiga.org for Palm.  Has anyone else found a good forum?

Again, I'm surprised several of you mentioned games. I've never played anything beyond Minehunt and Othello while waiting for a plane.  Mpiva, what great games did you find?

[DiskDoctor]

Well I bought Palm IIIe around 2000.  I used it regularly as a PDA, mainly the apps plus the PIM functions.  I was addicted to PIM already as I had been previously using two models of Casio Databank watches that had phonebook and an organizer(!).

Then I got Palm m125 back in 2002.  The main enhancement was the usage of SD/MMC card.  Both of my palms were B/W but it suited me as core functionality (plus the gaming) was realised.  At those times, I used only freeware/shareware apps.  Unfortunately the said palm fell and broke on 2004.

But the era of mobile phones reached the level of colour screen and J2ME apps.  At that time I had Siemens S55 mobile, so I switched altogether with many apps to that device.  At that point I was using proprietary Java apps also.  The said cell phone had a digital camera addon which I got next year.  It supported no memorty cards.  Next year I switched to Nokia 6230i with the camera and MMC cards support.  That was the time of my extensive using mobile apps, including games, that were all in colour.  Both cellphones had proprietary OS though, alas Java been the open API.

Then I subsequently got cell phones with either Symbian (Nokia E65, E75) or Win Mobile (HTC S710).  This is what I call modern PDAs that is, PDAs with integrated voice+WWAN.  Recently I got a Blackberry.  All those mobile phones (except for E65) have qwerty keyboard as I now presume it a must-have due to exhaustive messaging use.  I also had Targus keyboard attached to my palm m125.

Now I consider Kindle when I get to the US (which is next Saturday), to be serving as a PDA-like with its WiFI browser capabilities, also with GMail support via www.

I also had a certain mobile device been worth mentioning.  It was the C-Pen.  Basically that was a really fat pen serving as FineReader's OCR scanner so that one could scan all printed documents and place the text in txt files to be sent by IrDA or a serial cable.  It also had some dictionaries built-in which is quite a nice option when one learns some foreign language; after scanning a word, definition pops up in less than a second.  So this could be considered an e-dictionary also.  It had C API so one could write apps for it.  Unfortunately the company had troubles and now produces only the scanners attached via usb (so no more mobile).

[Tenacious]

Now I consider Kindle when I get to the US (which is next Saturday), to be serving as a PDA-like with its WiFI browser capabilities, also with GMail support via www.

There is color e-reader now, forget it's name.  What part of the US are you visiting?

[DiskDoctor]

There is color e-reader now, forget it's name.  What part of the US are you visiting?

You mean Nook?  But I'm not sure if the said colour is realised in the e-ink technology.  E-ink is all I want.  Besides, Kindle is extremely cheap.

I will go to Pacific Grove, CA for around a week.

[yakumo9275]

palm pilot professional (1mb!) -> iiix -> peg300c -> handera -> tungsten e1... still got the e1..

the best was probably the professional, loved its backlight and it was just plain cool

[mpiva]

Again, I'm surprised several of you mentioned games. I've never played anything beyond Minehunt and Othello while waiting for a plane.  Mpiva, what great games did you find?

Redshift has some awesome RPGs.  They have amazing graphics but since they're old fashioned turn-based RPGs they're great to play in a casual setting such as a waiting room.  You can be in the middle of fighting a monster and, when the nurse calls your name, simply turn it off and continue later.  There's no worring about dying because you looked up at the wrong moment.

Warfare Incorporated (sorry can't seem to find a working link) was, by far, the best RTS game on the Palm.

Rifle Slugs was a good Worms-like game.

Ricochet was a great brick-out type game.

And, of course, there was Bejeweled2.