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IIRC, Graffiti 2 is actually based on Jot, written by CIC. So, if you want anyone to apologize, it should be them. :P

According to Fossil's spec page, it uses Jot instead of Graffiti for input. You can download a demo of Jot if you want to try it out on a traditional Palm device.

Does the add-on software the author mentioned require Windows or can I use the current version of pilot-link?

I'm sure they only officially support Windows. But the interface is USB. Assuming they conform to Palm's specs, you may be able to use any other application that can talk with a USB-based Palm device. At least I hope so. If I can't sync it up with the Palm Desktop on my Mac, then it loses nearly all of its usefulness.

...this one has a battery life of 2 hours @ 33 MHZ

Where did you see that? Fossil's spec sheet says 4-5 days. Which should be fine if you stick it in its charger every night before going to bed. If you put a charger on your nightstand, it won't even be inconvenient.

If you look at the Sony product page, it says that it uses Graffiti 2 (Palm's rebranded version of Jot).

By reading the Federal Circuit opinion that reversed the district court's summary judgment, it seems that the key issue that prevents Jot from infringing is that it "does not allow for 'definitive recognition' of symbols immediately upon pen lift by the user." Certain letters and symbols in Jot -- 'T,' 'X,' the question mark, and so on -- require multiple strokes to create the character. The actual shapes of the characters are not part of the patent, so there's no problem with Jot and Xerox's Unistroke sharing swooshes.

This leads one to wonder why the Graffiti 'X' doesn't allow Graffiti to escape infringement -- the appellate court opinion quotes the district court as citing accented characters in this sense, but not Graffiti's two-stroke 'X.' If I had to make a wild guess, I'd assume this was proffered by Palm in district court and refuted by Xerox on the grounds that the first slash in the 'X' is actually the stroke to enter extended mode, and thus the 'X' is still technically a unistroke character. If Palm had simply reversed the direction of the strokes so that the first stroke wasn't extended mode, then they might have been immunized. Of such tiny errors are great patent cases decided.

If you look at the character chart, every Jot character except "X" has a one-stroke equivalent (in fact, only "I", "J", and "T" have a two-stroke varient).

Certainly modifying grafitti so that "X" is two strokes would not have been sufficient to fend off the lawsuit, right? So what gives?

Check out CIC's web site for information on JOT, as well as a listing of the symbols.

Check out CIC's web site for information on JOT, as well as a listing of the symbols.

For those who want an easier to use setup for Graffiti, try ScreenWrite, it's a hack (so you'll need hackmaster)

ScreenWrite has some nice features, "local echo" of your graffiti, so you can see it... making the whole screen a writing area, Caps/lowercase detected by size of your characters, etc... I'd highly recommend it.

or, if you just want a whole different HW recognition engine, try Jot.

As for new palm pilots, I'm still loving my Palm III with 2MB. For simple PIM apps it's great, and overclocking it makes my favorite breakout-style games run awesome.

Well, I'm dumping my Sharp organizer because it has a proprietary development kit and there's about five pieces of software -- none of which I want. Now I have another Linux PDA to consider.

For the record, Jot isn't a Microsoft invention. It's merely licensed from Communications Intelligence Corporation, which also sells Jot for PalmOS devices. Also note the spiffy "We Like Linux" graphic on the home page. :)