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Handspring Visor Deluxe $249
Who needs color for schedule, contact info?

Hell, even minute browsing (gathering some reports of online traffic for a client) don't *NEED* color.
/**
Welcome to the Internet: Leave your privacy at the door...

PalmOS has been licensed for use in such devices as the HandSpring Visor, TRGPro, and others. Furthermore, you can run ucLinux on it.

With many WinCE devices, developers had to produce multiple versions of the same program to cope with different devices' displays, controls, and processors. Hardly an open standard.

While you're scrawling commands at a prompt or waiting as X groks away the last of your memory and rejoicing "Hooray for Open Source!" the Palm users will be -- get ready now -- using their PDA's for productive use.

As an example of an alternative, I have a handspring visor and a modem. I can dial into my computer at home or in the office and get my email and such. I even have a telnet program (I would kill for ssh on this thing). Once I find a cell phone that I can plug into it I'll be set.

I hope that this kind of freedom will be available to palm users, but I kinda doubt it.

On a different note, why does a $99 Rio have 4x the memory of a $400 palm?

All of your claims are factually incorrect. Look at the Visor product details page.

* mild mannered physics grad student by day *

In the Development Zone area of Palm Computing's web site, they have a pinout diagram of the Palm's serial port. More importantly, however, if you register as an independent Palm Solutions Provider with Palm (registration is FREE), one of the many things Palm provides is a list of hardware vendors which sell serial port connectors and modem casings which will fit various Palm devices. In addition, Handspring, which makes the PalmOS-based Visor, provides mechanical information on all of their products, including suggested dimensions for both standard and expanded SpringBoard modules. They also provide a list of recommended vendors for SpringBoard module casings.

In the Development Zone area of Palm Computing's web site, they have a pinout diagram of the Palm's serial port. More importantly, however, if you register as an independent Palm Solutions Provider with Palm (registration is FREE), one of the many things Palm provides is a list of hardware vendors which sell serial port connectors and modem casings which will fit various Palm devices. In addition, Handspring, which makes the PalmOS-based Visor, provides mechanical information on all of their products, including suggested dimensions for both standard and expanded SpringBoard modules. They also provide a list of recommended vendors for SpringBoard module casings.

In the Development Zone area of Palm Computing's web site, they have a pinout diagram of the Palm's serial port. More importantly, however, if you register as an independent Palm Solutions Provider with Palm (registration is FREE), one of the many things Palm provides is a list of hardware vendors which sell serial port connectors and modem casings which will fit various Palm devices. In addition, Handspring, which makes the PalmOS-based Visor, provides mechanical information on all of their products, including suggested dimensions for both standard and expanded SpringBoard modules. They also provide a list of recommended vendors for SpringBoard module casings.

In the Development Zone area of Palm Computing's web site, they have a pinout diagram of the Palm's serial port. More importantly, however, if you register as an independent Palm Solutions Provider with Palm (registration is FREE), one of the many things Palm provides is a list of hardware vendors which sell serial port connectors and modem casings which will fit various Palm devices. In addition, Handspring, which makes the PalmOS-based Visor, provides mechanical information on all of their products, including suggested dimensions for both standard and expanded SpringBoard modules. They also provide a list of recommended vendors for SpringBoard module casings.

As I'm sure most other readers know, that'd be handspring, with their Visor machine.

As I'm sure most other readers know, that'd be handspring, with their Visor machine.

Hello Katz,

I'd be more than happy to share some of my reading habits with you.

Newspapers have never quite tickled my fancy, I've always had a hard time to tackle an overly large and totally untame sheet of paper. The times I do read something news worthy would be over a person's shoulder or when it appears in a more tame form (ie. cut into pieces).

On the average, being a geek, I'm a real busy person and would give almost nothing to the major newspapers out there (but I'v seen the new Onion), politics and gossip just does not delight me. The only time you do see me get over my boredom and read something in default format would be to turn the newspaper on it's back, and explor the last few pages in the hope of finding something comical to entertain.

The same goes for traditional books. I am an avid reader, but over the last few years, I've been slacking very badly (since it's just not economically possible to read a book anymore nowdays). All sorts of constraints apply when reading a book.

My solutions arrived in the form a small electornic device (which I immediatly dubbed 'garo' -- a long lost feline friend). This device was a PalmOS based Handspring Visor Delux, with 8mb ram and the ability to upgrade using an unique hardware modular slot (even though it's flash is not upgradeable).

After having exhausted my batters in less than a week (of continuous play with the Visor), I decided to explore the waste expances of software available for PalmOS. I installed utility after utility, getting delighted with the slightest twist of a coding wizard (and yes the little mirror program that turned your palm screen black did send giggles up my spine and entertain a whole load of female friends).

One of the delightfully free software that was buzzed down my USB connection into my Visor was AvantGo. Which was a mixture of channel based online newsfeeds and other resources (even /. could be tamed to exist inside my avantgo). I quickly started to apperciate the depth and breath of this free services and the number of channels available on my Visor. This is the time I started to read newsspapers seriously. I have the following channels on my Visor, CNet's News.com channel (updated puter type microsoftish news), ExploreZone (Scientific not so in depth news), HollyWood.com (Movie times for my city! very important -- daily as everyting else), New York Time ( traditional media now readable), PalmCentral/PDABuzz, Slashdot.org (Oh baby .. this could be created by making a custom channel in avant go and putting this URL in), The weather channel (Ok, not so necessary in the desert :))), USAToday (fine with me), Wired News (Some low tech is fine while doing the daily garbage disposal).

I take my visor everwhere, it fits snuggly in my pocket and feels very conforatble in my hand. All channels are updated at least once a day. I usually update early morning and in the evenining. News is read where I happen to be :)

Now that takes care of news.. What about books?! It took me over a month to get into books on my Visor and man.. Now I'm reading almost 2 books a week after that. My fav doc reader would undoubtably be Bill Clagett's CSpotRun, A GPLed reader that is undoubtably the king of all Doc Readers out there. It has the ability to make the fonts closer, to turn the text into every single position known on the pilot (read from the sides or upside down?), autoscroll, drag scroll, scroll using the pageup-pagedown (fun!), and anything you could contribute! Ebooks are fun! Most books from the gutenberg project have been converted into ebooks over at MemoWare also you could OCR any book you own and convert it into doc format using the linux doctoolkit. Others check here. I have read War and Peace (over 1/2 million words) by Tolstoy (free on tolstoy.org), re-read Most books from William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke and various other entities. I've also had the pleasure of reading classics such as ShakesSpeare, SunTzu, Tolkein, Plato, Confucious and many others right on my PDA.

Overall, the handheld computer with it's extreemly large memory (yes books in electornic format are tiny!) has been the only reason why I've gone back and read so many books (not to mention carry around so many techical notes and moste of the relevant HOWTO pages). I would recommend a handheld PDA to anyone who reads it and encorage them to read electornic Newspapers and e-books on a regualar basis.

Enjoy!
--

I have a Handspring Visor that I use on a daily basis and bought specifically because of the expansion module (and lower price). I'm hoping that someone will come out with a springboard module that doesn't extend beyond the edge of the Visor's case. The MiniJam from Innogear just seems to bulky and the small size of the Music Clip from Sony proves it. Remove the screen and usb connector (I'm guessing you can load songs into the modules via the springboard connector through the Visor at a decent rate) from the Music Clip and the circuitry must be quite small. The only issues would then be the buttons, headphone jack (put them on the top edge of the springboard) and battery life (use a rechargable battery pack in the module and dc power connector on the top or just use the visor batteries). One of the reasons PDA's are cool is because they're small and I'd like to keep mine that way.

Handspring Visor (TM) + iSilo (TM) + The Perl CD Bookshelf = Perl Hacker's Reference Nirvana

I carry 6 books with me on Perl, along with the whole bundle of Perl docs that come with Perl itself, on my Handspring Visor with a memory expansion module. It's nice, fairly readable and usable, and searchable. I even read the XS tutorial while in the can. It took some ponderance and reflection, and what a better place to do it? :)

As for the search engine on the CD-- it's in Java, and I've gotten it working under Linux. IIRC, there are directions in the kit on how to get it working.

As for books in general, I'm working on getting more and more of them into my Visor, but I still tend to need a physical papery copy of it lying around. Electronic books (at least on the Visor) still haven't gotten the correct user interface details down to replace paper.

My current companion is DocBook: The Definitive Guide, so that I can be a DocBook XML expert while composing the massive body of documentation for my Open Source project. Try learning a new set of XML tags without flipping rapidly back and forth to see what's valid within what, what attributes are legal where, and what the hell is this?

I think you can get a visor to do that with a bit of work....

Handspring has had a tech contact the developer of the Visor module for Linux USB serial support. This module is already part of the 2.3.40 kernel and some people have reported success in hotsync'ing using it at limited speeds. But it is nice to see Handspring offer assistence with the on-going effort.

Palm is not the only PalmOS device out there. Handspring has the Visor which is exactly like a Pilot and even uses the same handwriting scheme. So will Xerox sue them too?
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:

This "pluggable" MP3 player for the Gameboy reminds me a whole lot of the Handspring "Springboard" MP3 player from Innogear. The MiniJam Player uses the same approach as this Gameboy product uses of inserting a module with a DSP, stero-out, and memory; and leaving the "host" hardware to do management functions.

I might actually buy the player from Innogear: I just love those buttons on the top (ala MiniDisc)! It is just too bad they had to go with a proprietary flash memory spec. Bummer.

For the MiniJam spec in PDF, click here.

-AP

The great thing about the palm for me, is the ability to have all the information you could want with you at all times. For class, I have

• a copy of the book that we're reading in class
• AvantGo for reading the news when class gets insomniating
• the todo list for writing down homework assignments
• the memopad for taking notes (well, classes other than math and physics)
• date book for keeping track of meetings with teachers or consultant work after school

A note on graffiti: it's great for what it was intended for, quick jots while holding the device in your hand without having to unfold or setup anything. Meeting someone and taking down their number/setting up an appointment is really what the system was geared for. It doesn't scale up very well, though, for something like taking extended notes in class or working on a paper. So, I now am anxiously awaiting This really cool folding keyboard.

I have gotten to play with a WinCE (I refuse to call them by their new name) device (my dad's HP Journada). Save the battery life (s'posedly 10 hours) and possibly the price (~$900) I see no reason to buy one of those things. True, it can do all the things that most people want from a laptop (ms office stuff, web access, email) but in that case, why not just get a laptop? As for using them as a PDA-type function. They are a bit smaller than a laptop, but not small enough. One of the major things I enjoy with my Visor, is that I always have it on hand. During class, at work, at a consulting job, and at home. You just can't just stuff a jornada in your front pocket (well, I probably can [mmm, big pockets. plenty of room for visor, RJ-45 crimper, penguins, etc..] ;-) but it's still not very practical).

So, I always have my Visor, and am thusly never really bored (games, books, news, work). The next step is to go for total integration: wire the visual output directly to my brain and have the unit tickle my visual cortex so that the screen overlays whatever I see. After that, thought recognition and after that make it have some sort of temporal shifting capabilities so it knows what I want it to do, even before I tell it (hrm... reminds me of some certain elevators ;-)).

I've yet to see NSI follow any sort of pattern with our requests. Some changes are accepted the first time and go through quickly. Other times I've had to resend the [binary-identical] request 20 or 30 times before NSI's robot decides that it is really a valid request and then waited for an insanely long period of time for a trivial database update[1]. The bottom line is that we try never to do domain updates of any sort without planning for a month's delay. [1] Forget the usual /. "My Linux PC could do better" mantra. In NSI's case, I'm starting to wonder if my Visor would be faster...

Hmm. I have a domain that actually some folks might be interested in. I grabbed it from a lame delegator some time ago because I was at the time setting up an IRC net. We were popular for about, oh, 3 months... then we got to the point where we had more servers than people. :-)

Wonder how much I could get for nameless.net? I'll trade someone it for a new Visor Deluxe :-)

Congratulations, you have found the device that you want for your needs.

I had a handheld CE device for some time. Its touchscreen recently broke so it's only usable with the keyboard. But even before then, I had the following beefs with it:

1. Its scheduling app was not something that made sense on a handheld or palm-based device. It felt just like a copy of Outlook (which ties in with point #3, btw.)

2. The traditional Windows GUI metaphors just don't work on handheld devices. I mean, come on, we're going to simulate right-clicking by holding down Alt and tapping?

3. It only syncs with Microsoft products. I can't emphasize enough how terrible that really is. I've been slowly migrating to FreeBSD and Linux more and more for all my ``desktop'' work. They do a good job of being compatible with each other. However, my H/PC, as well as Outlook itself (which can import iCal/vCard but can't export them), hold the data I've trusted them with very close and don't let it go.

CE just bothers me. Its interface is unintuitive for doing what I expect a handheld or palm unit to do first and foremost -- calendaring and contacts. I'm getting a Visor as soon as I can. (Ironically enough, where I used to work, an engineer recently sold his Nino after having offered it for several months. But another tech who has a Palm III just mentions in passing he might be upgrading to a newer Palm and there are already three people lined up to buy it.)

Next I'd get a copy of The WIZARD of SPEED and TIME for the best geek film ever.

Team up with the guys from PALM and/or HANDSPRING.
For them, the availability to download books into their devices
has cash value since it can attract new customers.
They'll eventually place some pointer to PG into
their hand-held manuals or their web sites.

Try to get some authors to sponsor PG by providing
etext stuff (or even books?) donated to PG.

Speak to Tim O'Reilly. ;)

The /. crew provides a column "My Favorite
Literature Download of the Month" which can
bring new insights to geeks who usually read more
Perl than literature pearls (training the other
half of your brain cannot be wrong and
might even improve your programming skills :)


--

As good as this news seems, I have to wonder where the Palm platform is headed in terms of expandability. I just ordered a Visor Deluxe with the Springboard expansion slot to replace my Palm III. Then along comes the TRGPro with Compact Flash. Now we've got Sony (PalmMan?) with the memory stick.

That's three, count 'em three, incompatible standards for one computing platform. The Springboard module is bigger than CF so you can make a CF to Springboard adapter.

But what about the memory stick? Granted its supposed to be as small as a stick of gum. So you could probably squeeze it onto the same device as a Springboard or CF slot but we're talking about a device that's the size of a deck of cards here. There just isn't much room for expansion slots.

So you're going to have the situation where one technology will catch on and the others will fall by the wayside. If you bet on the wrong one, you wind up with a hand held Beta VCR. That's a bit of an exageration since you could still use the device as an organizer and handheld computer, just like the Palm Pilot. And it will still run rings aroung WinCE in terms of usability.

I would guess that the memory stick will die out as a technology. It only seems good enough for, well memory while CF and the Springboard are much more versatile.

I called them once. Way back when. Just to see if my order was subject to their ordering database bug (see their website). They redirected me from the toll-free number to an ordinary long distance number to get information on my unit... and they put me back on hold during that time.

(That might have changed, since their staffing has apparently been seriously reinforced.)

In the end, I learned my order was intact, and that my Visor should be in my hands "around Halloween" as I was originally promised. I'M STILL WAITING.

Once it comes, I'll happily throw my two cents in about battery life and anything else I can blather about without being as off topic as this message seems to have become.

Anyone noticed that you cant get past the first page of handspring?

About a half dozen posts take the tact that "Well, all educational technology fails to work, thus this contest is a waste of time."

There were a couple early Java system contests offering reasonable prizes (Sparcs) that were won by ridiculously simple programs. After that, there were a couple of contests that generated pretty good programs. Then an industry arose. Someone had faith at the beginning.

Faith takes risks. Risks make profits. Some slashdotter out there will write the cannonical multiple choice test with a 'beam results to teacher' option and score a new Visor. Maybe someone will get jealous, and make something new and useful.

Berkeley, California had been running a program for a couple years where each student needed to sit in front a computer for a few hours each week to run somewhat silly rote testing problems. Most students found it boring. Still, Berkeley persisted because it 'rescued' some students who could learn basic reading and math skills in a private setting instead of admiting illiteracy in front of a class. The technology did serve a purpose in a school.

Have some faith folks, someone will make a profit here.

Okay...no one seems to have mentioned this, so thought I'd share a dirty little secret with my fellow slashdotters.

When a company pisses you off...fails to respond to your questions...or is just generally unreachable...there is something can get you on the inside track...run a WHOIS. Check out what is listed for handspring.com:


JD TECHNOLOGY (HANDSPRING-DOM)
189 RENARDO AVE.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94043
US

Domain Name: HANDSPRING.COM

Administrative Contact:
HAWKINS, JEFF (JH28760) JHAWKINS@HANDSPRING.COM
650 230 5000 (FAX) 650 230 2100
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
BOLY, JEFF (JB37706) jboly@HANDSPRING.COM
650 230 5000
Billing Contact:
JD TECHNOLOGY (JT240-ORG) no.valid.email@WORLDNIC.NET
650 470 0944
Fax- 650 470 0943


Presto...look at all that information. There's a couple of fax numbers. Why not sent them a firm, but polite request for information? According to the WHOIS, they have phone numbers that begin with 650-230 and 650-470. Why not try wardialing them to see what other extensions you can find?

Notice the e-mail addresses and the pattern they follow: first initial plus last name. That means that you probably know the e-mail addresses for everyone on the Executive Team like Donna Dubinsky, Ed Colligan, Bernard Whitney, Mike Gallucci and so forth.

Also rememeber that any other domains that show up on a WHOIS can lead to more information. Check out all the other domains that ol' Jeff currently owns.

Now, of course, this is dirty dirty pool. These people are not going to like being contacted directly. But this only underscores how STUPID it is that Network Solutions forces us to put our real information in a public database. That's why I run a WHOIS on major technology companies every day. Whenever I get a busy Vice President on the phone...I am sure to let him know how I got this phone number so he can be sure to let that @#$!@$#! Network Solutions know what he thinks of this WHOIS nightmare.

Anyway...if you goal is to find out when your Visor is shipping...contacting someone on a WHOIS is a good way to make sure you get put last on the list. But a friend of mine had Handspring put an $800 hold on his credit card (which would cover the cost of THREE Visors, not the ONE he ordered) and after politely alerting everyone at Handspring to his problem, he got a personal apology from Donna. And later that day, a phone call from Sally, the head of customer service promising to resolve it ASAP.

So...to review...if you have a SERIOUS issue...go ahead and try a WHOIS. But remember that this type of contact can easily be considered abuse, so if aren't careful and tactful you will end up doing yourself more harm than good.

- JoeShmoe

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Handspring is not responding to emailed questions about the problem. Word on usenet is that they plan to release the source, but not now, and maybe not for the current version. Of course GPL Sections 5 and 7 clearly state that you can't distribute derivative works unless you're prepared to offer source at the same time.

-Peter, no longer so enthusiastic about Handspring

http://www.handspring.com/visor_info.html

wow. that says backlight there.

Handspring modules carry their own applications with them - if you plug in the module, the software installs itself, if you take it out, the software gets uninstalled. Transparent to the user (freaky!), and supposedly pretty stable (details here).

Is this good or bad? I don't know, I rather have controll over the installed applications...

Handspring modules carry their own applications with them - if you plug in the module, the software installs itself, if you take it out, the software gets uninstalled. Transparent to the user (freaky!), and supposedly pretty stable (details here).

Is this good or bad? I don't know, I rather have controll over the installed applications...

Have you seen the Handspring Visor Deluxe? Its available in 5 flavors^H^H^H^H^H^H^H colors.. Handspring

I think this is a good thing, and I hope that they use this new found power wisely. It would be so easy to go down the WinCE path and just paint pretty pictures all over the place. Yuk.

Who thinks they will "enhance" the GUI? Given their track record, I think they will be OK. Oops, it's not their track record is it? It those guys over at HandSpring that created the Palm. Hmmm, maybe the Palm will hand grenade itself...

you mean http://www.handspring.com not mindspring.com, that's the isp.

oops - it is http://www.handspring.com/

Handspring is a new, *more* simplified handheld coming from a company created by the original founders of Palm Computing before it was bought by USR which was later bought by 3Com.

For more fluff, check here.