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People are freaking out at the TreoCentral thread where they're discussing the WiFi SDIO cards. Some kind of problem, technical or corporate, between SanDisk and Handspring might put the kibosh on the SanDisk card whose delivery date has been slipping for months. But other suppliers seem undaunted in their promises, and Handspring seems convinced their current HW can support a WiFi SDIO card. Perhaps consumer demand will speed the delivery of the WiFi feature from someone. Or perhaps a Bluetooth SDIO card to WiFi gateway, which would be a paltry compromise.

The reason all of the vendors seem to be out of stock (I believe) is that they are clearing inventory in anticipation of the release of the new XT model. There are a number of advantages that would seem to make it worthwhile to wait.

One of the major complaints about the older Stowaway was that you had to have a smooth, level surface to type on, otherwise the keyboard would try to fold up again on you. You can see in the pics on this page that the back of the case now prevents that. Also, another major complaint was that the interface for your PDA on the old model was off center and had no real support. Again, on that page you can see that they've now centered it and added a nifty pull-out cradle to help keep your PDA stable.

Hopefully they'll bring them to market soon. In the meantime if I were in your place I'd try to make do for a while. Alternatively you could always snag one and sell it later on eBay. Hmmm...actually there may be one or two up for sale now. Might be worth it until the XT hits the market.

The first would be the lack of tactile response. After all, your desktop or any other hard surface would become uncomfortable after just a few minutes IMHO.

The second would be the lack of any position designators - i.e. the 'f' and 'j' keys. Most 10 fingered typers probably don't even think about it anymore, but it's very easy to lose your place without them. I suspect this would become very annoying if taking notes in class during a lecture or in a business meeting.

As far as a good portable keyboard for a PDA, my money is on the new Stowaway XT. It's been getting really good reviews/previews.

Anyone been lucky enough to play around with one yet?

If you have a Handspring Visor, which IMHO was one of the best PDA's ever, there are instructions for how to extract the ROM using the supplied USB cradle over at VisorCentral.com.

VisorCentral has also picked up the story (complete with pictures):

http://visorcentral.com/content/Stories/1448-1.htm

FCC also has info including the users manual

According to this review over at Visor Central and one at O'Reilly its a pretty nice card.

But I remember reading another review saying that its speed was nowhere near the 11Mbits advertised. This isn't really surprising considering the speed of the Dragnball processor that runs the Visor. But I'll be it beats the heck out of the VisorPhone's data mode (which is really an analog modem connection to your ISP over the cell network).

Brian

The low-battery warning comes on fairly consistently after about 2 hours of call time. Since I spend a lot of time on the road, I tend to carry my charger in my briefcase, and charge when I am at my desk. This works well for me because the charger works quite rapidly, but some people will be disappointed by the relatively limited capacity of the Treo battery.

This is true- the battery life is pretty much unacceptable on the Treo. However, the new firmware shipping on newer units is supposed to dramatically improve the battery life. Supposedly, Handspring will make this downloadable soon.

Yes, you can make data calls to an ISP and this works well, but call setup time is still at least 30 seconds, which seems like an eternity to me.


This doesn't have to be the case. If you dial into your own ISP, it will take quite a while to negotiate the connection - but if you are using voicestream, you can call into their ISDN enabled number. It's quite reliable and connects in about 6 seconds. When I switched from my standard ISP to dialing into voicesteam's (which is free, BTW) it made all the difference in the world as far as usability of the internet features.

Size: It has a smaller footprint. The documents are reduced too. Want graphics: you can choose page per page, greyscale, bw, color, or none at all. Same with Link Depth, as deep as you want.

Easy Automation: iSilo for Windows to set up the channels, iSiloXC to have them update nightly. It's not as dead simple as AvantGo, but it sure is easier than Plucker (for now, we'll see what I think when I'm not running a windows box)

Channel Customization: Each channel becomes its own document. No homepage to configure. You can
delete channels when you're done reading them.

Navigation: iSilo has back, forward, page up, page down, and % of a page navigation.
Scrolling: the Autoscroll is still not as clear as CSpotRun's (nothing is, IMO, and I can't say why..), butclear enough and handy. You can also customize the behavoir of scroll buttons, jog dials, screen scroll buttons...

Custom Views: Whatever you want, from straight BW up to the max your PDA can handle, be it Handera or Sony's monster-color. like the scrollbar, keep it. hate it? ditch it. Same with the top and bottom toolbars.

Speed: yep. She's fast.

Expansion: Ok, this doesn't apply to me since I use a Treo. But iSilo can install directly to expansion cards (though I don't know about visors... may not be there...).

Categories: Put your channels in categories.

One App for both Documents and Web sites.
Copying: easily copy text, whatever portion you want.

Button Customization: Set up all your buttons (including Handera/Sony's jog push and back.. and hopefully soon also for the Treo) to do what you want, scroll, next page, autoscroll toggle, bookmarks, back, forward, etc.

Bookmarks: Insert bookmarks in any document on the fly. You can also just "mark" a location for faster
returns.

Screen Regions: The screen is split into 4ths, each region can be set to dragging scroll, page scroll, line
scroll, etc.

...phew! That about does it.

The not-so-good

Custom content: AvantGo hides their channel links and some are just unavailable to others. I can't find the NYT frontpage or bookreviews. I had to sign up for Salon Premium and do their daily download to get it.

Link Depth: Somehow, even channels designed for avantgo get screwy. Slashdot, for example, gets hella-big when I set link depth to 3. when i set it to 2, no comments, so no point.

Not a Browser: well, this is a plus for me, b/c I've got a browser in ROM and therefore I don't need another. but still...

Easy Channels: Hunting for channels is a PITA, especially when you discover that you're just not going to find them. Your only friend in this endeavor is the site: tag on google.

...there ya go, get iSilo

Size: It has a smaller footprint. The documents are reduced too. Want graphics: you can choose page per page, greyscale, bw, color, or none at all. Same with Link Depth, as deep as you want.

Easy Automation: iSilo for Windows to set up the channels, iSiloXC to have them update nightly. It's not as dead simple as AvantGo, but it sure is easier than Plucker (for now, we'll see what I think when I'm not running a windows box)

Channel Customization: Each channel becomes its own document. No homepage to configure. You can
delete channels when you're done reading them.

Navigation: iSilo has back, forward, page up, page down, and % of a page navigation.
Scrolling: the Autoscroll is still not as clear as CSpotRun's (nothing is, IMO, and I can't say why..), butclear enough and handy. You can also customize the behavoir of scroll buttons, jog dials, screen scroll buttons...

Custom Views: Whatever you want, from straight BW up to the max your PDA can handle, be it Handera or Sony's monster-color. like the scrollbar, keep it. hate it? ditch it. Same with the top and bottom toolbars.

Speed: yep. She's fast.

Expansion: Ok, this doesn't apply to me since I use a Treo. But iSilo can install directly to expansion cards (though I don't know about visors... may not be there...).

Categories: Put your channels in categories.

One App for both Documents and Web sites.
Copying: easily copy text, whatever portion you want.

Button Customization: Set up all your buttons (including Handera/Sony's jog push and back.. and hopefully soon also for the Treo) to do what you want, scroll, next page, autoscroll toggle, bookmarks, back, forward, etc.

Bookmarks: Insert bookmarks in any document on the fly. You can also just "mark" a location for faster
returns.

Screen Regions: The screen is split into 4ths, each region can be set to dragging scroll, page scroll, line
scroll, etc.

...phew! That about does it.

The not-so-good

Custom content: AvantGo hides their channel links and some are just unavailable to others. I can't find the NYT frontpage or bookreviews. I had to sign up for Salon Premium and do their daily download to get it.

Link Depth: Somehow, even channels designed for avantgo get screwy. Slashdot, for example, gets hella-big when I set link depth to 3. when i set it to 2, no comments, so no point.

Not a Browser: well, this is a plus for me, b/c I've got a browser in ROM and therefore I don't need another. but still...

Easy Channels: Hunting for channels is a PITA, especially when you discover that you're just not going to find them. Your only friend in this endeavor is the site: tag on google.

...there ya go, get iSilo

This same discussion is being help at VisorCentral. So far we have come that if you want free, you use Plucker. If you are willing to pay you should use iSilo. Check out the thread if you want

Althought the price has fortunately come down on the Minijam, support is less than stellar for new operating systems. In fact, Innogear originally said they had no plans to support WinXP or Mac OS X. Looking at their FAQ I see they now say they're "exploring" XP and OS X support for "early 2002".

Given that Innogear still hasn't implemented the originally promised functionality to read e-books and other files directly from the Minijam's memory, I'm skeptical that they'll get around to it that soon.

Plus, the Minijam uses MMC cards with a proprietary format, so you wouldn't be able to pop your MMC card into any old desktop adapter and pull your MP3's off that way (or put new ones on).

Early Visor adopters may remember Innogear as the company that boldly announced the SixPack module early on, which was supposedly going to provide six features like a 56kmodem, 8 megs of flash memory, vibrating alarm, voice recorder, etc. They claimed it would cost $199 and that it would be available Q1 2000.

After pushing that release date back for the better part of a year, they announced the cancellation of the project. I've never bought any Innogear products, as much as I'd like an MP3 player for my Visor, because I don't trust the company to provide me with adequate support for the damn thing.

The SoundsGood MP3 player springboard seemed to be well received, but it has been discontued and didn't use external memory.

You'll find all kinds of consumer opinion about the Minijam at this site.

-Andy

P.S. You might want to check out the Sony Clie PEG-N760c for PDA/MP3 Capability. Sony seems poised to kick Handspring's ass.

And for those who poopoo the significance of firewire, speed matters. In the handheld world, I compared 2 MP3 modules whose biggest difference is the speed of file transfers. Our readers cared more about speed than the size of the modules themselves, and I think iPod users will too.

The fast lookup feature lets you look up an entry in the address book using only the four app-launch buttons, in a binary-tree sort of way. It is described, with a screen shot, here:

http://www.visorcentral.com/page/0-6-102-3-6.htm

steveha

here is our AF article. I got plenty of emails from people saying how good it was and a few from people wanting more info on it. :)
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James Hromadka

Go to http://www.visorcentral.com and look in the forums for a guy named "DKessler". This guy is singlehandidly designing modules and releasing plans to folks.
He seems to post in the "Springboards" area.
He started the "CF adaptor" thread.

Kalrand

-the voice of reason

Handspring also has a cell phone coming out. It's a Springboard module that was announced today.
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James Hromadka

Something missing from the /back is that there is a review of the SoundsGood MP3 player for the Handspring Visor now.
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James Hromadka

There is an MP3 Springboard module for the Visor that plays on the Mac called the MiniJam.
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James Hromadka

Visor Central has a review of it. I couldn't even find the story on EETimes...it looks like they have a database problem...(SlashDotted?)

The transfer speeds for the MiniJam (that's its name) seem to be its major problem. If you wanted to fill only half of the 32MB module it wouls take somewhere around 7:30 to complete.

I'm not saying that this is a bad piece of hardware. As a matter of fact, I belive that the handheld market will be pushing technology further and further in the future. But, most ppl won't be willing to wait that long. Think of it this way...

* 1MB MP3 ~ 1 minute of CD quality music.

* So, that means that the 64MB unit comes to right about the same size as 1 CD.

* It takes ~ 15 minutes to burn a CD on my $130 4X4X24

* This thing costs $259 and at the reported transfer rate, it takes about the same time to fill it up with MP3s as it does to burn a CD.

Now, I got a pretty good deal on my CD-RW...I have seen similar units in the $179 range. Now, if we do a little math...that is a difference of $80. Now, if we buy our CDs in bulk, we get somewhere around $.50 a piece. That makes 160 CDs. Do we see where I'm going now. Now, many people talk about the anti-skip features of a solid-state player...ok, so go buy one of the cheaper stand-alone units out there. There's no reason I would buy this unit...however, a better solution might be to make a cable+software combo that would let you transfer MP3s on one of the 320MB (or even the 1GB) MicroDrives to one of the portable MP3 players.

2 x 0.35-inch MP3 module around a 74-MHz ARM7 processor from Cirrus Logic Inc., 64 Mbytes of NAND flash memory and a 1-bit D/A converter from Cirrus' Crystal division, at 24-bit resolution and a 96-kHz sample rate.

There is also the one from InnoGear called the MiniJam that just came out as well. This one uses Multimedia Cards (MMC) that store the MP3s. Looks like they have cards in 32 and 64MB sizes and the player can hold 2 of those cards. While it is a little bigger than the SoundsGood, but it is only $249.00. You can read a review of the MiniJam here VisorCentral

there is another, perhaps better known (at least in the Visor community) Springboard MP3 player. The MiniJam from InnoGear uses removable MMC cards for storage. There is a user's review of it (with plenty of pix) here. That same site, VisorCentral also lists an announced-but-not-shipping Rio Springboard module from Diamond.

there is another, perhaps better known (at least in the Visor community) Springboard MP3 player. The MiniJam from InnoGear uses removable MMC cards for storage. There is a user's review of it (with plenty of pix) here. That same site, VisorCentral also lists an announced-but-not-shipping Rio Springboard module from Diamond.

The networked clock and kitchen appliances are coming soon.
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James Hromadka

The Visor Deluxe (which I have) is an even better value, as for only $60 more you quadruple your RAM usage. By the fact that you are reading this on Slashdot you should get the VDX for the extra memory, as you're sure to load it with AvantGo channels and the like.

Call it a shameless plug, but if you want to read more on the Visor and the Springboard modules/accessories available for it, check out www.visorcentral.com.
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James Hromadka

True, but a wireless modem for Handspring will be out soon enough. More then that, there will be a _choice_ of wireless modems and plans. Just take a look here -- 4 wireless modules were shown at PC Expo.

You want to talk about apples and oranges, quit using the company name as the product name. It is the Handspring Visor. The name of the product is not the "Handspring." And although it's not due until later this month, the Glenayre @ctiveLink will be the first 2-way Springboard module (and also the first to be usable outside the Visor).
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James Hromadka

Ah, but wait until Bluetooth is out in force. Then you can communicate with more than one Visor/Palm at a time, and not worry about line-of-sight issues. The Visor will be getting Bluetooth soon, and Palm made an announcement of putting Bluetooth in their organizers as well.
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James Hromadka

sadr's reply to your post makes the most sense. But in case you're still interested, one of the many vapor modules that's supposed to come out for the Handspring visor is a cell phone module. I've seen pictures of prototypes. There's an ear piece for the speaker, and you use the built in microphone on the visor as the mic. Unfortunately I don't have the url off the top of my head, but there is a decent list of modules and status at VisorCentral.

Jason

sadr's reply to your post makes the most sense. But in case you're still interested, one of the many vapor modules that's supposed to come out for the Handspring visor is a cell phone module. I've seen pictures of prototypes. There's an ear piece for the speaker, and you use the built in microphone on the visor as the mic. Unfortunately I don't have the url off the top of my head, but there is a decent list of modules and status at VisorCentral.

Jason

So you say that anyday now we should expect Palm to drop all their lisencees?

Interestingly, this IPO filing occurs on the same week that they even have their _only_ product in the retail channel (not counting direct mail-order/web sales).

Supposedly Handspring has a few other products in the pipe (from an interview when the Visor was initially avilable). Maybe they need the cash from an IPO to follow through with them. Though I would think that it really woudn't be that hard for them to get most any VC that they need.

-mark

With cool addons like the folding Stowaway keyboard and the upcoming SixPak, Handspring is going to really take off. And what's good for HS is good for Palm.
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James Hromadka

With cool addons like the folding Stowaway keyboard and the upcoming SixPak, Handspring is going to really take off. And what's good for HS is good for Palm.
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James Hromadka

Check out www.visorcentral.com -- they have a lot of those addon modules listed. Of course, it doesn't appear until somewhere in the year 2000...