Handspring's New Palm-OS Entrants: Color and Speed

ResQuad writes: "Handspring realeased a new palm top in their Visor collection, the Prism. It is $450 and have 65k colors, compared to the 3c's 256 colors. It also has an internal Li-Ion battery. Handspring also came out with another new palm, the Platinum. It is still gray-scale, but it is suposed to be 50% faster that the Visor Deluxe. This makes four palms out from Handspring." These are the same models discussed a few weeks ago, but now Handspring claims that they're shipping. Personally, I'm still pretty happy with my Deluxe, but the Platinum one looks very nice.

Comments

Don't buy it just because of the photos

[alee]

Be careful here. You may be slightly misled by the 'photos' of the Visor.

The Prism looks awesome in the photos, but remember that the resolution is ONLY 160x160 -- the same as the Palm IIIc. For those that have seen the IIIc, you will remember that it has a very grainy resolution.

Although the Prism does have a higher color depth, and uses TFT color, unless the screen has a tighter dpi, you will probably find that it is only marginally better than the IIIc. Also, remember that it is thicker and heavier than a regular Visor.

Be careful buying this blind -- I'm very interested in seeing a real one up close, in both indoor light AND outdoor light. As far as color goes outside, I have only seen 2 color LCDs that really work well outside -- the Sony hybrid LCD on their digital camera, and the Compaq IPAQ. The rest wash out completely.

Re:How long will it run?

[Max von H.]

If your Palm 3 eats up its batteries, there's a few things that you may want to check:

- Leaving the Palm (only for units running on alkaline batteries) in its cradle drains the batteries. There's a *very* easy fix for that (a wire to cut in the cradle). You can find detailed instructions here

- Perform a warm reset, it often solves lots of problems. There's plenty of info on usenet, and I strongly recommend comp.sys.palmtops.pilot, there's heaps of guys who probably have all the answers to any question...

On average, my Palm IIIx runs about 18 hours on 2 AAA el-cheapo alkaline batteries, about 45 days of use. I once managed to run the beast a whoping 34 hours on a pair of the same batteries. Uptime hack is pretty handy, and once you get to know your batteries' discharge curve you can really guess how long they'll last (I have found many variations, even between batteries from the same pack).

Nevertheless, I really wouldn't mind a Palm Vx. The lithium-Ion battery is a dream to use, and if you know how to use them properly (recharge them as often as possible, never empty it totally and never, ever, leave the device usused with an empty battery).

Cheers,

/max