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Limitations in Current Breed of Palm Handhelds?
JabrTheHut asks: "Having been a Palm user for over two years now, I've upgraded to a Tungsten T3. While the features I'm used to using have not changed, I have become increasingly frustrated by what I see as a lack of progress. It doesn't seem to want to deal with text files (there is no import feature for the Palm Desktop notepad or memo pad, for example). Also there seems to be no way to copy arbitrary files to the Palm - all files must be "owned" by an application. With a 256MB SD card I expected to use it to copy files between work and home. Has anyone else noticed these or other shortcomings and have figured out ways around them?"
Buy a laptop.
But, seriously, find/write an application that copies files and "owns" them.
You could always write your own application that owns whatever files you want. I think it's possible in Java with J2ME.
Pocket PC.
Go ahead. MOD me down I don't care.
You Know I am Right!
The Palm desktop application sucks. You can work around some of the issues you mentioned though. Moving text files is pretty straightforward if you just copy and past the content. There are file size limitations though. A better way is to write to your SD card directly, and use (on the palm) an application (like FileZ or UniCMD) to access it.
Buy a Windows handheld.
Haha. Just kidding.
(ducks his head)
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
In Palm Quick Install.. Click on "Add" then select files of type "All Files (*.*)".
:)
Alternatively, get a SD card drive, its faster
Documents 2 Go can handle text files, alternatively, you can use the Palm Desktop to copy/paste things into memopad.
There are various shareware/freeware utils that act as very basic file managers for the palm, with hexedit capabilities. (They can also be used to edit/delete your preference files - which can come in useful)
My IBM Workpad C3 (rebranded Palm Vx) does everything I need in a PDA. Calender, address book, to-do list, note pad, minesweeper clone and patience. Anything more than those basic functions is just added fluff that I do not need.
/usr/games/fortune
1) PocketPC
2) 8-in-1 card reader
Third party applications are really the only solution to this problem, here's one I used a while back: http://www.tealpoint.com/softmovr.htm
Some Palms (and Palmish devices.. I have a Sony Clie) come with a gateway-type program you can use to put random files on the memory card. If yours doesn't have one built in, you may be able to find a third-party one.
mrg
this is the new PDA, unless Palm try harder (and not silly branding initiatives) they will be marginalized even further, palm are already considered last and if they dont buck their ideas up they are history left in the dust of the giants which would be a shame
There are many shortcomings with PDAs. Three years ago, I looked into getting one, but found too many limitations. Sure, they are small, and fairly easy to carry. The newer ones even let you do Bluetooth and WiFi.
I wanted a keyboard, so back then I would have to purchase an external one. So much for small and compact. I would then be carrying around the PDA, and then a keyboard. No thanks.
I decided on an iBook 14" at the time. Just this year, I upgraded to a Powerbook 15". I bring it everywhere. Sure, it is much heavier than a PDA, but I have all my music on there, all my photos, I bring it to meetings at work and training sessions, and take notes.
No more pen and paper. No limitations. Of course, it doesn't have to be Apple equipment. Just a laptop that is relatively light enough to carry around everywhere.
Need to check mail in the car? Get the Powerbook out, search a hotspot using MacStumbler in just about any residential area, and free internet access!
No wonder Sony is getting otu of the PDA market. Too many limitations.
Pocket PC has its own annoyances, but amazingly, it's one Microsoft product that does less arbitrary intervention on the user's behalf than the competition. Better yet, many ipaq's can be flashed with linux, and the Sharp handhelds, which are unfortunately no longer being sold in the US, run linux out of the box. As for the file transfer on an SD card thing, just get a cheap USB2 SD reader/writer. Way faster than transferring using the palm, and only like $10. There are a couple software products for PalmOS that will let you transfer files directly, or use it as a card reader for the SD card. I think FileZ is one of them, but there are others.
You can install anything to a SD card by selecting "Install to Card". Alternatively, you can install anything to ram using a program such as RAMDisk. Palm uses a very efficient database file system, and they don't want it cluttered up with your MP3 files (just look at the problems they had with the T5 when they tried to allow any files to be stored in RAM).
I think you mean bred of PDA's.
seriously, give me that, ssh, and an internet connnection and people (I) would start doing all sorts of cool things with the palm. (putting a small gcc compiler and perl on there wouldn't hurt either)
Most Palms seem to go to great lengths to hide details of the filesystem from the user. The workaround I've found is to simply store all user data on the removable flash memory, plug it into my flash memory reader and access it that way. I don't have a T3, but I'm able to work with the filesystem directly on several of the m-series Palms.
I agree, there seems to be very little forward movement in significant functionality in the Palm world. Can I be so bold to suggest that this lack of innovation might be due to the lack fo significant competition for Palm?
They are great for using in a support environment as you can keep server passwords (not ips) etc in them and use them for the datacentres when you goto servers that your not always using. Sync the passwords from the db then go and work on it... works in a secure environment very well.
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
Check out: http://www.softick.com/cardexport/
I have a Tungsten/E, up from a Palm IIIe that I had for years. The only workarounds I've ever been able to come up with have been to do the old cut/paste for plain text, and to find an app that I can set to 'own' arbitrary files.
That recent flap about Palm using the FAT for SD suggests they're trying to do something, but they obviously still need to work on it.
Yes, it does pretty much suck. If Palm doesn't get their thumb out, I'm going to have to start looking for something else. If somebody comes up with a way to burn Linux to the flash, I'd be real happy!
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
I currently use a Sharp Sl-5600 PDA. I love the little guy. It has an SD memory slot AND a CF slot. I have a 512 Mb SD card for all my files. Straight out of the box there was applications to read Word files and Excel files, as well as a decent text editor. I too had the problem you described with the ability to read and transport files. Plus the capability to do just about anything with a cf card is a huge plus. Just my humble opinion.
I have been a palm user since the Palm III. They definitely defined the palm top and made it popular (with some help from the Newton, et al).
...Michael...
Now with Sony ditching their palm based products, we see how truly uninnovative Palm is. Sony had some of the best designs, including swivel displays, camera's, keyboards, WiFi, etc. Palm pretty much had the same old design, sometimes adding a feature here or there. After all, there is a palm that has a camera, but only that one unit. Some could play MP3's, but the business ones didn't have stereo sound. Retarded.
Unless palm can innovate, and quickly, the exodus will only continue. With Handspring and Sony gone it's pretty much up to them, and I don't see it happening. Even the owners of Handspring left Palm because they didn't like the direction it was going.
And now we have the Treo, thanks to them. Palm gets a hold of it and can't even put WiFi in it. Is that too much to ask? But to their credit it is probably the most feature rich Palm available.
For my next PDA I am seriously looking at a Dell. Cheap, and just about every feature you could want. VGA display, WiFi, Bluetooth, Compact Flash, etc. And these features are all in the same unit. What could I possibly buy from Palm that has all that?
The PocketPC is much more advanced in all areas. Microsoft took a while, but the new fifth generation of PocketPC devices are much further along than any other handheld device. They have excellent screens, wireless capability, sync, integrated with Windows, Outlook and Office. Go to a store and (with an open mind) play with a Palm device and a PocketPC device.
If you own Palm or any such related stocks I would recommend you sell. They cannot compete, because Microsoft has their act together on this one.
Don't know about the other ones mentioned as I haven't used them, but Softick Card Export makes the Palm into a USB mass storage device, when used with an SD card. Makes it easy for file transfer, and you don't need drivers installed on the target PC.
I sold my Treo 600 and purchased an I-Mate PDA2k Pocket PC.
What was your username again? -BOFH
Where the hell is it? Palm bought it years ago and presumably hasn't sat on it. So where IS IT?
It reminds me of how many delays the Mac OS went through before they finally got pre-emptive multitasking in the form of OSX.
I assume that many of Palm's limitations will be solved when this OS happens. IF it happens, that is...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Mount the media directly under linux or bsd.
It's just an msdos vfat file system. Copy whatever
you want onto the media. The palm will not
recognize them or touch them, but it won't
overwrite them either. You can the copy
to and from work.
I do the same using memory sticks (1G size,
and soon up to 4G, and 32G theoretical max),
using a clie.
The problem is not the palm (though the hardware
innovation has slowed... they need better
power savings). The problem is with the
desktop app. Ditch it in favor of some
custom scripts, based on stuff like pilotlink.
Learn a little perl or bash, and it's easy.
Don't wait for the stupid fucking gnone app
to wrap a lame cmdline tool. Just make your
own.
Even my iPod can import and read text files without a fuss, and I can listen to Radiohead and look good while reading them too!
If you must have a free solution, a FileZ-like software will do the file transfer job, but you can buy a couple of card readers for ~$50. The card readers will be way faster than a hot sync. As for notes, they do sync to Plam Desktop, but if you mean MS Outlook then most palms come with PocketMirror which syncs the palm to MS Office including Notes / Memo Pad.
The other thing I would like to add is that creating apps for the PocketPC is soo much easier if you already understand Windows programming. The Desktop and PocketPC and Smartphone environments are now unified with Visual Studio 2003 and higher. The API is consistent. There is C# and .NET and VB.NET support.
If you were a corporate developer, even assuming the capabilities of the underlying OS are equal, why wouldn't you leverage your Windows programming knowledge, instead of learning another environment (palm OS API + palm tools)?
This is why Microsoft will win in all areas eventually. They offer a unified API over many devices.
Then I was purchased a Dell Axim as a gift. It did all sorts of stuff my Palm couldn't - video, sound, etc.
But it did a crappy job handling my todo list. So I stopped using it.
Palm got a lot of stuff right off the bat - and they don't seem real eager to mess with success.
A lot of the major updates to the OS have really been focused around hardware support as opposed to new features. It took forever for the first MP3 playing palm to come out..
stuff like this has cost them a lot of sales to Windows CE (or Pocket PC or whatever they call it now).
If only Apple would buy them...
I have a Palm Vx (old school now). And it can import memopad and notepad stuff into it and out of. I used to keep all my classnotes on it before i got a laptop. I think they keep rehashing the same hardware. I mean, do they still use that 24mhz processor.. (mine's 16). Basically all you do is buy a prettier screen each time.
The greatest limitation I have found is that except for PixelViewer (which only comes with Sony Clie's), no application has native PDF support. Adobe's reader must first translate the file to another format for the palm to read. This is a minor annoyance because since I have a Tungsten C, with WiFi access, I still cannot get school files to my Palm straight off of the internet.
Fortunately, future Palm OS releases will be built on Linux. Even if the fine corporation does not build in all the features you would like to have, it shouldn't be too hard to hack them in. And with all the geeks loving handhelds, Linux, and features, it will be done.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Wouldn't a full strength "tablet" PC be a nice addition to the Palm lineup? Of course M$ would never let this happen, but it would be good to have more choices for full-sized touch-screen computers.
Yes we have!
We use Tungstens at work and, in spite of their equal or superior hardware (i.e., more screen real state), fuctionality-wise software blows. I end up using my privately owned iPaq 4150 for work purposes. Mostly, carrying around lots of technical references in html format, stored on a 1G SD card.
I do not like Microsoft or HP a lot having been burnt by them in the past. But the Palm UI and default software bundle is "retard." I owned an old Palm with 512K and "at the time" was kind of cool, but I see that they have done nothing in terms of improving the platform. All they did is adding color, storage capacity, cpu frequency, and bundle disparate software that does not interoperate seamlessly.
File Link|Create New Link|Application (Memopad) | File Path (Select your file -- even a
It will sync the file to the palm EVERY time you sync. Works great.
You can EASILY install ANY file to ANY palm with an SD card using either a USB card reader OR install-to-card on the palm quickinstall menu.
This doesn't even begin to address 3rd party solutions available, too. I have a LOT of problems with palm -- but what you are complaining about isn't a weakness in palm, but a weakness in your knowledge of how to USE a palm.
My current palm is a Zire 72 -- and I'm quite happy with it. Aside from the paint peeling off (DUH PALM!), it's VERY stable. My few work-mates who have PPCs crash almost daily.
I eventually found out from talking to the developers that version 0.12.0, currently in CVS, supports the uploading of arbitrary files to the memory card on the palm.
I downloaded 0.12.0-rc4 from CVS and it compiled cleanly. There's a new option to pilot-xfer, -D, to install arbitrary files to the filesystem on the memory card.
This worked perfectly, but I found it a bit slow for transferring lots of MP3 files, so I bought a cheap USB2 card readed, which I can mount like a drive, and use cp to copy the files across. The card readed only cost UKP9.95+VAT and is really worh it for convenience and ease of use.
Stick Men
While you are limited as to what you can store in a Palm OS5 handheld's memory, you can put at least a few file types on the SD card without any of them being "owned" by an application. For example, you can copy the following file types, each of which can then be used by at least one Palm OS5 application without any sort of desktop conversion: JPEG and GIF, MP3 and several other music formats, including Ogg, MPEG (supported codecs are limited but growing in number, .doc (MS Word), .xls (MS Excel). There may be a few other as well.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
You mean 'in Windows'. In the Linux and UNIX world, there are dozens of choices in how you want to talk to your Palm.
For "text files", nothing beats Plucker when carrying text, ebooks, manuals, HTML pages, HOWTO documents, and other items. The LDP even carries all of their HOWTO documents in Plucker format. Its the only format that is freely available, openly documented, and very extensible.
Just look at how beautiful Plucker is with the PHP documentation as one example...
You must mean '...in Windows' again. In the non-Windows side, including OSX, we have pilot-link which talks natively to your Palm and can do all kinds of things that the Windows tools cannot (including operating at 40% faster in some cases).
Commercial companies such as MarkSpace are using pilot-link (the core library of pilot-link anyway) in their commercial product, MissingSync which runs on OSX.
For desktop replacements, PIMs, and other tools, there are dozens of alternatives. Here are several, in no particular order (with Coralized links to protect the bandwidth of the various projects):
There are many others, but these are the top contenders. They all also rely on the libraries and language bindings provided by pilot-link to communicate with your Palm device.
Yes, stop using Windows. Stop using the featureless proprietary tools provided by these vendors who only listen to their profit margins, not to their userbase.
Seriously
I'd really like to see multiple calendars on the palm. Right now all categories of events have to reside in the same calendar, I'd like to be able to have just family stuff (like birthdays) on one calendar, have a business calendar, and then a personal calendar, and then all of the above. Currently the palm is fine for my needs, but that's because I only use the basics these days. It is true that there has been little innovation from Palm in the past 5 years. Just little details here or there, nothing really revolutionary. I expected something big from them when they bought the BeOS, but it looks like that was simply filed away for use by no one. Too bad! This wouldn't really bother me much except that I like Palm and I'd like to see them succeed. The truth is that eventually palmtops will be as capable as desktops, and palmtop makers will need to be ready for that reality. From this standpoint microsoft has a huge advantage over Palm in the future, since Palm has no desktop capable platform. Palm's only hope here is that they seem to have (or had in the past) an ease-of-use advantage, and a simplicity and reliability that microsoft has traditionally lacked. What palm really needs is a powerful work-of-art trendy eye candy OS that is be strong enough to be used as a full on work/game platform as well as a palmtop OS. Maybe its time for apple to take the stage here again? OSXNewtonPod anyone?
On the one hand, I can see the sense in complaining about the lack of innovation by Palm.
On the other hand, there is something to be said for "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". Palm's handhelds are largely immune to the feature creep that Pocket PC devices exhibit. They just do what they were made to do. Last time I checked, Palm devices were cheaper and required fewer recharges and reboots than Pocket PCs.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Too many palm loving mods suppressing intelligent comments
Palm is a dieing breed (Score:-1, Troll)
by fzammett (255288) on Sunday December 12, @08:15PM (#11067719)
( http://www.omnytex.com/ )
Seriously, it is. Even the worst PocketPC is far more functional, and they are quite stable and reliable.
And that doesn't even mention Linux-based devices, which really haven't taken hold yet. I think it's just a matter of time before they do, although there needs to be a good shell around it. I thought the Zaurus was a good start, but (a) they just aren't big in the states, and (b) they aren't up to snuff yet.
Simply put, a PocketPC is what you want, well, in your pocket, these days. Palm used to be king, but it's stagnated, and even in it's heyday it was difficult to write applications for, so even though you saw a lot available, 98% of it was crap (and still is). Sure, there's plenty of crap for PocketPC's as well, but there's a higher percentage of actually useful software.
Forget Palm. History will do the same, soon enough.
--
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pair?
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
It doesn't seem to want to deal with text files (there is no import feature for the Palm Desktop notepad or memo pad, for example).
I found the lack of a decent text editor so annoying that 18 months ago I started writing a text editor for PalmOS: SiEd. It opens text files straight from SD-Cards, as well as Palm DOC files in main memory. You can use it to convert between the two as well.
...underwater, solar-powered, or autonomous!
...with the Tungsten T5 and the Treo 650. Each of these handhelds has two types of memory built in - the usual RAM that we've had for years, and non-volatile memory where all of your user data, programs, etc are stored. This memory is formatted with a standard FAT filesystem, and can be mounted on the desktop with no special tricks. Essentially, this NVRAM acts as a "hard disk" for the Palm, and should be every bit as flexible as one.
From the T5 spec sheet:
256MB (215MB actual storage capacity: 160MB internal flash drive, 55MB program memory for applications and data.)
And from the Treo 650 spec sheet:
23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory [doesn't list program memory - I believe it's 32MB]
See the following for more details:
How does the Treo 650 memory system work (NVFS)?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Sorry. If you want to do real work, you need a real computer with real production apps.
Palm, to me, has never fulfilled that dream of a handheld capable of doing any real work.
You should not have to bend yourself to your computer - rather it should be able to accommodate itself to your needs, and do it easily, without hassle or angst.
Almost any small laptop, even an old one, has far better production capabilities than any new Palm, or for that matter, any new PocketPC.
People who sit on the commuter train while trying to do serious work on one of these minuscule devices look like they are playing on a GameBoy - and losing.
Regards,
Roger Born
writing.borngraphics.com
"Sorry. No Refunds."
I'm using a Sony Clie TJ-37. Apart from the entirely useless built-in VGA camera, it's a very fine PDA. It accepts memory sticks, and comes with a built-in application that exposes the memory stick as a USB drive to the computer. For short text snippets, I'm using the gnome-pilot suite to synchronize them to the Memopad application. It also comes with Picselview installed, which is a very cool MS Office/PDF/many image formats file viewer, with an MP3 player application, and with an editor for MS Word and Excel files. A web browser and WiFi connectivity are also part of the package. Then again, I heard that Sony wants to discontinue its PDA line. On the positive side, that could mean that you could get one pretty cheaply. On the negative side, Sony seems to be comitted to getting rid of all products that geeks actually find cool.
I'd score this as funny, expcept one has to wonder if he/she really knew the right word was, "breed" in this context. That's one problem with humor on this site, some folks are funny in their stupidity and others aren't funny when they're trying to be.
I use my Clie for a lot of stuff and love it, but I just had to accept that its not a laptop and you use it for the small size and convience, not to do a ton of stuff. I agree tho that there is a lack of progress in this agree and it should be improved
I've found that the PocketPC is generally better in this respect. Before I get modded as a troll like all the other pro-PocketPC comments, have a read.
"all files must be "owned" by an application"
For a device like a Palm, this makes perfect sense. A Palm is not a file transport device, it is a PDA/viewer. Not having to deal with filetypes per se means that it can do away with a huge chunk of complexity as you don't need the equivalent of Windows Explorer to manage the file structure. In any case, why would you want to look at files that aren't associated with an application, moreso, how would you look at them?
This is where the Palm is a damn good PDA, whereas the PocketPC takes the PC metaphor and shrinks it down to - literally - a pocket PC. While there are a lot of people posting saying the PocketPC is better, it is also more complex, which is not desirable if you want a PDA. It also suffers from exactly the same problem as the PocketPC - or any desktop PC for that matter - in that if you don't have a required app installed, you can't view certain files.
From personal use of both devices in the past (Pilot Pro > Casio E115 > Tungsten T > Fujitsu LOOX 720) I've found that the Palm is a much better PDA, while the PocketPC is a much better pocket computer. In essence they've both defined their own niches in the market and if you find that one doesn't suit you, the other one will.
I think it's a problem with the device when you need external applications to accomplish those things.
Fortunately the market is so small compared to the potential number of users that any "market leader" today pales in comparison to the potential.
It's a quite different struggle than the desktop/laptop market.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I have been using jPilot for about 5-6 years now with my Palm Vx http://www.jpilot.org/
I can import/export plain text files as text, CSV, or DAT/MPA. No need to copy-paste. This works for the Memopad app in Palm OS. It also works for the Addressbook, Datebook, and TodoList. I can not say enough good things about jPilot... reliable, simple, fast, gets the job done. It is such a good application I would use it as a PIM even if I didn't have the Palm OS device. One can also get plugins for gnu-keyring and email... and a few others I never use.
Only one caveat... jPilot only runs on Linux/Unix. Once the files are imported to the Palm the regualr Windows and Mac OS Palm Desktop apps read them just fine.
I really don't see the problem of the original question. Palm OS does a limited set of things and it does them well. It is basically a way of carrying around a bunch of conveniently searchable and editable databases. I have not found the need for the newer or more featureful apps that are available on Pocket PCs. I also own a Sharp Zaurus 5000 and an HP iPaq. Neither of which comes close to the reliability and utility of my nice little Palm Vx. From my experience all the fancier devices try to squish desktop apps into a palm sized device... none of them do it well.
YMMV
"Don't sweat the technique."
The good thing about Palm is that it is not PC like, the simplicity of the OS is its best feature, I don't need a file system, or floating point numbers etc. Having a simple robust OS that runs on hardware that draws little power, has no moving parts and will actually function in adverse conditions is a huge advantage. Turns out you really don't need a file system or floating point numbers or a 32 bit OS to implement complex applications. Also Palm devices are as cheap as $75 for OS 5 models. My current project http://www.snowpilot.org uses base level Palm devices to collect Snow science data in the field, the conditions are quite adverse, (extreme cold, moisture etc.) this type of project would be very difficult to implent on heavy weight hardware and OS. I love Palm OS because it is the opposite of PC, the more they try to make it PC like the more they'll ruin it. Developers have implemented all kinds of very powerful apps on Palm without all the extraneous PC like features, and this can continue, if it ain't broke don't fix it. If you want a more PC like OS why not use Pocket PC/ Windows Mobile? Mark
Ok here's my biggest beef with Pocketpc "progress".
Why can't I sync my notes with categories? Phatnotes crashes with Exchange, and no other "open" or closed source solutions even come close to giving me that functionality.
I invested a good amount of time organizing everything by categories, and bought a pocketpc for seemingly seamless integration with Outlook.
Boy was I wrong. Does ANYONE have a solution?
Thanks.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I use softick card exporter (site is not responding to me, look for the google cache) which makes the card show up as a USB drive. Under linux it is a scsi device like any other usb card reader and can be mounted and used as a normal drive. When done make sure you sync and unmount !
Maybe you live in interesting times
I would really suggest some sort of media reader... I have a Lexar Mult-Card reader (the 7-in-1 I believe, a bit older than the current 12-in-1) and I insert my SD card whenever I need to transfer files around. It's not a huge expense, and doesn't take up a lot of time. A mountable Palm device would be nice, but I wouldn't expect to see one soon. (The Palm cradle is too conducive to removing the hardware, you would have to "eject" your PDA every time you picked it up.)
Have you considered pedit for text file editing?
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I have stopped reading books in print if there is an e-book of it availible. I only wish they came with more memory built in so I could veiw video. In my work we are busy creating digital video and it would be nice if I could carry a lot of it around with me. I am sure that the "memory revolution" is coming, I only hope I do not have to wait for to long.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING!
I've found that the best thing to do is to stick with a non-Palm yet Palm OS variant. I have a Sony Cliè and it is wondrous. The Picsel viewer that comes standard with the Cliè handles images, plain text, office documents, and PDF files wonderfully. There is also an MS-Office compatible application called "Documents to go" which allows you to create and open documents accessible by a variety of PC applications. The data import application allows you to connect the Cliè via USB to any computer and use it as a USB hard drive using default mass storage device drivers allowing you to copy arbitrary files to and from the Cliè with very little hassle. I've owned a fair number of PDAs, everything from the old pocket organizers from "back in the day" to clamshell full keyboard devices like the Psion Revo and Jornada 680 but by far my Cliè has been the most satisfying and useful PDA I've owned. Unfortunately, Sony has pulled out of the US PDA market (at least for now, one can hope can't they?) and you'd have to procure one via import or an auction site like e-bay.
On another note, it's disturbing to me that Sony's PDAs did so poorly in North America. In terms of ergonomics and ease of use, I've found the Cliè line to be outstanding. The only reasons that I can muster to explain their poor sales could be the price... they were on average a bit pricier than other models, but as the axiom goes, you get what you pay for. The other might be the relatively conservative design of the devices themselves. PDAs made by other companies are often exotic shapes and covered in lots of prominent buttons and such. They stand out, that's for certain, but they also get turned on in your pocket and are much more uncomfortable to use. The Cliè sports a hold switch which prevents any of the face buttons from turning the device on, and the face buttons themselves are recessed enough to prevent accidental operation anyway.
The jog dial of the Cliè is another example of superior design, whilst the majority of palm devices sport directional pads; the Cliè has a wheel-mouse like jog dial which makes navigation far faster.
Also worth noting would be the media fidelity of the device. The sound-rendering abilities of the Cliè rival any portable digital media player I've seen and the internal speaker is surprisingly capable when it comes to playback. (There is also a headphone port which makes it a suitable portable MP3 player as well. Start up the built-in media player with a playlist of MP3s and put the device on hold to save power) There is a lot to be said for the display as well, the screen is bright and the colors are rich and true. The Cliè has a higher resolution screen than most all PDAs of its class which means that images, websites, and games look much cleaner than they would on other devices. The higher resolution means that it's generally possible to scale a website designed for a 1024x768 PC display and still be able to read it without the need for tedious left-right scrolling.
Also worth noting is the wireless networking capabilities of the Cliè. It is convenient to be able to connect to your inbox when in a pinch. However, it is important to note that the use of WiFi is a major drain on the battery of the device. This is a minor pratfall, but I think it is also safe to say that PDAs are decidedly not the ideal device for casual web-surfing. If your intention is to surf the web at your local coffee shop or book emporium, it might be a better idea to invest in a laptop rather than a PDA. Even if somewhat dated, a laptop with a USB 802.11b adapter would be sufficient for mobile web surfing. (802.11b is inferior to G, I realize, but it seems fairly unlikely that you will be finding a WAP willing to give you a 54MBps internet connection)
There are downsides to the Cliè, I will admit. First off, the price is a bit daunting, especially for those who aren't looking for a device they plan to use constantly. You are also bound to using Sony accessori
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
If you have Treo 600 (palm OS 5.2), you will definitely get frustrated by lack of multi-tasking/multi-threading in PalmOS. If you are surfing the web and your friend sends you a text message, you go to SMS application and go back to browser, you lose where you left of. You have to start all over again.......
When you're trying to put something external to the device, onto the device, or convert it to a format suitable for the device, it is logical that you would need external applications to handle such an operation.
If everything was self-contained, I would agree.
How does any of what you just said make up for Linux's shortcomings such as its non-ease of use and lack of common applications?
Oh wait I forgot some folks can't separate advocacy from common sense.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I have a Treo 600. When I put it next to my IR port on my laptop, WindowsXP detects it and opens up a file transfer window. If I drag a text file into it and send it, it opens up in Palm's Memo Pad.
Why would anyone develop for Symbian based phones when they can leverage their Win32/.NET knowledge on a Microsoft platform?
Because they have enough Win32/.NET knowledge to know better than to develop for a Microsoft platform?
Do I win a prize?
Even with great advances in PDA CPU power and PDA-based web browsers, Palm's PQAs were king as far as ease of use when it came to quickly looking up info.
:( Almost all of the current smartphones are PDAs first and then phones, and as a result utterly suck as phones. (I've heard numerous complaints about awful sound quality with the new Treos, and I just don't like their design in general.)
When Palm.Net was shut down, the PQA gateways were too. As a result, existing Palm-based devices became much less functional. (Using the web browser on my Kyocera 6035 is nowhere near as convenient/fast/easy as PQAs were and is much slower.)
Palm should have open-sourced the PQA gateway software and released a small update for PalmOS allowing the user to set their PQA gateway in the same manner as WAP gateways for WAP browsers.
The feature I liked most about my smartphone no longer works, and none of the current breed of smartphones can really compare in both design and features that *I* actually use.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You're absolutely right. Talk to your vendor, and have them begin porting their applications to Linux.
This isn't our problem to solve. Thanks for pointing it out.
You might also want to check out installing Linux on your Palm. That page links to other such efforts, not sure how far advanced any of them are... not very far last time I checked.
There are problems with Palm Desktop, too. If you do end up importing small text files into the memo pad, you'll find that Palm Desktop will corrupt them. Just opening a memo in Palm Desktop will replace any tab characters in the memo with spaces. So if you later try to export the memo to a tab delimited spreadsheet, you're hosed. It's also practically impossible to report bugs to Palm (either half). You're treated like an idiot by their outsourced support group (if you can even get them to understand that you are reporting a bug) and then nothing is ever fixed.
All the things you mention are limitations of the Palm Desktop application (i.e., the Windows application) not the device itself. I don't know about Windows or Mac software, but there's plenty of Linux software that does what you want.
I saw a few comments requesting SSH clients and Text Readers so I thought I point some out.
First some free stuff:
plucker - Ebook reader. Really only supports it's own format but is very robust. iSilo is a non-free ebook reader that supports other formats including txt, but with the plucker tools you can convert almost any document into plucker format.
pssh - There are other SSH clients for palmos, but this one doesn't crash my treo.
palmvnc - Very neat, but less than practical on my low-res, low-speed treo.
soundrec - Simple sound recording application, export to wav (usefull with Bhajis Loops) designed for the treo 600 but may work with other palm devices
Now some non-free stuff:
Pocket Tunes - Turn your palm device into an ipod only better with ogg and wma support. Worth the price.
Bhajis Loops - Turn your palm device into a music studio. Also worth the price
Not too mention the countless games, calculators, calendars, and other knick-knacks.
There are limitations in hardware obviously. There's only so much stuff you can fit in such a tiny device. But I must say that my treo 600 does way more than I ever expected when I bought it.
These devices were a tech fad that is now over. For example, BestBuy is getting out of the market entirely. They are not being improved because the good developers have found better things to do...
I was a big fan of the Palm and really didn't want to go the Pocket PC route. I purchased a Tungsten E and was disappointed with it. The biggest problem was that you couldn't connect a GPS to its nonfunctioning USB port and no built-in bluetooth. I looked at upgrading to the Tugsten T5 and was disappointed at no built-in wifi and a rather high price. The Dell Axim v50x came out about the same time. Built-in bluetooth, wifi, choice of SD and CF. In the vga model (v50x) it's available for just over $400. Surprising decent software and nice design. Too bad it runs pocketPC but it's really not such a bad choice. The palm seems to have lost their edge and it's hard to recommend them any more. The darkside is taking over...and damn it with a better product.
Why is it when anyone posts "Dump the palm and buy a Pocket PC" they get modded down, but when someone suggests "Dump the palm and buy Pocket Linux" they get modded up? Both are equally valid (or not valid suggestions.)
anyone tried to install linux on one of the arm based palm yet?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
What you forgot to point out is that most folks would be better off by simply avoiding Linux in the first place. Its the operating system for autistic asperger syndrome self punishing losers, and not regular folk who need something that "just works".
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Especially when you consider the vaccum features on the Zaurus SL-6000L :-D. Check the features on the following eBay auction out, hilarious:
e gory=38331&item=5737274915&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cat
Heiko
You want the T5. That one has an internal drive that is accessible from your pc. I think it would solve most of your problems.
If your using WOrd and Excel files, Docs2Go handles them just fine (better, IMHO, than the Pocket version on the PPC) - I regularly beam them back and forth from my laptop.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I recently got really tired of the Palm platform and bought a Sony Ericsson P910i instead with the Symbian UIQ operating system, and I could not be happier! It opens what ever I throw at it, and it has replaced my mobile phone too. The built-in calendar and task software also does their job very well.
It also runs the Opera web browser, so if I'm bored I can always check on good ol' Slashdot on the run!
Palm has been consistently losing market share to Pocket PC for some time now. You may argue that PDAs are on the way out, but it doesn't change the fact that Palm missed a big opportunity and stumbled with keeping their OS up to date and easy for developers to use. I used to be a Palm V owner. Now I use a Smartphone instead which does everything my Palm V did and more.
but get a PDA with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. My Dell x50v has it and I still can't belive the stuff I can do with it. It mounts as drives in WinXP, I stream TV/DVDs to it, I mount my home network and can play any file I own. Well, expet for my HDTV stuff - then again what's the point of a 1280x720 video on a 640x480 display? I guess the Linux ones can do some of this too...
Second, because Palm apps used to do that - when you entered an app it put right where you were when you last left it. Strictly speaking they never launched or terminated, they were just active or not.
PalmOS lost it's focus a long time ago, it's very depressing.
Clear, Dark Skies
Way cool things are coming with GPE, the Gnome Palmtop Environment. It's not quite ready for prime time on OpenZaurus yet, but it's beautiful and has the best handwriting recognition I've seen. Syncing software for that platform is in the works and already exists, I think, for Evolution. The further away from non free you get, the better things are.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have Internet access at home, at work and at all the customer sites so my data is always in reach. Plus I no longer have to worry about charging/replacing batteries
For smaller stuff (phone numbers, etc) I just use my mobile phone.Only if you are running familiar or OpenZaurus. GPE has excellent handwriting recognition. KPIM works almost exactly like Palm datebook +. Then you also have browsers, wifi, media players and other not considered "palm" programs.
I'm still using a Handspring Visor to organize my life, but I can see great advantages to newer platforms. With a little work, I'll master syncing with the Zaurus. If I do that and can find as good a calculator as the Visor has, that's it for the visor.
There's no way I'll find what I'm looking for in a Pocket PC running Microsoft crap. The last time I looked, those keyboardless things without decent hadwriting were a huge pain in the ass to use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes. I have.
I've been a long time palm user (since 1997) and I just switched to a Pocket PC device. It's not that I like Pocket PC but the hardware (the features) is so much better. You just get more for the same money. I really hate to say it but Palm will be dead if they don't change their strategy to better hardware with more features. The OS is good but that alone doesn't make it. For myself I go with a good piece of hardware with a bad OS then vice versa. I hope they make something good out of the deal with this chinese company they bought.
While I am not sure if this is relevant to the T3 or other models from Palm, my Treo 600 has a Memo desk option on the Palm Desktop that works fine for any text files and you can install the files on the memory card or in ram at the next synch.
I also use Documents to go but find that memos serves most of my needs.
I had to check but you are correct about not being able to import text files directly into memo from other apps it only works this way through the desktop. But you can still cut and paste into a new memo when not connected to your desktop.
Whether your not you're a big fan of Windows, it's hard to argue that Palm is a better OS for a PDA. The windows based devices are simply much more functional and much better at dealing with desktop interaction. I suppose a Linux based handheld would be fine as well, but I have no experience with those.
--
RumorsDaily
I picked up a Tapwave Zodiac last year, and was really looking forward to getting back into a Palm device two major OS revisions newer than my old Palm IIIc (which was eventually traded for a Newton 2100) but boy, was I surprised by how little had really changed. Sure, the resolution was higher, the expandabiltiy was there at last (Two SD card slots), it was designed for "gaming" with an actual 8M ATI video chip in it, 320x480, the works and then some. The only things it lacked were WiFi and a camera... ...and a decent fucking OS. Sure, my Zodiac can run in 320x480 - but the actual PalmOS dialogs all run in 320x320 at best, popping up the graffiti area even when not needed. If I use the toolbar to remove the graffiti area, it just puts black space on the sides of the dialog. And speaking of the toolbar, it's just so wonderful that Palm made every manufacturer come up with thier own way of doing more than 320x320 resolution. Apps to modify the toolbar on the Tungsten T2 or Clie series Palms, do fuck-all on the Zodiac. Well, I take that back - they're great for crashing it. You can't skin the graffiti area or toolbar, you -still- can't change your icons from the ones included with the device and applications, and multitasking? Nope, that'll be in PalmOS 6.
The Zodiac is great hardware. It feels right. Well made, sturdy. Quality stuff. But the OS it got saddled with makes me feel like I'm running the PDA equivalent of Mac OS 9. It'll be great for people that require OS 9 apps, but there's a lot more out there. Palm stayed still without INNOVATING for way, way too long.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Try Card Export. It exports the SD card in your palm as a usb mass storage drive which you can mount under windows/linux (usb-storage) and access as a normal drive.
Things I am missing from the current generation of Palms, but I find as built-in features on my [tr]usted HP-100LX are:
- A rechargable battery that runs for about three weeks.
- The ability to plug in standard AA bateries when the rechargable battery runs out.
- A plain vanilla 12V charger port and a backup batery when the two options fail. (In 12 years I have only lost data once, when the machine fell from my bike in a shallow water ditch).
- Real (though not preemtive) context switching. When I enter one application, the other one is suspended in the state it was, and will be resumed at exactly the same state when I return to it.
- An industry standard file system (FAT), and support for cheap standard PCMCIA memory cards.
- A complete spreadsheet (not just a viewer) that includes macros, and graphs.
- A customizable database supporting complex queries and a visual form builder.
- Customizable calendar, phone book, and note-taking applications, based on the above database.
- A scientific and financial calculator with an equation solver, and graphing capability.
- Locale support for Greece (fonts, keyboard, sorting) out of the box.
- A sturdy design that can withstand 12 years of (ab)use.
The flexibility and stability of the machine's software is legendary. Over the years it has adapted to a change in the daylight savings time rule, Y2K, the introduction of the Euro symbol, and a number of phone renumbering exercises (it contains a world city database with a dialing prefixes and a map). The software is fixed in ROM; all needed changes were made via configuration files.If all you're going to do is copy files, why not just get a 256MB USB flash drive? A *lot* cheaper solution!
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
I haven't seen any mention of Psion yet, so here's another thread.
I switched from a Palm3 (actually, an IBM WorkPad) to a Psion exactly because of the too-small display. I mean, 160px just isn't very useful (anything longer than "lunch with dad" causes line wraps in the calendar). I chose Psion because of good reviews, and my brother had (and still has) a Series 5.
The Psions give you about twice the display width, plus they come with proper word and spreadsheet apps. Oh yeah, and a file system you can structure yourself (you know, create your own folders, rename files, and yes, also store any odd file you may or may not have an app for on that machine).
I've used it extensively as an ebook reader as well as general PIM device. Sadly, the Revo had issues with the battery, causing data loss (but to be fair, so did any Palm I've ever been near, and I daresay that's quite a few). But until it failed, boy was that ever one great PDA, it was laps ahead of Palm.
Alas, Psion no longer makes PDAs, and even the Symbian-based phones I've seen don't come close to what I want. As an aside, how come all phones nowadays have camera, ringtones, MMS, GPS and whatnot, but not a single one has a half-decent (iCal-compliant!) calendar? How come *nobody* makes "just" phones anymore? I wish somebody would market (a) a just-a-friggin-phone and (b) a PDA that's based on open standards so people can sync with the rest of their friggin data. There, I said it (oh, that felt nice).
"Good news, everyone!"
for exactly the same reason, if you were even half way computer literate.
Sounds like you inserted a live CD once and that's about you linux experience.
1: There's hardly a 'common' application that isn't available under linux, and a lot of commercial windows applications run under wine (XMLSpy, Flash, Director, Photoshop, WinZip etc..)
Sometimes the application are better under linux (e.g. the ones that talk to you palm) and sometimes there better under windows. If your insearch of 'desktop' linux applications you can try going
to Freshmeat, Source forge or for kde apps there's kde apps, I'm sure you'll find anything you look for, well except the odd brand name.
I don't understand this ease-of-use thing either, try mandrake or knopix. You can even have a go at installing and setting up Gentoo if you want, just remember to print out the installation guide before doing a stage 1 from you USB key.
As someone who's been using Windows for 10+ years and linux for 5+ I have found that most problems are easily solved under Linux, but when you've got a problem under Windows you end up banging you head against the table trying to fix it.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Solution to about 99% of the above complaints:
Open the Palm Install Tool.
Click "Add"
Change "Files of Type" to "All Files (*.*)"
Select the files you want to install (don't worry about whether the files are "owned" by an app. It's totally irrelevant).
Select the files you want to install. Non-Palm apps and databases will default to installing to your expansion card.
Sync.
If you know anything about installing *anything* to a Palm, you may have noticed that this is the exact same process for installing apps and databases, except for the part where you specify the file type.
This ain't rocket science, kids.
Let me just amplify one point about pilot-link -- one which had eluded me until recently. Yes, it's a great toolbox and this is one of the things it handles. The tool for this is called pilot-schlep.
A quick read of the manpage makes it look like pilot-schlep is for installing files to the Pilot. As such, I mistakenly decided that I'd just learn and use pilot-xfer, which is more general-purpose. But pilot-schlep isn't for schlepping files onto the Pilot, but for schlepping files around with one. Just what you need. In short, it packages up arbitrary files into a .pdb format
for installation and unpackages them later. Dandy!
The dlpsh debugging shell is pretty cool, too.
--
I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
Have you ever realised how useless Windows was without 3rd party apps. (actually windows stops being useless and starts being frustrating after you add them). Every complaint you have can be fixed with a third party applications. Check out palmgear and see what I mean.
Palm may not be the leader but I still need a seperate phone and PDA. I work in a noisy industrial environment and I like being able to press my phone to the side of my head and hear it through my ear plugs while I thumb through my palm for the calendar or client info.
I don't want an integrated smart phone!
(I do but I couldn't use it.)
buh buh buh buh
May I ask what type of PDA you're using to view those screen shots?
[o]_O
Ive used palm since the IIIx, and Ive noticed they tend to be the Apple of the PDA world. For the same reason using a OS 9 Mac bothers me (lack of power for non retarded users) using a Palm bothers me. Its great for what it does, stable, and has tons of available software (something OS 9 lacked) but at the same time, its time that Palm followed suit with Apple and used a *nix core. Ultimately the short comings I find in palms are the lack of a console, that and the akward multitasking, perhaps this has improved though, ive been out of the palm game a little while. Until I can run linux on a palm, Iam sticking with Zaurus.
Tungsten T3, of course.
Main advantage of database abstraction is that HotSync could incrementally backup and synchronize your data without knowing about its internal structure. In cases when it should know about record structure, it could be extended on PC-side by something called "Conduits" - essentially plug-ins responsible for synchronizing certain kind of database records.
In more recent versions of Palm OS they realized that they could not get away without good old file system abstraction (for example for accessing network drives or compact flash cards) and they introduced Virtual File System manager, in short VFS. VFS is certainly step ahead, but data stored on VFS does not have advantage of HotSync - it is not backed up, not synced on per-record basis, not purged then application owning it is deleted.
Other systems, like PocketPC and Symbian already have just one data storage model - File System. PalmOS now have two, incompatible ones.
VFS abstraction is more flexible than database, since it offers multi-tier data organization (nested directories) versus two-tier in database (database and record). Interestingly, old model could be mapped into VFS model. One could write VFS library representing databases in main memory as VFS directories. Each record will be shown as file in appropriate directory. This would allow to access with old data structures via new API. Databases modified via this VFS API are still valid PalmOS databases and could be backed up via HotSync. Now developers could gradually shift to new VFS API and old database API could be eventually phased out.
I hope somebody will develop such VFS implementation.
(copied verbatim from my june 2004 blog entry)
Anyone know if there's any way to do two way syncing with an LDAP directory under Windowa? (That's a Windows desktop, not Windows LDAP server ;))
You can't find any downloads in .prc format. The developers don't get it that my device (Treo) has a browser, and all I have to do is click on the .prc link to download & install the app. The developers think I still have a legacy Palm device and I need to use a PC or other "conduit" to load s/w. So all the download links, even on sourceforge, are in tar/zip/exe format. .Prc for me!
Palm just announced that the next generation Palm environment is going to run on top of a Linux kernel with a standard (though, presumably, trimmed-down) Linux user space. They have also fixed severe problems with their database format and other parts of their system.
If they don't go bankrupt before shipping the Palm/Linux environment, that should turn out to be a good handheld.
IMHO, the biggest issue with PDAs right now is screen real-estate. Yes, the small size is convenient, but the convenience is (almost) outweighed for me by screen size. I'd prefer something slightly larger with more real-estate.
Forgive me if this is slightly off topic as I boast about blackberries vs palms, but I think the idea of avoiding "information dead-ends" is significant enough to be of value to some slashdot readers.
For me the usefulness of a tool is connected to how well it allows me to do tasks I already want to do. On my Blackberry I will look up a person's contact information on the internet using the browser, then I'll click on their phone number and my blackberry is calling them. Or In our organization of 20,000 people if I don't know exactly who I'm looking for I do a search against our exchange server and get the closest matches, then I can choose the right one and send an email. My email is always synchronized (no plugging into a cradle etc...) After I use a number or an email, I have the option of adding that contact into my address book.
I can't play solitare on my Blackberry. It isn't a computer, but when it comes to email, the web, phoning, and otherwise connecting those communicating tasks the Blackberry doesn't present many "dead-ends" for information. My palm m125 on the other hand is nothing but a dead end for information.
Much like the Internet or Unix, it's not about one killer feature, but rather the integration and connection of simpler features that allow us to work with tools in a way that is powerful scalable and ultimately useful to us without re-inventing how we do our work (graffiti?)
Thanks
Greg.
"Sometimes you've got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight" Bruce C0ckburn
I prefer the lack of progress that the original poster complains about. I specifically liked the orginal Palm concept of "keep the nandheld simple and do the heavy liftng on the desktop." If I wanted a desktop in my hand I'd get a PocketPC device. In fact, I just bought 3 more m505's off of ebay because I like the one I have and I'm tired of having to buy new cradles (I sync in several locations) for new devices. I do agree that Palm Desktop could be better, like why no repeating tasks on the PC when the Mac version has done it for years? Yes, I know that newer versions of PalmOS/Palm Desktop on the PC support this, but see above.
Actually, I'm a Mac user :)
Last I checked (2 months or 2 minutes ago) pilot-link support for OS X was "just around the corner" and had been since September. I used it at work on Linux and loved it, but it doesn't work on OS X yet.
Everything you've listed works fine or only on linux or is a wrapper for pilot-link.
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
I agree up to a point. But I personally prefer Linux. I think it is a matter of preference, but also what your current options are. If you buy your own then your options are what ever is available on the market. But if you company supplies you then you do not have much choice. And most big companies want to single source all of there computer assets. And most big computer suppliers are in bed with the "evil" microsoft. Competition is good in that it drives the market place to innovate but it is hard to complete against a monopoly.
The version we're working on in CVS, has had native Darwin USB support for awhile... we've just been working out the other cleanup and userland bugs. We're pushing about 12MiB/minute over USB on that hardware.
If you want it working now, just grab CVS. In a week or two (fingers-crossed) when we finally release 0.12.0-pre1, Fink should suck it in and be able to use it natively.
It'll get there, we just had to get all of these new devices (and all of their bugs) worked around.
What is missing from the crop of handhelds is good data input. Fast data input.
This is a problem across the industry. We NEED a new way to input a LOT of data quickly.
Think of a shopping list or a manufacturing floor where you must record many values quickly.
There is simple NO good way to input data on a handheld at this time.
Thrazzle
I use Linux daily at work. It's the only OS I use for development. I tried to swttch from a Palm to a Zaurus and it was a tremendous failure. First off, I could expect crashes consistently that would trash all of my PIM data. Secondly the apps (or lack thereof) made me carry my Palm as well as the Zaurus. The Zaurus wasn't good a s a PDA or as a "mini laptop", IMHO.
that PocketPC has outsold Palm. It may be made by microsoft, it may have its problems (connectivity is still stuck in the dialup state of mind, etc), but a PPC kicks the CRAP out of anything palm.
Also ironic is the fact that Dell makes the best ones. They suck at computers, they really need to focus on consumer electronics.
I use CardExport2 from http://www.softick.com/. It cost roughly $15, and allows me to use my Palm Zire 71 as a portable USB drive, recognized as a generic, so no special drivers are required on Linux, Solaris9, *BSD, MacOS, or WinME>later. Oh yeah, there's more. I also downloaded the RealOne player for PalmOS, and with a /AUDIO directory (FAT16) on my removeable SD card I can upload music and playlists without any of the DRM crap that bugs a lot of folks. Palm has their own upload system which won't let you download the music again, but with CardExport2 I can. I was able to find 512MB SD(I) cards on pricewatch for about $24 at one point, so I bought a pile of 'em. Now, my Palm is more of a necessity for me than ever. It's even possible to boot my laptop with knoppix fom my Palm using CardExport2 and this info:
http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/
There you have it.
-Dustin
Thanks Matthias!
-write unit tests, or else.
1) Sell Palm
2) Get PocketPC or Zaurus, both of which have a non-flat, hierarchical filesystem
3) Transfer data and be happy...
Your problems are a large part of why I abandoned my old PalmOS-based Visor Deluxe years ago. I recently got a Zaurus 6000L and haven't looked back, and I'm much happier now. A real computer fits in my hand, not some Palm toy.
Seriously, Palm devices suck if you do anything besides basic PIM stuff (as organizers, however, they are fantastic, and better than my Z. But I barely use my Z for PIM stuff, so I don't care)...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
The big question that needs to be asked is why???
I used to own a Palm III and still own a IIIxe...the my xe hasn't even been used in over 2 years.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are some kewl things that can be done with a palm (or more specifically a Zaurus), but I (like most) have a cell phone that does almost everything I could want in a PDA.
The applications are done in Java (ok, maybe it's a cut down version, but at least it's a fairly open standard)...
There are all kind of games available for it, a good selection of applications, voice recorder, scheduler, memos, todo list, email, pager, cell phone, browser, etc....and all in a package smaller than a Palm.
And it's not even a new phone!!!
I know some phones run PalmOS, but those are generally over $400 and generally don't perform either job particularly well (too big for a phone, to awkward for a PDA)...
Bluetooth makes syncing with the scheduler, todo list, and memo much easier.
It's really hard for me to see a future where stand alone PDAs serve much more than a niche market...
I still use my Palm m125, which I bought in 2002. I use Pilot-Link (I'm a Linux person) and my Sandisk SD card reader to do all my Palm file transfers. Pilot-link is cool, works so much nicer than Palm's crappy desktop application.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Even if it does not strictly adhere to Palm interface guidelines, it takes less than two mins to get used to, and it is a good .txt solution. Get it at: http://benroe.com/sied/index.shtml The program is good, but if you hate the icon, you can freely blame me.
to which I have one answer in the form of a question: Do you think it is the right time for Apple to re-enter this market?
when you entered an app it put right where you were when you last left it. Strictly speaking they never launched or terminated, they were just active or not
That worked in palmOS 1.x or 2.x. This is the age of internet. When you are surfing the web, logged in to read your email or are chatting with someone or logged to your corporate VPN (yes, yes you can log into VPN with Treo 600 with 3rd party software), running a terminal emulation software etc, when the application you name become inactive, it seems to lose connectivity or state where you left off since OS wasn't multi-tasking (or whatever it is termed) and another application had taken over...
Hope I am making sense, maybe I am wrong but that's my experience and others too
PalmOS 6 has full support for multi-tasking/multi-threading:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6
lol!
"...end up banging you head against the table trying to fix it."
Ya especially when it is so ridden with worms, malware, spyware, crapware...
I just ran into a Windows install with adware that embedded itself so well that 2 spyware programs and 2 virus programs could not detect it.
I was going to try 3, but at that point its a reinstall.
I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned Card Export - It might not be free, but it's the best of all the improvements available.
Card Export simply turns the Palm into a standard SD card drive, accessible on pretty much any computer simply by plugging it in. Yeah, it should have built into PalmOS when USB cables first arrived. Pretty splash screens triumph over simple usability once again.
Palm reminds me of the Amiga story, ten years on. Clueless company completely fails to develop on massive runaway success, enthusiastic fanbase doubles machine's lifespan with creative hacking, eventually killed off by price, incompatibilities, and undeveloped OS as once-crappy competition out-evolves them. [Sighs]
Its the "mythical" PalmOS6
By the time it comes out, Palm may be down the toilet.
The current OS is starting to suck like a whore.
"This ain't rocket science, kids."
Apparently it is to the developers at Palm.
I like the modular idea. That's why I cannot stand the thought of having to use a single device for both phone and PDA - I use them differently (want smallness for phone, and relative bigness for PDA/PIM functions), and also would not want battery time for talking wasted on PDA functions/bright big screens.
;-) .
;-) .
My latest Palm happens to be a Zire 71, but the only reason (besides the fast-disappearing "Universal" connecter) I got it instead of something like a T/E was that it was a closeout floor sample for $130 early this year. The camera "feature" actually was holding me back from getting it since it seemed frivolous, and could possibly get me in trouble at work (many businesses worry about industrial espionage and are paranoid about cameras on premises - camera-capable phones and PDA's are frowned upon if not prohibited), but since I work at home 99% of the time, I decided to risk if for the deal. As it is, I have found the camera function useful every so often as a type of visual note-taking, and some candid pix of events I'm involved in (exactly what the corp anti-spies would worry about
But I would still prefer to save money by leaving out a camera, and also hope to gain battery life, and more compactness with still as big a screen as will "fit in the hand" (admittedly, the Z71 is one of the more awkward feeling shapes, but not too much so to offset that low price
I do like having the MP3 feature, and would definitely prefer it over a camera (Sony got that really backwards with their last low-end model, the TJ-27). Having held the Zire 72, though, I might make another exception if the price gets low enough - it has a great feel in my hand at least, compared to most other handhelds I've tried since my M130.
I would also have to say that if Palm "innovates" too much more (agree with most long-time Palm users that Graffiti 2 is definitely more awkward than G-1 with the 2-stroke letters, but better with the auto caps area between numbers and letters for a near net tradeoff for me), it would be too much like the bloat of PPC, and would definitely turn me off.
I have tried HPC (still dabbling with a Jornada 728 and NEC MobilePro 780/790, which was perfect for taking notes in a class this past summer - all-in-one unit with keyboard that was quite usable compared to the Jornada and with Pocket Word's basic functionality, instant on/off - aside from that, too limited, though - I still used the Z71 for PIM functions), and PPC (Ipaq 1910 - even better fit than the Z72, but not much else to excite me, and Toshiba Genio E-550 - loved the CF slot for my WiFi card, but then looking at websites and email on that limited screen was too restrictive after the novelty wore off).
I even tried a Sharp Zaurus CL-5600, and was impressed by the Linux functionality, but the Windows-ish inteface, awkward shape, and the ridiculous thumbboard (hold me back from ranting about the appalling stupidity of pepetuating the crippling QWERTY layout with a whole new typing paradigm - "parathumbs" - with this unit - and all thumbboard units - fresh start with Dvorak anyone? Might as well learn a new way to type that is also efficient - what a concept!) just brought me back to Palm's simplicity - innovation for its own sake is not necessarily a virtue (whereas a Dvorak thumbboard would be a real and worthwhile innovation).
Back to modularity: For "real" computing, I find a laptop or my latest experiment, a Fujitsu Stylistic LT with its 800x600 8-inch screen far more suitable; for PIM functions, a Palm; and a cell phone for phone functions - to each his own.
ROC
So you bought the entry-level Tungsten model then bitched about it not having a complete everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feature set?
Sorry to appear rude, but are you an idiot? Didn't you read the model's specifications before you bought it? To make things worse, you then go on to compare the Tungsten E, which costs £199, to a Pocket PC that costs twice as much! Talk about trying to compare apples and oranges!
Two points for you to remember for the future:
1. Know what you're buying. It helps avoid small disappointments like, say, your new car not coming with heat-seeking missiles or an energy shield.
2. If you want a fair comparison then compare like with like. Don't expect a $199 device to do everything a $399 device does and certainly don't compare one to the other without at least acknowledging that one's twice as expensive as the other.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It's not free nor Free Software, but if you need a word processor / spreadsheet / presentation program, get Documents To Go if you have a Palm. It works well.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
It isn't a computer, but when it comes to email, the web, phoning, and otherwise connecting those communicating tasks the Blackberry doesn't present many "dead-ends" for information. My palm m125 on the other hand is nothing but a dead end for information.
That seems like an unfair comparison. I do all of those things with the Palm Treo 650. The Treo is more a phone-with-organizer device than a email-with-a-phone device, of course. But that's better for me; I'm near a computer often enough that I do most of my email with a real keyboard and screen.
For me, the primary function of a handheld is making calls and acting as an organizer (contacts, calendar, to-dos). The other things that I do with my Treo (browse the web, check email, listen to music, ssh in to my servers, track passwords, take snapshots, read e-books, play games) are all nice, but very much secondary. I imagine that were I a manager in a large corporation, my priorities would be different, and the Blackberry would make a lot more sense.
Because it's going to be another two years while they port it to another kernel. Maybe then they can start innovating.
I didn't like the Palm Tungsten either, so I got a Palm Pocket PC instead, it allows to do what you want very easily.
Here is a link to what this guy is talking about.
— darco
.... but after years with Palms I moved to the PocketPC platform (ipaq 4150) for precisely those reasons.
Again, it pains me to admit it, but the ipaq 4150 is a much more capable machine that any Palm unit I could buy for the same money.
I have been missing for years:
- categories for contacts and appointments
- tentative, etc flags for appointments
- multiple addresses per contact
- BIRTHDAY FIELD!
These things are all so simple - even my old Psion had them! What so difficult about it for PalmSource?
Very good points about the newfangled handhelds. In the same vein, I currently use a HandEra 330. (For those who don't know, this is a little-known utilitarian Palm-compatible that takes both CF and SD cards.) I've been using it for about 3 years now. The thing is, it is now out of production, so I really should find something else. But I can't find anything that meets my needs.
It's not because of expense, mind you. In fact, where I previously worked, we were each entitled to one new handheld computer every year at company expense --for us to keep, not to give back to the company when we were done. There was no real limit on the expense.
So of course I went out and bought the most expensive Palm available. I was already using a HandEra, and wanted to continue using the Palm system; I didn't have time to mess with switching to PocketPC stuff. I bought my very own Tungsten T3 plus a two-year warranty at company expense. Very sweet: high-res colour screen, telescoping casing, rotatable display, built-in Bluetooth, etc.
I fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with it. And in the end, I refunded it. (Actually, I gave it to a colleague and let him claim the expense, so I neither gained nor lost money.)
The Tungsten T3 was the epitome of new technology being --well, not necessarily worse, but not better, but most of all being utterly incompatible with the old. Here's my list of gripes:
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Forget palm, get a Zaurus and have it your way.
No silly application-file ownership, no proprieratory OSes (can run an opensource linux, including OpenZaurus, Gentoo, and probably others. I particularly like the Gentoo build, as I can use distcc with my home machine to do the actual builds for my zaurus all over WLAN. Then sit back and reap the rewards of hundreds of precompiled packages and thousands more that you can build yourself using the ARM toolchain.
I don't know about you, but these things when compared to a tunsten just seem a whole lot sexier to me.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
so you can write to your card directly as if it were a harddrive, through you cradle or hotsync cable.
I have a Palm Tungsten E precisely because I did not wish to give money to Microsoft. It was very reliable. Too reliable in fact, and as a consequence I got sloppy with taking backups.
.....
Then somehow I managed to do a factory reset, which lost me my data and my applications. Worst of all, the applications had been installed from my old Windows 98SE machine at work, which is no longer there. This means I am now going to have to find somebody who has a Windows PC {or a Mac?}, and get them to install the Palm stuff just to re-load my apps. {Unless someone knows of a bootable Windows CD, kind of like Slax but Windows-based?}
And this time, I will copy all my Palm applications to the memory card, then -- using my trusty slot reader -- archive them off, probably in the same place as my bz2 images of various size empty memory cards {IMLX using dd is the quickest way of formatting them}.
As an aside, I believe the newest member of the Tungsten family actually has a "drive mode" where it behaves more or less like a standard USB storage device. Long overdue IMHO {but I'm still not going to get this one, I'll get the next one which should answer some of the criticisms this one is bound to attract}. If only some device would emulate a USB-Ethernet adaptor, plugged into a computer with various servers such as HTTP, SSH and database
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The T5 does all that for you...
KPilot is OK. It's not great. And, if you're not careful, it does quite a bit of renaming of lables for memos, apts., etc.
As far as using a Palm w/linux? Forget it if you use the palm for anything other than a fancy address book. Unless you're a wizard with Linux -- which I am not. I do a lot of writing on my palm. For windoze, there are a number of programs that let me convert between text and palm format, and at least one really good editor (QED).
Third party is the only way to go to transfer text files on a palm. QED + QEX is a great, inexpensive, set of programs for anyone who does a lot of writing on a palm device.
What you need to install text files (or other 'unassociated' files is http://envicon.de/e/pinstall/pinstall.html to do the installs.p
To view text files you'd have to go with something like Resco exporer:
http://www.resco-net.com/palm/explorer/default.as
-- Neil Milne
I've come off the 'must have latest gadget' train quite a while back. When it comes to PDAs, my Clie NX70 is doing OK, but is miles from perfect. What I'm waiting for is something like the new XDA IIs, but with sliding keyboard (they removed that for some bizarre reason) and 3G and 4 band capability.
;-).
;-).
;-)
One box to do it all, and I'll suffer the fact that it's Windows because it does what I need it to do (as long as it talks to my Linux systems at home as well as to my Windows company laptop or it'll never make it into my hands
If anyone remembers the Organiser II and the Psion 3/3a/Revo/5/5MX range after that, they all had two extremely redeeming feature: a very simple database facility (flatfile), and a easy to use language called OPL (Organiser Programming Language) which was a cross between Pascal and BASIC.
It wasn't perfect, but just having a simple language and a simple flatfile DB facility turned it from a gadget into a genuinely usable piece of kit. The language acquired GUI facilities when it moved to 16bit platforms like Psion Revo and 5MX etc, but the fundamentals of a flatfile layout remained. Nt ideal, but for a portable device it was very useful because the average end user could create a new DB without any programming knowledge, and without having to fork out extra cash.
Oh, and having the hardware diagrams meant I could develop some interfaces as well for the Org II - it was quite fun to hook it up to things like digital calipers and torque wrenches. It just depends on what you call fun
As for durability - someone I know is still using an Organiser II..
Getting back to where I started - I think I'm at least half a year away from seeing my 'ideal' PDA on the market. And I'm sure that a better one will appear the moment I buy it
= Ch =
Insert
TealDoc reads txt files natively. So does Documents To Go.
Card Export can turn your palm pilot into a big USB key so you can use your SD card as removable storage.
Now that Sony has bailed on the Palm format, I'm afraid that any new innovation will be nil to none.
Some people are like Slinkies - Not good for anything, but you can't help smiling when you push 'em down the stairs.
Palm really
My main problem with Palm platforms is that out-of-the-box, they are inherently limited in function. They are quite powerfull, don't get me wrong, but they just lack what power users need. Enter the third-party market. After years of using PalmOS devices, I've had a lot of experience trying out the myriad of applications, and after all these years and applications, i came to the conclusion that you really just need some basic add-ons to really make your PalmOS device powerful.
First, purchase and install ZLauncher as an Application Launcher replacement. Yes, it's full of more features than you could possibly need, and its default configuration, in my opinion, is not ideal, but it's a very powerful launcher. Spend some time getting to know it and tweak it to your preferences, and you end up with an environment that is top-notch. And it sports an integrated file manager that is almost second to none.
Next, purchase and install CardExport. When you connect your Palm via USB cable to your PC and run this program, your WIndows XP PC sees the SD card as an external drive with no additional drivers needed--truely plug-and-play. You can now copy files to and from your PC to your heart's content and manage the directory structure to your needs.
Third, purchase and install the latest version of your choice of Documents To Go to manage Word, Excel, and optionally PowerPoint presentations. The latest versions work with native Word and Excel files. This is an excellent tool, and combined with CardExport, you can move files in and out in a heartbeat.
OK, so you have to spend some money, but you end up with a system that is very flexible and very powerful.
And yes, Palm shoule include these features by default, but since they don't, your best bet si to turn to third party apps.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
http://www.softick.com/cardexport2/
Disclaimer: I have no connection to Softick. I don't even use this product. But I thought you might want to know about it.
I currently have a palmtop not unlike the HP-100LX: a Cassiopeia A-20. Its most important features are that it accepts CF cards, a limited number of PCMCIA cards (depending on the drivers mostly), and the serial port interface. Since it has a keyboard, it can be used as a dumb terminal, which for me is one of its most useful applications.
The problem is that it's too heavy to use for the most useful PDA applications: notepad, todo list, calendar, alarm clock, pocket watch. In fact, I can find full-featured laptops that are only about three times the weight that will run windows XP and thus power any PCMCIA card I want. Moreover, since the thing is obsolete, I can't find applications, or drivers for new hardware. Even to run Netbsd on it (which has support for the hardware, believe it or not), I actually need a version of Windows that it doesn't have, in order to run the bootloader.
Personally, I'm going back to a cheap PDA, just as soon as I buy a 2lb subnotebook to work as the dumb terminal I need.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Thank you for confirming my point - nothing you described requires two tasks to run at the same time they merely require that the apps correctly remember where they were when the context switched.
Which, as I said, used to be true of all PalmOS applications.
Except for terminal emulation. In that case you're simply insane because no sane person wants to emulate a VT220 without a proper keyboard.
Clear, Dark Skies
Wait until Palm OS 6 (Aka Palm OS Cobalt) comes out. It should improve the Palm Platform a great deal without bloating it up like Windows CE.
Been doing this for four years with WeSync freeware. Handles up to 14 different calendars, multiple views. Accepts standard DateBook data from each user.
Contact WeSync.com and ask to beta-test their new stuff. You'll be glad you did.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
QED is another good text editor, with capabilities SiED does not have (e.g., file size limits).
http://www.qland.de/qed/
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
The Eudora freeware text-only browser is reasonably fast. When combined with lean sites, it does a decent job.
Yes, I miss PQAs, but to keep on the good dside of the carriers, I figure P1 (palmone.com) had to ditch the use of the two-way paging service, because it was just too efficient when compared to data transport over cellular service.
These days, the major customer is the guy who sells your gizmo, and increasingly, that's the cellular provider, who lives and dies by houw much airtime you buy.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I say T-mobile, for they will SMS you to tell you you have mail; other carriers (SPCS) cripped SMS and don't offer e-mail filtering (do I need spam on my PDA? NOT.)
I really don't think it's realistic to expect a no-radio device to compete with one which does. How could anyone expect otherwise?
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Huh huh. "Palm user".
I'm only slashdot's second biggest Monkey spanker
Truthfully, i'm not real sure what your problem is. One of the main advantages to palms is that they arn't laptops. By this I mean that UI is pretty inovative realitive to anything elses in the OS market. If you haven't noticed this its probably because of the fact that it is in may regards a lot better than anything else. One of these diffrences is due to the fact that there arn't any "files" on your palm. This means there isn't even a proper file manager. Think about it.... There are lots of other things that result from this, For example the concept of 'saving' your work doesn't exist on the palm. When you enter something its just there. Enter a phone # and turn the thing off, or switch to a diffrent application, when you come back the phone # is right where you left it.
Anyway, saving files to the thing goes against the whole UI concept that your ebook readers know about the ebooks on the machine but nothing about the mp3s. Its sort of like using a Mac and then running linux and bitching about your inability to do anything without dropping to the command line. The enviroments are just diffrent. Each has its strong point.
Now, while i'm a big fan of what I see as the core PalmOS i'm not sure that the people at palm are even aware of its strong points relitive to its weak points. I say this because lately it seems like they are releaseing devices that just don't make sense in the palmos world. I don't need a 200Mhz ARM in my palm to edit phone numbers, read ebooks, and run a calculator, nor does the palm really need that processing power to play Mp3's. It would have been possible to simply add a hardware decoder for a couple of specific features, like playing mp3s, without changing the whole enviroment. On the other hand those nice new 200Mhz arm based units chew through a battery charge so fast that the device isn't useful for me.
It seems to me that the people at palm don't have any real plan at the higher levels of management. There are a lot of markets they could go after, besides the cell phone market. Which is an excelent market to go after since in the future the idea of a PDA will probably combine with a cell phone, but they need to understand that current cell phone users want a cell phone _FIRST_ after that they may want extra PDA like functions. Making a crappy phone with cool features is a bad way to get into the market. Another market they could eat into quickly is the calculator market. The Palm with just a little work would make a significantly better scientific calculator than anything else on the market. So why does palm continue to ship a crappy calculator, and let TI completly own the educational and engineering markets? Or how about the fact that palm could have given every single palm an audio output by default. With a simple hardware mp3 decoder they could have taken part of the standalone fixed memory mp3 player market. Imagine a PDA with wireless access, a calculator competitive with TI's top of the line devices, and the ability to play MP3's all in a package the size of a palm?
Instead it took palm 5 years to discover that a lot of people would like to be able to optionally replace the bottom of the screen with a keyboard type layout, or just use it for screen real estate in games. Even now, they still ship a lot of palms without this basic feature, while every CE device on the market has been able to do that for years.
Thanks for all those who responded. While I have not investigated everything so far, what I have seen is: SiED: Great tool, wonderful. Text file support at last. Plucker: Has potential, I haven't done anything but the basics as yet. Documents to go: Included with the T3, thanks to all those who suggested it, but I really don't want to convert my text files to word (or excel) documents just to be able to view them. SiED good. Word bad. That said, my resume is great on here :)
CardExport: There is another product on the market aimed at macs called Missing Sync. I downloaded a trial of CardExport - it says it doesn't support Macs yet, and with good reason - once you run it, you have to reset your palm before you can sync again. I'm not paying for beta software. Missing Sync is aimed specifically at Macs. Won't mount your palm on anything but. No way to demo it. Next.
Filez: I can't really see the point, as I want to get the data onto the palm in the first place.
Application Launchers: Some people have raved about these, but invariably the descriptions on the web sites are light on specifics. "Loads of features" does not actually tell me how they are better or why I should invest in them.
kMoria: Oh my god where did all my time go!
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
Thanks, I'm looking forward to it.
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
Looking at the moderation, I'm guessing they didn't read about the new bread of cars the other night...