I bought my Palm while I was on an assignment to the US. Before I went about buying it, I had not seen a palm for myself (though I had seen people show off their little GADGETS held in their palms), and so went about learning about one on the internet. From various user opinions and various other websites, I gathered Palm IIIxe was the most logical buy – for three reasons. One, It has everything (except online connectivity to the net, which you don’t really need unless you travel frequently and are frequently away from your desktop/laptop for the internet) that any Palm has...in terms of features and storage space (8MB, the max. any Palm handheld then had!). Two, the price difference between IIIxe and IIIc did not make it viable to have a color Palm. Three, its from the pioneers of the technology in handheld computing!!
I bought mine from Best Buy (a retail chain in the US), primarily because it has the best ‘returns policy’ and I wanted to make sure I am able to return it in case I am not satisfied. But right from the day one, I have been using my Palm to the max. I haven’t had any reasons to complain. Learning to use Palm was a smooth job.
Pre-installed Applications that come when you buy Palm IIIxe: Address Book, Calculator, Date Book, Expense, Mail, Memo Pad, To Do List, Graffiti (that lets you write on Palm)
Applications that are installed once you synchronise (as these come on the CD): Avant Go (Web Browser), Parens Lite (advanced calculator)
Applications you can install later: There are lots of them, Palm OS being so popular amongst programmers. You have Wordsmith (Palm equivalent of MS Word, from https://bluenomad.com), Album to go (Picture viewer, from https://clubphoto.com), numerous games, Yahoo mail, rediffmail, and many more. You can find links to these sites from https://palm.com
How easy it is to enter data? Its very easy to use the onscreen keyboard to key in data. Its still easier to write using the Grafiti on Palm. Its even more easier to key it into the computer and then hot synching. I have not personally tried the portable Palm Keyboard! It took me just a day to get used to Grafiti. In fact your familiarity with Grafiti depends on how much you need it (and therefore how carefully you learn it!).
Initially when you switch from your digital diary to a Palm, its better to key in data into your comp and then hot synch it to your Palm. Later of course, when you have an address to enter, or a note to write, you would use either the onscreen keyboard, or Grafiti.
Synching Palm to the computer is just pressing the hot synch button on your cradle – provided you have installed Palm Desktop (from the CD that ships with it). Besides pressing the button, you have settings which let you decide if Palm data over writes the data on Palm Desktop, or vice versa, or ‘do nothing’! As you get going, you surely will come across situations when you need one or more options of these.
The screen is monochrome, but is quite good. I hardly find situations when its difficult to read it. For such situations (especially the sunlight, but you would hardly need to see it in bright sunlight), there is the ‘contrast’ settings tuner at the back.
One thing though, about the backlit screen I should say. Backlit is good, but the part of the screen that is backlit is the display part. The area where you have the four controls.....is not lit. I happened to fall in this trap one night last week when I had gone off to sleep and a friend called up to say he wanted a friend’s number. I thought my Palm was backlit and so I need not put on the room light. Oops!! I could not go to ‘home’ because I could not see the home icon. (Is Palm Inc. Listening?)
I wouldn’t agree that I was less organised before my Palm came to live with me. But for sure, it has helped me in leaps!! One, because the the data holding capacity of Palm is enormous. Say, address book. It has lot many fields, and even custom fields so you can create your own if needed. Say I call up a bank. When I am back from the bank, I make a note (in the notes field of the address book) I met....say Tom for such a task. Next time when I go to the bank, I have this information right there when I see the address book for the bank’s phone number! This was not possible with my digital diary, though it could contain addresses. The search function is a real booster – because it does not search like digital organisers by phone number, by names, etc. but by words. This is quite like the search you have in windows.......search for files containing the word ’xxxx’. Then you have email. A real great tool because you often tend to forget writing mails to people, friends, and who all....If you have Palm on your side, you write your mails whenever you think of it.....in train, or a cab, anywhere.....even in the loo!
Expense is another application that takes care of your finances well. I only wish you could create custom categories in it. (Which I am given to understand is not possible because it has excel templates to link up to which it finally exports the data (sheet) when on your desktop!!
Yes, lets talk about battery power. Initially, when I bought my Palm, I was myself quite excited about this new gadget that pleased me whenever I touched it! So I used it more and more (in an attempt to get familiar with it ASAP). Alkaline batteries did not last for more than 22 days. I was a bit disappointed as this was quite below what was claimed – 4 weeks or more! But now I use Rechargeable Nickel Cadmium batteries and these last invariably for around 5 days on one charge. My take on this is....once you have the pros that your Palm offers, you wouldn’t mind spending that amount on batteries every 22 days. And if you get to use rechargeable ones, you wouldn’t even think about it!!
One fact about the Sound alarm. Palm comes with a couple of budgers and three volume settings. Though these settings are good enough for a society like the US, in societies where ambient noise level is high, the alarm volume is too low to catch attention!
I still do not own a cellphone, so am not used to carrying even that much in my pockets. Though Palm fits easily into any shirt (or trouser) pockets, I do not feel comfortable carrying it in shirt pockets. And with a leather case, it slightly blows bigger. I normally carry it in front pockets of my office bag. When not with office bag, it goes into my wife’s purse! Shikha’s always given me that previlege!!
My advice to new users of Palm: Be very careful about the screen. Its very delicate and scratches very easily. As a rule, if you see any dust particle on screen, don’t even touch your stylus onto it. FIRST clean up the screen.....by blowing off the dust and then ......get going!!!!