My first bite of the Palm apple

[From Nathan Burgess] My first bite of the Palm apple (no pun intended) has caused much more addiction and prosperity among my family members than I ever could have imagined, and all because of a little unassuming device.

First a little about my handheld use - I'm a very middle of the road user. I use the basic calendaring and contact functions - I don't need anything fancy just to keep track of my appointments or friends, and Docs to go works just fine for business apps. I don't get too much into hacks, games, or the like. I've a got full-time job and a toddler son I enjoy spending time with. I rarely invest significant amounts of money or time into my devices - they exist primarily to save me time not pull me away from other projects that need my attention.

My current model is an E2 though I almost got the Zire 72 due to price considerations. I'm not poor - just have lots of other things to spend money on and don't see the necessity to spend 3-500 on a Treo or the like when my cell carrier sends me a new phone every year - though I drool over my father-in-law's each time I see him playing with it.

That, and despite my lack of day to day activity you'll see they've been a near constant presence in my life for nearly a decade . . .

I was late to the Palm game. I had seen the ads in magazines of executives 'beaming' their contact information across tables and toting around an astounding 2MB of data. The concept of taking an entire traditional organizer and not needing to refill it every year was very enticing. Add to that my wretched handwriting and it was almostirresistible . Then I saw the cost - no way was a college kid affording that and I went along my business. I wasn't really that busy - it'd just be a toy.

I eventually graduated and entered law school. In my 2nd year my recently-turned fiancee heard about a company competing with Palm, founded by the original Palm founders offering product at cut rate prices. The new outfit was called Handspring.

We checked out their site and as a holiday / engagement present that year I was given my first Palm handheld - a Graphite Visor Deluxe. Included in the box was a vinyl slipcase, hard clip covering, lousy default stylus (this was before they included the 'deluxe' stylus), USB cradle, CD, manuals and batteries. The box arrived December 24, 1999. A clear one (I believe it may have been called Ice) arrived for my wife simultaneously. For those of you who don't remember the initial Handspring line came in 3 models - the Deluxe (8MB with accessories as above), the Basic/Standard, and the Solo (only 2MB of memory). The Deluxe line also came in an assortment of fruit-flavored colors following the trend of the then-popular integrated iMac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IMac_G3_flavors.jpg).

I began the install on my Dell Latitude 233 MHz (Blazing fast!) and my fiancee began toying w/ Graffiti (the first one).

I booted up my machine, spun the notebook around for the USB port (this would be my first USB device) and waited for Win 95 SE to start. The CD install went according to plan and then everything came to a crashing halt. The techies among you have realized the problem - Win 95 SE did not support USB. I, never having used USB before, had no idea. I began scouring message boards, tried calling the Handspring help line - they were closed and would be for the next 4 days (check the date above to figure out why).

After about 10 hours I discovered there was a serial cable/cradle.

About 5 hours after that I discovered no one was carrying Handspring merchandise in retail stores and I'd have to order it from Handspring. This was not turning into a satisfying experience.

About 18 hours later (and after some serious thought about cutting the USB cable and the cable of a serial device I had sitting around and splicing the two together) I broke down and got the 98 SE disc. By this point myfiancee had basically mastered Graffiiti and had most of her contacts entered. She did, however want to sync the list so she wouldn't lose anything. The first Visor line ran on AAA batteries - this will come back to haunt me.

The Win 98 install went perfectly, and the sync worked on the first try. Of course I had nothing to sync since I had been toying with my PC for so long, but it worked on hers.

A few weeks go by and I start noticing tiny scratches on my screen. I pull up some quick reference materials and discover I can make a simple screen protector out of very inexpensive overhead sheets. I dive in, buy a package and make a handful for myself and friends.

Realizing I had many extra I begin to sell them on eBay - my first set of 4 (which cost me under $0.10 ended up selling for nearly $20). Within a few auctions the screens paid for the handheld they protected many times over. Unfortunately after a few weeks I received notice that I was apparently infringing a patent and had to stop selling my little wonders. So sad.

Fast forward 7 months and my fiancee and I get married. The Visors prove to be worth their weight in platinum - we manage 'to do' lists, registry lists, band information, venue specifics, guest lists all on the Visors, beaming items back and forth endlessly. I wasdefinitely hooked.

Our Visors accompany us on our honeymoon as we hunt for NYC apartment rentals. The calculator and notepad prove invaluable in our quest.

Ahead 2 months - guess what helps us organize the move to NY from Florida?

We begin internships at our respective law firms and from day one we've got our visors - tracking expenses, keeping our billable time, used for taking notes which can then be instantly integrated into word docs or client memos - saves us each valuable hours on a weekly basis.

Then we delve into the world of bar reviews classes. For those out there that haven't taken medical boards, bar exams, or other heavy duty standardized exam they can be brutal. The NY Bar exam is a two day test. One day is dedicated to short answer and multiple choice questions, the other pure essay questions - 6+ hours each day.

The Bar review course can be even more brutal - our particular choice held class 5 or 6 days per week for anywhere from 4 to 7 hours per day (weekdays would normally run 5:45 to 10 and weekends 10 to 5) for 2 months.

With my handwriting I knew I was in trouble - not only would I be in pain each day from taking the notes but I wouldn't be able to read them. There was no hookup for a laptop in the room so the possibility existed for real disaster. This was particularly true given that these courses were vital for me - I had studied law in a different state and while not useless I needed the material in the review course for 95% of the exam topics.

Once again my trusty Visor came to the rescue. I had received the Stowaway keyboard a few weeks earlier and decided to give it a test run. Snapping mylil buddy into the keyboard I began typing away (I type faster than most secretaries so keeping up with manual notetakers was not difficult). It seemed to work. Within days I had upgraded to a sufficiently decent Word processor (notepad filled up almost instantly) and I stocked up on NiMH and NiCDrechargeables.

My trusty little plastic friend brought me through bar prep with shining colors. All I needed was two minutes every few hours to change out batteries (which I burned through with ridiculous speed - at the time hours upon hours of use of a PDA was nearly unheard of) and to perform a backup to a module in case everything went to heck in hand basket.

Historical note - This was the big advantage of the Visor over the Palm at the time - the SpringBoard slot, in this case a backup module. A backup SpringBoard ran approx. $40 but was a simple self-contained, on the spot backup system. Snap it in and you're presented with two options - backup or restore. It was foolproof provided you remembered to put the thing in.

I, of course, had the great advantage of instant digital notes. Others would go home and retype everything. We had instant copies and backups of each days' lesson so I could provide copies to friends if they missed a section, bring a copy with me to study if I was going out of town without risking the originals and I was able to easily make review sheets on specific items just by copying and pasting.

It worked for me and my wife - we both passed first time around. A few months later a friend asked for a copy of our notes and was able to pass the bar based solely on the quality of our notes (and her own intelligence, of course). No way would anyone have been able to decode my notes if they were handwritten.

Ahead again a few months and commencement from law school brings an upgrade for us - Visor Edges - sleek aluminum PDAs with slightly faster processors, and much higher sex appeal. Mine's silver and hers is blue. Mine is much cooler.

Around this time my father-in-law, mother-in-law and brothers-in-law realized what a great device the Handsprings were. They had been listening to us proselytizing about the things for years and began to convert. Since that time my father-in-law has been through 4-5 devices, my brothers in law 2-3 each.

Then came the real job and the PDA slowdown - as an associate in a very small law office I was at my desk most of the time and had no need for my swanky new Edge. Even after buying a new keyboard it mostly sat at home, going out on the occasional trip with the GPS springboard, really and truly mostly collecting dust - a sad tale really.

Until 3 years later when I tried to pull it out and use it at a new job.

Sadly the relationship between my friend Edge and I had been broken beyond repair. His battery wouldn't hold a charge, there would be constant fatal errors and even the flimsy clips on the keyboard snapped off. His monochrome screen also wasn't living up to par next to those swanky Treos, recaptured by renamed parent PalmOne. He was ashamed and it showed. I gently placed him in tech storage, allowing him to live out his final days with the Graphite Visor, Ice Visor, and a number of old cell phones no one wanted.

The hunt was on for a new device. The old purchasing standards didn't work anymore though - they nearly all doubled as mp3 players, had SD card slots (my SpringBoard GPS would now be useless), Bluetooth, rechargeable batteries, etc. Everything I could've ever wanted, how to choose, how to choose!

The choice literally took months and finally came down to an E2 - which I've been using with abandon ever since. Though it's made me more appreciative of the Visor Deluxe/Edge - Graffiti 2 is wretched and settings are entirely too complex. Though, I am able to have a hard crash, require a reset, and have my battery die all at the same time and my data is still alive - that kind of advancement is the stuff of science fiction and a welcome addition.

Though now the time has come to move on and experiment with the next and newest and so I find myself standing outside T-Mobile stores drooling at the 'display model' phones, wondering what they'd feel like in my hands.