[From Mike, Ottawa, Canada] Detractors of the Palm platform have long complained about the lack of multi-tasking in the OS. Palm hasn't done it in the past because the Palm has been designed to do what it's doing well, without being bogged down by other things running in the background (unlike Windows Mobile). Creative Palm OS programmers have created something called Desk Accessories or DA's, which pop-up over your currently running application, giving you some of the benefits of multi-tasking on your existing device. DA's were usually written as little single-purpose programs, but a brillant programmer named Alexander Pruss has upped the ante for DA's. He's created "the Accessorizer", allowing you to generate a DA from most programs. This gives you the ability to pop-up one of the other built-ins (for example, Memos) over top of say VersaMail, allowing you to copy from one application into another. Then you simply hit the Launcher button (the house icon) to return to the previous application.
You can only pop-up one DA at a time, then you have to return to the previous (normal) application. Trying to pop-up one one DA over another DA will crash and reset your Palm device. Alexander recommends backing up to a memory card before generating DA's; Accessorizer is Beta software, meaning it is under active development and is not necessarily stable. So, there are no guarantees that it won't eat your Palm, your cat, or your spouse. However, in my preliminary testing, I've found that it does what it advertises, and very well at that! I've replaced daMemoPad and it's 4K limit with a DA of psMemo, so I get the full 32K of Memos in a pop-up fashion. Accessorizer can be found in the 1src.com forums, or by googling for "palm da accessorizer".
Have a great weekend /week, Sammy! Hope your quest for "the right" tablet ends sucessfully! I never expected that my post "2nd gen Foleo should be a tablet" would get so many interested in the platform. I've only played with them a couple of times, but having been a long time Palm user, I think the stylus is one of the most natural forms of input around.
