Every day we talk about cool things to do with your palm, but today i'm going to talk about why i have a palm. I've been a Palm Addict since christmas 2002. At the time i had to commute to go to school in south london, from my home in hertfordshire, an 80 mile round trip. It took almost 2 hours on the train each way. So i sat there for the first 6 months bored out of skull, watching everyone else "play" with their laptops, phones and other gadgets. Then i got some ideas for a novel, with 4 hours of my day being taken over by my commute, it was perfect for writting. But how, no self respecting geek would be seen dead with a old fashioned pad of paper.
The first request to my parents was for a laptop, that was laughed at, so it was back to the drawing board. Then i remembered my mum's old psion series 3, it was great till i discovered(the hard way) the backup battery was dead, and i had no clue how to get the data off it. With that the research began.
I had a only a few requirements, easy text input, desktop synchronization and most importantly word document editing. I had seen my first palm (i think it was a palm III) several years before, but not again since. My googling eventually led me to my first palm (i prefer clie, but thats niether here nor there). Why a palm and not a windows mobile device, Price. At that time the cheapest WM device(an ipaq 1940 i think) was upwards of £200, far and above my (my mum's) £100 limit. After looking at exotic handhelds like the nz series, i settled on the Sony Clie SL-10. Monochrome, 320*320 screen , 33 mhz cpu (as fast as my first pc) 7mb of memory OS4, and best of all Documents to go version 4.
For the next 6 months i read avantgo, played dope wars, and even tried out Warfare inc. it was fantastic. However by the turn of 2004 i began to feel the need for an mp3 player, as a two device zealot, i refused to embrace the ipod wave. So i began thinking of an upgrade device, another Clie of course. The launch of the TJ-35 fell perfectly inline with my birthday, and only cost £50 more than my old device.It had a color screen, a 200Mhz cpu, 32mb of memory and 3.5" headphone jack, it was perfect. It even had a Hold button.
3 Months later i heard the news, Sony wasn't gonna make anymore clies. I had always said my next device would be a TJ-37(like a tj-35 but with wifi and a camera), but with production halted by the time upgrade time came around there wouldn't be any brand new devices in retail channels. T|3's were cool, but they're not clies. So i decided to wait it out, i considered importing a VZ-90, buying a used TH-55 for 110% the retail price, getting an OQO(don't ask how) and even lusted after a E|2 for a while (Who doesn't want 17 hour battery life). Basically you name it, i consider it.
In September of last year, i headed to university. I began to rely on my clie more than ever, taking notes, listening to music between lectures or while crawling though the law library. My friends loved me because my notes where the best, and completely digital(cut and paste anyone?). But it's age was starting to show, the battery life was dire with the backlight on, it used Memory sticks, and the stylus was way to small (think toothpick), i used a old pen instead (with a screen protector!), plus there was no way to get the stuff on my clie off my clie without doing a hotsync, which is kinda useless when your away from your computer.
At first i played with the idea of buying an ibook, however the average university student doesn't have £600+ to spend on tutition never mind a computer, then i heard the rumours of the Tungsten X. Wifi, bluetooth, all in an E2/T5 form factor. It was now a choice of the T|X or the Lifedrive. Moving parts in a handheld do not go down well with me. It's not that i'm a super active 19 year old, but having a 3600 RPM drive spinning up and spinning down in your pocket every 5 minutes doesn't seem clever to me. So when the T|X came out i read a couple of reviews and then dropped the cash.
It's still not a clie, but is almost just as good, now if only it had a
Hold button...
Oh and if your interested, i haven't finished the novel after 4 years, i've written 3 chapters, but it's still on my T|X, maybe one day it will be finished. ^_^
In the likely event that you didn't notice my disappearance, i've been busy. My new/several month old Job (Web Developer), keeps me very busy during the days, and very tired on the weekend. However i haven't forgotten about the palm community. In fact i spend practically all my 'spare' time with the good folks on the 1src forums.
