Palm PDA Reviews and Information

What can I say about the Palm OS line when Palm's strong market share says it all? As the cliché goes, less is more, as the venerable, simple shows us. While there are PDAs which have more memory, processing power, and all sorts of other hardware features running on more complicated operating systems, the Palm excels because it offers a quick, simple and accessible interface in the smallest package. The Palms are the easiest PDAs to find in stores- just about everyone, including Office Depot, and consumer electronics stores seems to sell them and their large number of accessories. There are more shareware programs of all flavors for the Palm than one could possibly ever sample in a lifetime, and many shareware/download sites devoted wholly to all that great software. Check out palmgear.com and handango.com for starters!

All Palms include calendar, notes, outline, calculator, mail and contacts programs which are launched by either pressing the appropriate hardware button or clicking on the program's on screen icon. Most models include software to sync to MS Outlook and work with Excel and Word files on your Palm. The Palm can wake up, beep and warn you of upcoming appointments. The m500 series (discontinued), i705 (discontinued) and Tungsten T, T2 and Tungsten T3 also have a vibrating alarm feature. Most can play MP3s, including the Palm T|X, T5, Tungsten E2, Zire 72, LifeDrive and the Zire 31.

None of the Palms include a modem, except the discontinued wireless Palm VII, VIIx and i705 (which have a wireless radio modem that runs data at 9.6k on the Mobitex wireless network owned by Cingular). You can purchase an IR modem such as the ENR Tech Pegasus reviewed here if you need to use a 56k dial up connection. The Tungsten W replaced the Palm i705 and runs on the AT&T Wireless GSM network. The W has been replaced by the venerable Treo 650 Palm smartphone which comes in CDMA (Sprint, Verizon) and GSM (Cingular, AT&T and unlocked) models. It will allow you to access the Internet anywhere you can get a data connection. The Tungsten C has built-in WiFi wireless local area networking, as does the LifeDrive Mobile Manager and the affordable Palm T|X. SanDisk makes an SD WiFi card for the Zire 71, and Palm makes an SD WiFi card for the Tungsten T3, Tungsten T5 and Zire 72. The Tungsten T3, T5, LifeDrive and Zire 72 have built-in Bluetooth, and you can use this to connect to a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone for Internet access or to use a Bluetooth GPS.

The touch screen accepts stylus and finger input for navigation and data is entered using the stylus and Graffiti, Palm's handwriting recognition program. The Treo smartphone is the one exception: it has a thumb keyboard and doesn't include handwriting recognition software, though it does have a touch screen.

Handwriting recognition is the heart of data entry on a Palm. The bottom of the Palm's screen contains a small rectangular area where you write your letters in a manner similar to those we use when writing on paper. Some of the characters are a bit odd, but most folks learn them pretty easily. While the original Graffiti required that you learn the Graffiti alphabet, Graffiti 2, found in all current Palm OS PDAs running OS 5.2 or later, lets you write naturally. You can also write anywhere on the screen if you wish, rather than just in the Graffiti writing area. Both Graffiti and Graffiti 2 support print but not cursive writing. There are 3rd party applications that will allow you to write in cursive (script).

Palm and palmOne brand PDAs are compatible with both PC and Macs. Current models come with with USB cradles or cables for syncing, so you must have a USB port on your computer. Each time you sync your data to your computer, your Palm is automatically backed up. This means you need only put it back in the cradle and sync to restore your data should the Palm run out of battery power and lose its data (for older models that didn't use flash ROM memory, new models data survive complete battery drains). In contrast, with Pocket PCs you must remember to manually backup using ActiveSync (or turn on automatic backup which is off by default) and Pocket PC backup takes longer than Palm backup. The Tungsten E2, Tungsten T5, LifeDrive, Palm T|X and the Treo 650 (and all models going forward) use flash ROM memory and your data will survive a complete battery drain.

Note that Palm changed its name to palmOne, and the company that makes the operating system software is called PalmSource. As of July 2005, palmOne has changed its name back to Palm and PalmSource will find itself a new name at some point.

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