From Evan Sultanik

PDAs and the Decline of PalmOS

Back in the day I had a Handspring Visor. It rocked… until… one by one… nearly half of the pixels on the screen stopped working. By that time the case had also cracked in so many places that it was more quick-dry epoxy than plastic. I was really hard on it, but that’s also because I used it a lot and carried it with me everywhere I went. It was also briefly replaced by my “hobby,” but that’s another story. Over the past ~4 years that I have been PDA-less, many things changed, not the least of which is the pervasiveness of the Internet. Now I have wireless 802.11 access at my apartment, school, job, girlfriend’s house, and even my parents’ house. Now I just can’t justify buying a PDA until it at least has decent 802.11 support.

Last weekend I paid a visit to my parents, and was greeted by a myriad questions by my mother about her “new palm.” My mom owns and directs a nursery school, and is a member of the local school board association for directors (or something like that). Apparently she enrolled in a course they offer which aims to bring school directors and principals into the internet age. Apparently they also have a large endowment because everyone in the class was given a PalmOne Tungsten C, complete with 512MB MMC card, for a fee of only $100. Despite my best efforts, I could not convince her to sell it to me. The Tungsten C’s internal 802.11 card was pretty slick, and got me interested in getting another PDA. The next day, while randomly at OfficeMax, I noticed the Sony CLIÉ PEG-TH55 and was thoroughly impressed: built-in 802.11b, built-in 0.3 megapixel camera, a better form-factor than the Tungsten C, and no noobish keyboard (one thing that annoyed me when using my mom’s Tungsten was that there is no longer a silk screen to input graffiti; instead it is written directly on the screen, rendering clicking on buttons/text boxes an arduous task because the OS will often think you are trying to input a stroke). Even though the PEG-TH55 is available for as much as $70 less online, I bought the CLIÉ right there, fully mindful of OfficeMax’s 14-day return policy for electronics ;-)

My impressions: Sony sure know how to make sexy hardware; too bad the OS sucks (for my purposes). I am going to return the Sony as soon as possible. If I were an average Windows user, this would be the hands-down winner, however, I solely use Linux (well, some OS X too) and none of the applications I’ve grown to love will work on PalmOS. That’s not even my main gripe, though:

• I can’t seem to find any free (let alone open-source) email clients for PalmOS that support IMAP
• I have to pay for an AIM client?!
• I try to download a PDF from the included web-browser, NetFront (which is very good, by the way), and view it in the included PDF viewer picsel (which has an amazing interface), and I get the error, “Please insert memory stick!” It appears as if I have to buy additional memory to do any sort of file transfer onto the device without HotSyncing.
• I found a couple SSH clients that work great, but there don’t appear to be any SCP clients!
• Multitasking?! I thought I heard that they implemented some rudimentary multitasking capability in PalmOS 5, but it appears not to be the case. What does this mean? If I am SSHed into a computer and need to read something from my address book, the SSH connection will close.
• I hate the “new” graffiti stroke input language, “Graffiti® 2.” I seem to recall reading an article about a patent dispute causing PalmOne to drop the original (and awesome) Graffiti implementation for the new “2.0” version, but I am not sure. Why is it so bad? Not all of the characters can be input with a single stroke. For example, “t”, “i”, “k”, and “x” all require multiple strokes.

The bottom line is that if one is a Windows user that just wants a PDA to do normal PDA/PIM things and also browse google news every once in a while, check his/her Yahoo mail or Hotmail account, and take random pictures while he/she is at it, this is definitely the ultimate PDA currently on the market.

However, if you are like me and enjoy a hack-factor in your hardware (i.e. some level of modification and control over the software on it), go with a linux-based device.

I am borrowing a Sharp Zaurus from my job and will be trying it out over the next few weeks. I’ll probably make another post at that time with my impressions. I already have extensive experience running linux on the HP iPAQ, and I can already say that the iPAQ running linux is better suited to my needs than any PalmOS-based device.

Update: I just saw this news article! I am very excited! Now I have to find some way to justify the $700 pricetag…

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