Palm Timeline

Since it looks like new iPods won’t be available until January 2007, I started thinking about getting a Palm that would act as a PDA (currently I have a Palm m515), but could also store some songs and have wifi access to the internet. The Palm TX fits the bill pretty nicely with 128 MB of RAM and a SD card slot. I could get a 1 GB SD card for $29 which would hold 250 songs or about 20 CD’s. I still think the ideal device would be a wifi PDA with a big hard drive that could play movies on a screen larger than an iPod’s. I started putting together a timeline like I did with the iPod to get a picture of the upgrade schedule. The TX was introduced last October, so it is already kind of old. I started thinking that maybe Palm would introduce an upgraded model this October. So I still may end up waiting (not a big deal since both my iPod and Palm work fine right now). I thought briefly about a Blackberry which combines a phone and PDA, but I don’t mind carrying a phone and PDA (though the TX is larger than the m515).

Continue reading “Palm Timeline”

New Palm Program

A year or two ago I was trying to learn to write programs for the Palm. I tried this when I first got the Palm and quickly realized that the Palm was very difficult for a non-programmer to write for without spending a bunch of money on development software. But they had a free C compiler and other tools which I made almost no progress on.

Later I got a book on the Palm that had a trial version of some development software. This made things a lot easier, but the trial version didn’t let you write anything complex. Later still I downloaded another development package called CASLsoft. With one of those two programs I wrote a Vertical Curve program that I have had ever since (but I lost the source code). That’s a good program for me to write when I’m learning because it has a couple of variables and IF-THEN’s and needs input and output.

Last week I decided to make VCurve 1.0 available on Palm Gear. I already had a developer account from when I wrote MemoParser 1.0, so it was easy to do. So far 47 people have downloaded it.

Palm Gear VCurve Home

VCurve home on my web site

Memoparser (cont.)

It’s been one year since I wrote Memoparser and I get an occasional hit on its web page and 187 have downloaded it at Palm Gear. I did a search for “memoparser” and found one guy’s blog entry that said “Memoparser 1.0 sounds interesting”. That’s pretty good, I think. The guy that wrote Palm2iPod still hasn’t come up with a new version that exports memos so I’m glad I wrote the program.

However, I have to admit that I don’t generally use the notes on the iPod since I usually carry my Palm with me.

I still think the perfect MP3 player would be a Palm with a 20 GB hard drive. And it would need some kind of open source community to keep it constantly updated and configurable, unlike the iPod.

Unfortunately, I think Palms and other non-wireless (wireful? it still has no wires) PDA’s are dinosaurs. I was at Best Buy and they had maybe 3′ of shelf space for PDA’s and accessories. I think cell phones are doing more and more but I don’t really want a cell phone. I think eventually people will make fun of me for using an antiquated wireful Palm, like it’s a slide rule or something.

Palming the Internet

A few years ago our office bought 10 Palm V’s. Over the years any number of horrible things have happened to them. Recently one was sat on breaking the screen. Another, I just found out, hasn’t been used in many months because “it doesn’t work right”. I asked to take a look at it. One problem I noticed pretty quickly was that if you do a soft reset the digitizer loses its calibration and you’ll never be able to recover without a hard reset which will open with the digitizer calibration (and wipe out everything).

So I searched on the internet and found a neat piece of (free!) software called DigiFix from www.copera.com that will reset your digitizer to your settings on a soft reset and can also be assigned to a hard key so that it is always available if something else goes wrong (similar thing could be done by assigning Welcome to a hard button, but this recovers settings automatically).

Another problem seems to be the battery won’t hold a charge. So I need a new battery but it is sealed inside the case. I don’t want to pay to do this, but if I could transfer the good battery in the Palm with the broken screen to the one with the bad battery so I go looking for that and find detailed instructions and pictures!

And just as a bonus, I find a place that will sell an original hard case for a Palm V/Vx for only $5 and a stylus that converts to a pen for $5 (plus $4 shipping.)