What's in the Palm of my hand?

As promised last week, we are going to take a little “tour” of my Palm™. No, we aren’t looking at my lifeline or checking my fingerprints with the folks at the witness protection program. We are going to examine the software I carry with me almost everywhere I go on my three-year-old Palm Tungsten /e ™.

For sure the main functions I use most often are my address book and calendar, but I do have several other applications available. Since most PDAs have a small slot into which you can insert a SD memory card (the same used in many digital cameras) they can hold lots of information.

For example, my Palm™ has an electronic photograph album. The photos look good and clear but they are displayed on a small 2” x 2” screen. The number of photos you can store depends on the size of the memory card. You can expect hundreds on a single 1 gigabit SD card.

Since I am seriously “spelling impaired “ one of the most often used feature on my Palm™ is the complete Merriam Webster Dictionary and Franklin Thesaurus. A quick tap of the screen and I can look up spellings and definitions.

Another favorite feature is my AvantGo® software. Each morning when I synch my Palm™ with my desktop computer the front page of the current New York Times is loaded. I also get stories from Wired Magazine. During the day, if I have a few minutes while waiting for an appointment, or the barber, or the doctor, or a plane, I can read the latest news. The AvantGo® subscription is free.

I have a small QWERTY keyboard that folds up into a case the size of the Palm™ itself. With that and my Palm™ I can use mini versions of MS Word and Excel. The documents created on the Palm™ can be loaded and edited on to my desktop PC and visa versa. I would not suggest writing “Gone with the Wind” but for taking notes in a meeting it is great.

I have some specialized things as well. Since I am a frustrated musician, I carry a program called Tuning Fork. The program plays out perfect musical pitches. I have another one that displays chord charts for almost every stringed instrument from guitar to violin.

While I don’t have it, many PDAs can receive and send Email. This feature requires a subscription to a wireless Internet provider. Many high end cell phones have PDA features built in. Just last week, Palm’s co-founder, Jeff Hawkins, announced a new Palm™ product called the Foleo®. Larger than the hand-helds but smaller then a lap top, the Foleo® adds still another option. No matter what PDA device you choose, you will find hundreds of applications that can run on it. Some are frivolous. Others are tremendous time savers.

One common denominator for those who start using a PDA for the fist time is that you will hate it for the first week, tolerate it for the second week and not know how you lived without it by the third week.