-----------------------------------------------------------
Palm Pilot Fun, tfurrows (sdf.org), 5/15/2018
-----------------------------------------------------------
I'm composing this on a Tungsten T3 that I picked up
recently at a thrift shop in Columbia, MO. The PDA was in
perfect condition, with a flat-dead battery. It came with an
aluminum case and a folding keyboard. For $10 I couldn't
pass it up.
Yesterday, the replacement battery that I ordered from
Amazon for $15 arrived. It was about a 10min install,
without any real difficulty.
The keyboard is nice. It's a Think Outside Palm "Ultra Thin
Keyboard" model P10900U, wired connection. Finding a driver
for it was somewhat difficult, but only because I was
searching a bit too literally; when I went ahead and tried
out a general driver from Think Outside, it worked just
fine. The same driver apparently supports their wireless
keyboards as well.
The keyboard is wonderful. I have it on my lap, sitting on
the couch. It's wide enough, and sturdy enough, to use in
that fashion. Such is not always the case with tiny
keyboards (many can't span the gap between legs to sit on a
lap.) Some old reviews online complained about the necessity
to hold a function key for numbers, but so far I haven't
found that to be much of an issue at all. Yes, it's an extra
step, but it's not difficult, nor would it be hard to get
used ot.
The PDA is pleasant. It's a shame that this unit represents
the end of the era, because the features were just starting
to get interesting. My first palm pilot was a Palm IIIe, the
clear model. I had the original Palm after that as well,
plus a host of other PalmOS devices. This one compares quite
favorably with all of them.
(I do realize that I'm writing a review for Gopher on an
aged device. I might be slightly insane, but it doesn't
hurt.)
I'm not terribly fond of the sliding form factor. If it were
a bit tougher, it would be OK, but I find it difficult to
use the device and keep it from sliding shut. Also,
on-and-off the touch screen doesn't quite work properly when
the slider is shut. Perhaps it's not in as perfect condition
as it looks. If I shut it gently, it seems to work. That's
OK.
When I saw the PDA w/keyboard at the thrift store, I
purchased them because I enjoy having odd things to write
on. I have an Alphasmart Dana as well, and it serves as a
nice change when I want to write on something less
distracting. I plan on using this in a similar fashion. I
have a few other things, and I'll get more, that serve the
same purpose for me.
Certainly, this review is not at all complete. I haven't
talked about battery life or other applications, etc. I will
say, syncing with jpilot is a piece of cake. Finding
software is a pain in the neck in 2018. But, I've got SiEd
for text files (a full screen version would be nice) and
that's about all I need. I could do with a better text
editor, but it's certainly not urgent.
Next, I need to write about thrift stores in central
Missouri. Things are different here...
*****
An update after getting this from the Palm to my SDF shell
to post on gopher. The process was simple enough: 1) sync
and backup the palm pilot via jpilot; 2) locate the pdb file
in the ~/.jpilot folder; 3) convert the pdb file to text
with a pdb2txt project I found on google code; 4) copy and
past it in.
At some point, I'll drop the pdb2txt source on my SDF gopher
hole, as well as the keyboard driver, for easy reference.
