PalmOne VIIx Wireless Handheld

I have been using my Palm VIIx about a week now and definitely like it. As a deaf individual, the wireless email is as close as I can get to being on an equal footing with cell phone users. The service plans offered by Palm.net actually appear to be cheaper than service plans offered by Skytel.com for their Motorola text paging devices. The ideal solution for me would be a cell phone costing not more than $50 with a monthly service plan of not more than $10 and no data transfer charges. It would send and recieve text messages and surf the web anywhere in the world and talk to any wireless network, anywhere, for exactly the same price. We don't have price/performance like that yet. So I took the VIIx because I was impatient for wireless email. Now I have a minimally frustrating way of getting in touch with family while I'm on the road. It's really nice being able to carry all 427 of my contacts and a few tons of notes in a 6 ounce package. Is it worth my [$]? I am willing to pay that much just for the wireless email. (wireless web clippings appear to be well beyond my financial means at this time.) As for the rest of the device I don't know its true worth to me yet and suspect I will not for several more months. Linux users, you can HotSync a Palm to a Linux machine. Look for the pilot-link software for your distribution and be sure to check the O'Reilly web site for their Palm articles. Pilot-link, however, is focused on a serial HotSync connection. How about a little USB software too? There is for Red Hat users, but it is not targeted expressly for the Palm. If you have Red Hat 7.0 look carefully in your kernel sources for a module named visor.c. Open it in emacs and you'll discover it is USB-support code for HotSyncing a HandSpring Visor. Methinks with just a little work it can be ported to the Palm also, since the 2 devices use the Palm OS. The Palm VIIx has fairly severe limitations: 1. The Hotsync cradle ought to ship as USB hardware with a true USB interface just as the Handspring devices do. My desktop computer only has one free serial port and that is in use for my modem. (That's a tipoff that I'm a Linux user.) Few new computers have more than one RS-232 (serial) port. Old computers had 2 or 3, but new ones usually give you just one and a bunch of USB ports. Since a serial cradle ships standard, I may have to spend another $40 for the USB connector. (I'm thinking I might be able to go to CompUSA and pick up a serial port card for a lot less than the Palm USB kit. Is there such a card? Hmmm.) I think a USB option should be offered to Palm users free. 2. It should be easy to connect to a home network but is not. The VIIx is just another computing device. If you can hook it into a Windows or Linux based network, either with an ethernet cable connection or wirelessly, you can surf the web on a (far cheaper) landline connection without needing Palm.net. Palm OS 3.5.2 has TCP/IP code for making network connections. The interfaces Palm documents are through a serial (PPP, SLIP or CSLIP) connection. That means a hardware-based connection. I can assign the device an IP address or it can use DHCP. I should also be able to assign a hostname like 'bobspalm.lingpgmr.com'. But wait a minute! I'd like to sit down on my sofa (with a strong overhead light) and literally tap the VIIx into a wireless network connection to my home network. That must be possible because the handbook documents how to change the IP address of the proxy server, and there is now or soon will be wireless ethernet connectivity hardware available for the home. I should have a relatively easier time turning the Palm into a PPP-based network client in Linux than in Windows. But I would still be tied to the Hotsync cradle instead of relaxing on my easy chair and checking my stock account. 3. The Palm OS seems brain-damaged. For example I can only have ShortCuts of up to 45 characters in length each. Why that limitation? Why not 1K or more to each ShortCut? That way I can use ShortCuts to help fill in boilerplate text entries in DateBook or my To Do's. I'm limited to how many categories I can have as well. Why impose such arbitrary limitations? I might need 80 or 100 or 250 or 500 categories. The person next door might need 1250. That's flexibility. Memos and Notes are limited to 1K in length each. If you sync to Outlook 2000, an Outlook Note can be 32K long. There goes your notes if they are longer than 1K. Contacts in Outlook 2000 can have a large number of fields such as "Nickname" that the conduit will throw away no matter how badly I want access to them. What happens then? You suddenly find yourself reinventing the wheel, spending your valuable time paring existing data to fit the handheld platform when it really ought to be exactly the other way around: the handheld should accept whatever is thrown at it from the desktop application so that you can press that button and go. Instead of finding yourself with a mirror image of a desktop database you have 2 very different databases and each requires time to customize. What a waste. I think this is the fault of the Palm OS and very shortsighted design decisions. If you must reinvent the wheel someone was stupid somewhere. 4. I agree with all the other complaints made by others. The screen especially is very hard to see and use. I hate the greyscales and the reflectiveness of the screen and the difficulty of writing Grafitti. You have to be really determined to enter a lot of text using Grafitti. Complaints like these plus the presence of the Handspring platform may work to bring some humility to the Palm folks and convince them to make the Palm much more user and network friendly. If you are considering buying this device, waiting a year or so might not be a bad idea.

A couple of small gripes about the design of the device itself - The battery pack is counterintuitive of what is basically a universal format, the springs are for the flat, negative side of the battery; so when I put both in the way they should go in, in any other device, it wouldn't turn on. It wasn't until (an accidental) closer inspection, I notice one of the battery slots had the positive symbol next to one spring, so I flipped the battery around and sure enough, it came on right away. Another thing is the power button and the back-light are the same button; this seems like a bad idea. Just testing it proved tricky, one tap and it turns off, hold it, the light turns on. I'm giving this to my father for Christmas, he's not old or inept with technology or anything, just an average user, really; but come on, I'm a relatively advanced user of technology and I'm sure even I would turn the thing off by mistake, trying to turn on the back-light, far more often than I would care to. I'll definitely clue him in when he gets it, but it's going to take some getting used to; and that sort of thing you shouldn't have to get used to. There's just no reason to make those buttons the same; the power button shouldn't share a function with anything else, that should be common sense. Also, I was hoping even though Palm discontinued their wireless service, that the wireless reception translated to WiFi reception, if there was a WiFi signal being broadcast in receiving range of the device. So far that doesn't seem to be the case, but I'm not sure; all I really got was a message saying the antenna needed to charge and that the batteries I was using were too low in power to charge it properly. I'm okay with it not doing that, if that's the case; I knew that was a possibility when I bought it. It would have been nice though. Beyond those things, I think it'll come in handy for what it'll be used for.

I just ordered the Palm VIIx after going to Saturday brunch with a girl that brought her's along in order to check current movies listings and show times. She checked her email and weather reports (being that it was another rainy day in Seattle) and other stuff... I was utterly amazed at all that she could do from the breakfast table. As she was leaving to go to the bathroom (which lasted about 7 minutes) she said "go ahead and browse while I'm gone"... Seven minutes was all I needed to realize that I can no longer live without one of these babies... I went and purchased a Palm IIIxe from a local store and later realized that I did not have the same machine as her Palm VIIx. I really like the Palm IIIxe but since it does not have wireless internet, I decided to order one on Amazon.com at a much better price than local stores. I gave the Palm IIIxe to her daughter today and she was very grateful since she's never had her own PDA and her mother is always using her own. WORDS OF WISDOM - You can't be too critical of PDA's. I don't expect for it to do what a 1GHz Dell laptop or my dual Pentium III Xeon server will do... I only need the PDA while I'm out of the house or office and want to be able to check my email and surf the net until I can get home to my high performance machines.

Battery did not last long at all.

DID NOT LIKE IT!!

If you don't mind being a little behind the times to save money, than this is for you...good deals right now. Not as cool looking or advanced as some of the new models, but also hundreds of dollars less! It has all the GREAT PDA functions (calculator, datebook, memo pad, to do list, address book, etc), and easy to use e-mail and web clipping capability! If you are looking for a web browser, look at other products, but if you are looking to be able to send and retrieve basic e-mail away from home or office, and do things like check the top news headlines, get stock quotes, make travel arrangements, buy books or CD's from Amazon.com, check the weather, or read e-books, than this device is perfect for you. I upgraded from a basic Handspring Visor Deluxe, and will upgrade again in another year or so when "today's technology" becomes less expensive. Overall, this is a great product for those who realize it's limitations and don't mind them. Web browsing is a little expensive, but not insane. Again, this is NOT a replacement for your PC, but it is a handy little extension of it!

I bought this PDA as a standalone appointment planner for my office and other features it had. The wireless works but R.I.P. the palm network (2004). Everestmount is a good seller. It came in the palm box, with stylus, leather case, desktop cradle charger and docking station (serial), a serial to parallel adapter was also included in the box, along with the manuals. Overall, I'm happy with it, and it has a very rustic design, all functions are working, and the display is new. I wonder if (by a long shot), I sell it at 2030, what would its price be, specially for antique collectors. I remember as a child back in the late 90's and beginning of millenium, I always looked at Palm as a great PDA/organizer. I wish they still had been in the market so far. The fact that it is assembled in America makes the product even more worth to buy. 10/10 to this great old (but gold) PDA.

If you are looking for something that will help you to orgnize you day, then I say this is a great product to buy. But if you are planning to use it for the internet, then this is not what you are looking for. Because one, it is slow and the monthly fee are outstanding...So right now, I cancel the internet service, and use the plam as my daily planner. I don't know why Plam still make Palm that require batteries. Do they know that people don't like to spend more on something they buy one time. If this product was rechargable, then I say this product is worth the 150 price. But then when I order it, it came with a free keybroad, so in a way I only pay 60 bucks for the palm Vllx. Hope this helps...