Starting this month, we present a mini hands-on series on the
Palm Pilot, so that you can make the most of it. Why the Palm, and not any other
PDA, you may ask? Good question, and two very good reasons for that. First, the
Palm Pilot has become one of the most popular PDAs, with over four million
pieces been sold. Second, I’ve been using it for the past three years, and
even though what I have is a completely outdated model, I’m very happy with it
and am continually amazed by what it can do. I’ve stopped and admired all the
new models, but never felt the need to go in for them. I still feel that I haven’t
fully exploited its capability.
I’m
not sure how much hands-on we’ll be able to cram into this first issue, since
there are so many things I’d like to tell you about the Palm and its
capabilities. But that’s the reason we’ve decided on a mini-series. So, let’s
get started right away with a quick introduction.
On first looks, the Palm Pilot looks like any other digital
diary with the most important change being the stylus. Rather than having a tiny
little keyboard on which you struggle to type, you can actually scribble stuff
on the Palm screen and it makes sense of it. The second significant difference
is how the Palm communicates with a PC. You can transfer programs and documents
on it for virtually any application. You’ll see exactly what I mean by this as
we go along in this series.
The
Palm uses a script known as "graffiti" to recognize what you scribble
with the stylus. When you start using the Palm, this is the first thing you
would have to learn. Fortunately, the Palm makes it very easy for you to learn
graffiti. Remember the old classic Space Invaders, and how you learned typing
with a variation of the game–"Letter Invaders"? That’s exactly
what the Palm has–a neat little game called Giraffe, which has letters falling
from the sky and you have to quickly scribble the right sequence to shoot them
before they land. As the game progresses, it gets faster and faster, improving
your graffiti skills in the process. In just a few minutes, you get used to the
new style of writing. The downside of this is that the next time you step up to
give a presentation, you’d wonder why the strange symbols you write on the
white board don’t become the letters they represent on the Palm. By the way,
Giraffe is not installed by default, so that’s one of the first programs you
should install.
Now that you know how to scribble on the Palm, let’s look
at some built-in programs. The basic programs that are installed include a
datebook, an address book, a to-do list, an invaluable memo pad, an expense
manager,
e-mail, a small bunch of utilities, and preference settings.
To take a quick look backwards, PIMs (Personal Information
Managers) have been around for a long time, but they aren’t quickly
accessible. Imagine opening your laptop every time you want to check your
appointments. Another problem is that PIMs normally don’t have e-mail.
Microsoft Outlook, that shipped with MS Office solved the e-mail problem, but it
was still not readily accessible. So along came digital diaries. They were okay
as long as PC connectivity was not an issue. In some digital diaries, the
biggest problem was the fact that the PC interface cost as much as the diary
itself, and it only talked to a proprietary program on the PC. The program also
served as a backup more than anything else.
Palm Pilot changed all that. You could now use your normal
PIM on the desktop and any changes or additions made there would automatically
be "hotsync(ed)" to the Palm whenever you wanted. The best part is
that even mail could be synchronized. The desktop software that ships with the
Palm Pilot provides what’s called a "conduit". I’ve used conduits
for Outlook, Eudora, Lotus Notes and even with Linux-based machines, without a
hassle.
Essentially, the conduit provides three options–synchronize,
desktop overwrites handheld, or handheld overwrites desktop. Once you get used
to it, you could make changes on the Palm or the desktop. These would reflect on
both whenever you do a HotSync.
HotSync is the process by which your Palm and PC communicate.
It’s normally done through the cradle that comes with it, or better still via
infrared (IR). For a long time, I’d actually locked away my cradle since I was
using IR on my notebook. It’s ideal for traveling.
Tip: Buy yourself a HotSync cable as it replaces the cradle
altogether. It can be used for all kinds of applications like connecting your
Palm to routers, switches, modems, etc.
E-mail on the move
I’ll assume here that you’re using a Windows machine and
Outlook as your e-mail client. When you install the desktop software of the
Palm, it’ll detect this and set it up as the default conduit. Now whenever you
want, any messages in your Outlook inbox can be pumped into the Palm, and you
can get up and leave, and read your messages on the move. When you reply to
these messages, they sit in the Outbox of the Palm till your next HotSync cycle,
when they’ll be moved to the outbox of Outlook and sent by whatever means you’re
connected. Imagine, sitting on a flight or a taxi, or even a meeting for that
matter, with just a Palm in your palm and reading and responding to your e-mail.
One thing that you should know at this stage is that the Palm
is not really a replacement for your notebook or desktop, but rather an
extension or companion. I know several people who assume that it’s actually a
replacement, and then are very disappointed when they can’t do their
PowerPoint presentations from it.
A good example of this is the Mail program. It isn’t
standalone, and therefore can’t collect and send mail independently. It uses
the conduit for that. But I’ll talk about it in the next issue and also how to
set up your Palm to actually do POP3/SMTP mail without a conduit. I’ve used
this several times at the Singapore Airport IR Kiosk (more on this later).
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with another thought. Ever
wondered why the Palm Pilot hasn’t been officially launched in India? Well, a
very good reason from an extremely reliable source at 3Com India is that they
just can’t seem to make enough of them. No matter how many they produce, they
get snapped up instantly. I’ve been to computer stores several times and asked
for Palm Pilots, only to find them "out of stock". I guess that’s
the price you pay for popularity. I just hope that Palm sees India as a big
opportunity and steps up its production a bit, so that we actually unleash the
Palm on the unsuspecting Indian public. Till next month, then.