Palm VII, my thoughts so far:
1) This is the real thing, anytime, anywhere, reasonably fast access. I have never browsed the unadulterated web on a Palm, but from my understanding web pages come through looking pretty awful that way. I know from personal experience that the Sprint PCS messaging service that allows you to receive information pushed from say, Yahoo, is vastly inferior because it's one way. I have not tried the Sprint PCS WWW service but the cell phone screen is so small and I think the packet size is severely limited in size, plus even where 2-way is available trying to "type" using a phone pad strikes me as being a miserable task.
My suspicion is that web clipping is a vastly superior way at getting the information. The key here will be for sufficient sites to set up queryapps for Palm VII users in a fast enough time frame.
2) Some downers: Upgrading the stuff from my old 2MB (upgraded) PalmPilot Personal was easy for the "native" Palm applications (and 3-way integration with Yahoo was working very well and I expect to have that up and running again soon). However, upgrading the 3rd party stuff has been a PITA. The next MAJOR downer is that the Palm VII is 2MB only, I think this is a bummer. 4MB would have been good but for half a year now I've been maxing out on the memory, so this problem has not been solved by the shift to Palm VII. (If all you do is address, calendar, to do and memos, there is absolutely no need for worry; but if you want to take advantage of all the great things out there, you need the space. Some of my favorite apps are Datebk3 (a must), Avantgo, some of the more popular hacks, and Account Manager; some of the more useful queryapps so far are Yahoo!mail, Webster's Dictionary, and stock quotes (from Fidelity, the system's default; oh and the GoType keyboard is great if you know you'll be typing more than a sentence or two; and one final plug: I've gone through a bundle of different cases for Palms over the past few years, and all of them had drawbacks. But I have found the Holy Grail and it is Synergy Solutions's flipcase with belt clip. I know I look like a geek with it, but over half the usefulness of the Palm comes when it is within arm's reach and "quick draw", and before this case nothing even came close)).
3) The one thing that has surprised me the most is how one can take advantage of spare moments with it. And with webclipping, this is more useful than ever. The more queryapps become available, the less "downtime" will be dictated to me. I can choose to relax, but all the situations where you find yourself twiddling your thumbs as you wait on someone or something can be put to use, or not, as you see fit. I didn't really foresee that.
Andre |
