Retrocomputing

Feeling the need for a PDA, I dragged my Palm iiic out of mothballs. I bought it a USB adapter and dug some OSX drivers up from an obscure but *thorough* Taiwanese manufacturer’s site (Linux drivers too. Warm fuzzies) . I hooked it up to my iBook.

 

The Palm desktop is set up and works like a charm. iSync talks to the Palm and my muuuuch newer phone. Avantgo is up and running via a third party conduit. Mail.app won’t sync and crashes but I think that may have more to do with my colossal email archives than the plugin.

 

 They really don’t make stuff like the Palm iiic anymore. The battery is still fine after lying in a drawer for a couple of years. The UI is fast and straightforward. Theoretically I could have used my phone as a PDA but the interface is awkward and the software is slightly sluggy.

 

I really think Palm peaked with the Palm V and the iiic, I see a lot of them around still. The Treos that periodically emit their peeping alarms around our office, really don’t compel me to upgrade.  The news that Palm are moving to a Linux OS sounds really interesting though, I’ll keep an eye on that development. Palm might get interesting again.