3Com's PalmPilot is more than a status symbol - with add-on hardware and software, it's a complete mobile office.
| We recently got to play with the new Palm III, the latest generation of the hardware. The major difference between the generations is a flip-up plastic screen cover that replaces the older faux leather case. The other design changes are cosmetic. Internally, you get twice the memory, but we never came anywhere near filling up the 1M byte in the PalmPilot Professional. We think the Professional remains a better value. |
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If you haven't tried a PalmPilot since it first came out, you'll be pleased to see that current models can act as e-mail clients. Of course, the first thing you need to check mail from a remote site is a modem. Luckily, 3Com makes the dandy PalmPilot Modem, which fits into the bottom of PalmPilot, and looks as if it were born there. Like PalmPilot itself, it runs on two AAA batteries. The modem's top speed is only 14.4K bit/sec, but because I don't expect to use it heavily, I can live with the slow speed.
3Com provides a facility for reading mail with Palm Desktop, but it only works with certain desktop clients, notably those that support Simple MAPI or VIM. My favorite client doesn't support either of these, so I had no good options - until Smartcode Software sent me HandStamp Pro.
HandStamp lets you send and receive messages through Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and Post Office Protocol 3 servers. It can't connect through a remote access server that demands a password, but it did connect through my AT&T WorldNet account, and it supports eight other bundled services.
Sometimes you need tighter ties to your tasks than e-mail allows. For those occasions, you can install the Synapse pager card from PageMart Wireless. The new card uses Motorola-developed technology to add paging and double the internal memory of PalmPilot to 2M bytes.
With the card in place, you can get not only numeric pages but also alphanumeric messages. Unfortunately, carriage returns aren't properly supported in alphanumeric messages, so message headers and other lists run together in a single paragraph.
I've run out of space to do more than mention AvantGo's WebClient browser for the PalmPilot. It along with all these tools make the PalmPilot a viable replacement for a notebook computer for frequent travelers. It won't let you create presentations, and you wouldn't want to use it to write the Great American Novel, but it offers enough value to justify its cost.
RELATED LINKS
Contact Test Center Director Lee Schlesinger
Palm Web tool needs work
PalmPilot Professional
3Com
$299
Tele-Support Data-Sync for Act!
Tele-Support Software
$50
HandStamp
Smartcode Software, Inc.
$60
AvantGo
AvantGo, Inc.
$100
PageMart Wireless, Inc.
$169 plus $19.95 per month.
Palm Software and Resource Guide
Palm shareware
More Palm software
PalmPower
Online Palm magazine.
comp.sys. palmtops.pilot
Usenet newsgroup.
