I've got to admit I really like my palm as I can geek-play with it. I use Cygwin on top of win98 and gcc for palmos is installable by the Cygwin installer. http://prc-tools.sourceforge.net/install/

> Hi James,
>               I'm thinking of buying either Philips
> Philips Nino or Palm-pilot (as a present for somebody).
> Any advice ?
> What do you mainly use the Palm-pilot for ?

Found a good article: Nino 300 vs. the Palm III organizer: the hardware

Well I find the Palm great of course - quickly some +s and -s
 + light and thin
 + lower use of batteries
 + smaller application & doc size, better use for memory
 - not winCE => good/bad depending 
       - must convert docs from text
       + documents smaller
       - no direct interface from winCE to windows  word, excel, more
 - graphics not as good (I think)
 - sound not as good
 
Now I must admit I've never had a close encounter with the Nino so I'd
get someone in a shop to leave you twiddle with it.  I have met the
Velo though and apoart from the keyboard and weight I guess Nino has
pretty much the same capability.

Because 3com use their own OS and Nino supports winCE then obviously
the Nino can support more graphics, better sound etc... but I find
that the Palm beats pretty much all the winCE machines because the
overhead with the extra memory and software needed for winCE makes
Nino and others a bit heavier - weight and battery-wise.

> Any advice ?
> What do you mainly use the Palm-pilot for ?

The main things I use on the pilot are:
 o address book (built in)
 o calendar (built in)
 o memo pad (built in - reading documents, taking notes)
 o brainstorm (hierarchial planner - split up tasks and track)
 o mathPad and Parens() (calculator/mathpad - shareware)

There is a good bit more I have on it that I use occasionally
 o built in email and expenses. 
 o Shareware games, music (beep-boop)
 o the odd game of chess/tetris on long journies
 o kanji tutor, dutch/german/french/english dictionary
 o periodic table = actually I must admit I NEVER use this
 o PalmC/BASIC/database/infra-red-remote used mostly for entertainment.

> Is it targeted mostly for stand-alone use or
> for combined use with a PC ?

It is targeted for use with PCs mainly, the windows desktop software
comes with the palm and allows sync and browsing/export or import to
other apps. Also provides for download of new apps.

 Other software such as brainstorm comes with windows
software also and I believe Netscape, word, lotus, more are also
adding palm sync to various calendar/address/document/other utils.

Sync is quite fast, easy and would be perfect if I had it in work - at
the moment I sync at home, mostly for backup .... but it would be easy
enough to take notes (if you weren't shy of using palm), sync to PC,
and copy to wherever - email, doc, ...

> Any info gratefully received

So - of course I'm biased but I really do think the palm is an
excellent tool - and on occasion - plaything :)

> Jim


The following is the mail from myself before Dave M bought a palm:  
You might find it interesting too?

Leave me know how you do.

bye,

James.




From: James Coleman 
To: Dave.Murrells@ehv.ce.philips.com
Subject: Re: Palm Pilots

Hey Dave,

>   Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 13:15:57 +0200
>   From: Dave Murrells 
>
>   James,
>           Looks like I'm finally going to break down
>   and get myself an e-organiser. Dave French
>   is doing his bit to hype the Psion.  I thought I'd
>   see what you made of the old Palm Pilot. 

Le oul Palm III is still chugging along happily and I find it really
good, esp with all the shareware stuff available. Don't know much
about the psion other than that it was??still is?? very popular (&
excellent) but 3com Palm has size, graffiti and LOADS of shareware in
advantage I think, correct me as I'm ignorant!
I do actually find the Graffiti (writing text with stylus) quite good
now ... I can pretty much enter all I want without looking up even the
more obscure @#/?><,.!~, y'know ... doesn't take long to get used to
it + there's a quick popup help page. Cathy's favourite game was
Giraffe (teaches graffiti) so she's probably faster than me. I think
she's also tempted maybe to get one.

 I don't think you quite were in on "silly palmtop season" over here?
 But when I got mine I had it with me a good bit so the others were a
 bit encouraged ... so at CEIP meetings Siebe had VELO, Jan had Psion,
 Pieter, Gabe and I had Palm and Cathy and Fionnuala were feeling
 (only a little) left out.  But it was good fun.  Oh ... Jeroen bought
 a PalmIII after a while and we flashed various applications to each
 other - that was good!   We're still all toting them around more or
 less.

 The ability to "hotsync" is excellent but you do need a PC
 .... or of course find someone like Edwin Potman to download the Palm
 Manager for unix and get a reverse d-type connector. I've no time but
 I think I might find some in S3 to set it up sometime (it shouldn't
 be too hard I hope). Various "conduits" are available to sync with
 various programs - on PCs and on Unix - e.g. Quicken, Lotus,
 MicrosoftShedule/Whatever, Calendar, ... and if you are a fanatic
 they're easy enough to customise (trust Edwin to write a post
 database conduit!!!)
 
 Anyway - practical tools so far of use are the Calendar, and the
 address book. Memo pad also good use, shareware app MathPad which is
 excellent (can evaluate expressions in document => dump the silly
 calculator).

 I find the ToDO list is of limited use but I've got 2 apps now (shareware)
 HiNote and BrainForest which do a much better job - hierarchical
 tasks and project managment. And there's a thing called Actioneer
 which is a more integrated organiser and makes entries in the
 calendar, address book, memopad, todo list but I've only just got it
 on floppy and I'm gonna hotsync it soon.

 Other handy utilities - PocketC (develop your own Palm apps! - some
 open source stuff available - cool!) - Basic - Expense apps - various
 spreadsheets (getting better Jfile currently planned to be downloaded
 - sounds good!)

 Lots of other stuff, mostly non-work related, UNIX reference
 documents, C ref docs, periodic table, dictionary prog
 (Dutch/Japanese/.... ->ENglish) (I'm strange so I like the Japanese
 one). Language tutors, ....

 Of course there's a ridiculous amount of tiny (and some NOT so tiny!)
 games/puzzles/card games available too,  the most popular of which
 are chess (Fionnuala & Conor too), subhunt  (Siebe), bombrun (Conor),
 tetris & various mindbenders & piano/playSynth (me).
 Excellent (together with downloadable docs) when stuck waiting for
 lift/bus/train - imagine the bliss of playing tetris instead of
 standing waiting for that boring 10 minutes :).

btw ... I know it's terrible but I haven't registered a single piece
of software yet ... I might get around to it eventually but there's
alot of free stuff out there.


>    I seem to remember you were impressed in the beginning.  Still
>   using it now?

STILL using!!! Answer yes, and well, urm, sorry for being so
enthusiastic.

I've never played with palms email or web-browsing of course but might
get round to it some time ... maybe get a mobile in Dublin ... then
you just need a modem attachment fot the palm - small, fits onto the
serial slot - and sorted!

 Other maniacs have interfaced them to GPSs, their bikes speedometers,
 etc.... but this is prbly of limited use?
 
To be honest I never got organised enough to put my Goals & Objectives
in (never got around to writing them actually - Gabe seems not to be
worried about performance any more) but there's that Actioneer thing
to play with next.

Anyway ... links? ... oh, every so often there seems to be a good
offer for new PalmIIIs on the mailing lists but mostly only
deliverable in US :(

Sorry - links not ordered much, but good info somewhere in there :)
 
Insert links here
Picture From Numbers
PictureLogic

daggerware hackmstr

PilotManager

mot.com dragonball CPU

Palm III, Windows CE software @ Haus Of Maus

LFW: PalmPilot things

Wade's Pilot Programming FAQ

Pilot Software Development

Ted's Pilot Page
Pilot stuff from the b

Diego's Pilot Page

Ray's PalmPilot Software Archive
seashellinc orbworks pocketcapps
HPC.net: PalmPilot Software, News, Links, and More...
PDA Central

JZ's pilot page


Right then, we're back in Ireland the end of September (me maybe in
Clonskeagh) shall we see yous sometime then or are you going to be
living in Eindhoven foreverandever?

Good luck with Palmthingy purchasing,

Leave us know how it goes,

Tot ziens,

James. 

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