[vcf-midatlantic] Palm Pilot PDA: 25 years old!

[MEK K]

I had a US Robotics PALM that I gave away at one of the repair shops, the
screen had slowly stopped working on it.

I had bought a Palm TX with IR keyboard around 2005 or 2006 that I used as
an MP3 player and calendar for several years. It eventually had a weird
screen drift issue where even immediately after doing a screen
recalibration the resistive touch screen taps wouldn't line up with where
you were clicking.

I also donated a Netwon 2100, 2000 and eMate 300 to the museum with wifi
cards and an old wifi router that worked with them. They were fun to play
around with. The person I bought the 2100 from had originally used it for
some kind of engineering or architecture work and included some software
related with it.

When I worked at Sears in 2007 they had an inventory system that used
handhelds with built in laser scanners that ran on an older version of palm
os and I was always having to reset them and show people how to write in
Graffiti 2 (there was also an identical looking version of this that ran
windows CE but I never saw one in real life). They still used them up
until around 2012 at that store until they replaced them with iPod and iPad
based stems with a case that had a built in barcode scanner.

Another interesting documentary about handheld companies would be "General
Magic <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1uJAEAXlXk>" I cant remember if
this is the one where they talk about having stacks of modems laying around
that they couldn't do anything with or if that is a different documentary.

-Matt King

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 8:54 AM Andrew Diller via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> If you are into the PDA thing check out a nice documentary on YT about
> Handspring:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8-LmyroJKw
>
> Springboard: The Secret History of the First Real Smartphone (2021)
>
>
> I still take my T|C out and play with it every few years. Amazing device
> when you add wifi.
>
>
>
> -andy
>
>
>
> > On Dec 7, 2021, at 11:10 PM, madodel via vcf-midatlantic <
> vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: madodel <madodel at mac.com>
> > Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Palm Pilot PDA: 25 years old!
> > Date: December 7, 2021 at 11:10:47 PM EST
> > To: vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org
> >
> >
> > I have a Garman iQue that had Palm OS with an integrated GPS. Using the
> GPS feature without it being plugged in I got maybe 30 minutes of use if I
> was lucky. It was the first and last PDA I ever had. It's been in a box in
> my closet for over a decade. I don't remember when it came out. It was sort
> of like the first iPhone without the phone calling. But the handwriting
> transcription was fascinating.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 12/7/21 13:30, Jeffrey Jonas via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> >> According to Wikipedia, The Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 were the first
> >> generations of PDAs
> >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_digital_assistant> produced by
> Palm
> >> Computing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_(PDA)> (then a
> subsidiary of U.S.
> >> Robotics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Robotics>). It was
> introduced
> >> in March 1996.
> >>
>
>