In my line of work I travel a lot, and I was recently stranded in an airport for several hours because of bad weather. I always save up the latest of my computer magazines to take along and read on my trips. On this occasion I had enough time to read the two magazines twice over. While I was sitting there, I noticed several people working (or playing) with what appeared to be Gameboys (small game machines made by Nintendo). I’ve never been much into playing games on the computer; I don’t seem to have the patience. But on this unusually long day in the airport I think I would have made an exception. As luck would have it, when I finally got on the plane a young lady sat down beside me with one of these new hand-held things. It turned out to be a Palm IIITM (P3) connected organizer, or better yet, a palm-top computer. I had just finished reading (twice) the review on the P3 in one of my magazines and was anxious to check it out. But up until this point I had never been in contact with or even given these things a second glance. I asked the nice lady if she would mind telling me about it and how she used hers. She was very obliging and told me all she knew about it, which wasn’t much, because she had just recently purchased hers, too. She did tell me enough to more than whet my appetite and in the process of her demonstration she made one BIG mistake; she let me hold it and that’s all it took. I was hooked. That was on a Friday.

All that next weekend I went on the Internet and researched these things. I’m not one to rush right out and buy something like this on the spur of the moment. I usually wait at least 12 hours, <grin>. This time I had to wait a little longer because the P3 had just recently been released and was still a hot ticket item. I called around locally and no one had them. Everyone said they sell out as soon as they come in. Then the nice people at CompUSA told me to check back Tuesday when a shipment was due in. I did. They opened at 10:00 A.M. and I called at 10:01. A shipment of P3’s had come in so I had them put my name on one, and I took an early lunch. Needless to say I had an interesting Tuesday afternoon. And yes, it’s much more than just a Gameboy clone.

The Palm III^TM made by 3Com, which also makes the industry standard U.S. Robotics modem, utilizes an operating system called Palm OS3. And, as you can see by the picture, they do fit in the palm of your hand. This is the third revision of the Palm series by 3Com and apparently the third time is a charm. The 3Com connected organizer family consists of three models: the Palm III^TM, PalmPilot^TM Professional, and the PalmPilot^TM Personal Edition. The P3 is their top of the line but each one has their own niche. Although there weren’t many sweeping changes from the previous models, the refinements are obviously for the best. Or so say the reviews I’ve read.

So, what can you do with the P3 other than play games…. a bunch of things. The P3 connected organizer is designed as a companion product (not replacement) to my personal computer and enables a mobile user like myself to manage my schedule, contacts and other critical personal and business information on my desktop and remotely. The P3 automatically synchronizes its information with my PC locally or over a local or wide area network at the touch of a button through the use of a graphical user interface and a desktop docking cradle which facilitates two-way synchronization between the PC and organizer. The docking cradle easily connects to a serial port but nothing else can use that serial port at the same time. (Make sure you have an extra serial port or you might have to add an extra serial card, which is really no big chore and not very expensive.)

The P3, and the rest of the 3Com organizers, are equipped with a complete suite of built-in personal information management (PIM) software. These include a date book, address book, to-do list, and memo pad that are accessible through permanent buttons along the bottom of the case (see below). There are also four permanent buttons on the touch-screen that provide direct access to the applications, the menus in each of the applications (similar to Windows), a calculator and a find feature. The P3 works simply by touching the stylus pen (included and stored in the back of the case) to the touch screen (which is also a backlit screen) to open the application of your choice and enter your data or information. At the end of the day, week, or whenever you choose, it’s easy to synchronize, utilizing the Palm™ Desktop organizer software (a companion desktop PIM), HotSync® local or remote synchronization software and the docking cradle.

The trick to the whole thing is entering the data into the P3, which can be done in any one or all of three ways: (1) You can utilize an enhanced version of Graffiti® power writing software, which enables the user to enter data at up to 30 words a minute with 100 percent accuracy. All in all, Graffiti® is mostly like printing capital letters with the primary importance on where you start and which direction the stylus moves. It took me about half an hour to get pretty comfortable with the handwriting recognition software.

T his is the area that most of the complaints come from with users of the P3. You either love Graffiti® or hate it. I have had absolutely NO trouble with learning to use Graffiti®. Once I learned that there was an area to input letters and another to input numbers, it was a piece of cake. Although it was kind of touch and go to begin with. (Sorry!) <grin> The characters look something like this graphic to the right.

(2) You can also use the P3’s on-screen keyboard that looks like this:

Just tap the screen with a stylus like you would a regular keyboard.

(3) You can also key-in information using your desktop computer's keyboard, then use the HotSync® technology to synchronize the data with your P3. It's easy. Just drop the P3 into the HotSync cradle attached to your PC and press the HotSync button. You'll never have to worry about retyping anything again. That process looks something like the picture in the next column.

My favorite part is the ability to check my email wherever I am without having to lug my notebook computer everywhere. There is a small modem that plugs into the bottom of the P3 and with the proper after market software you can check your email from any POP3 account. (It doesn’t work with AOL yet but that’s coming.) The software I purchased allows me to download only the headers first and then pick and choose which mail I want to read. It also has complete email filtering to eliminate most of the junk mail that comes in every day. I can then read my mail online or at my leisure later on. You can also do the same with news groups and web pages in text or graphic-based style, although I recommend the text based style because the size of the screen makes it difficult to read everything properly. I guarantee that the average web designer is not designing for a palm computer.