Palm and Pocket PC general - Those old handheld you used to use before smartphones?

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I noticed the nostalgia for Palm's picked up. Even handspring devices are in some kind of demand. For what they are, palm pilots are better organizers and they are great interfaces to use like 80's MacOS. But they are probably difficult to sync with a computer. There is an open source program called jpilot that looks like it is still being developed. http://www.jpilot.org/
And I'm not sure about exporting to the sd card. There really is no way because until Palm 5 it didn't have a filesystem. It just used a database soup like the NewtonOS.

Good things about Palm:
The great thing about the PalmOS was that it only ran one application at a time and it ran it fast. The black and white devices (and the gray scale screens) would last forever on a pair of batteries. But the PocketPc wouldn't work too well even on black and white. Those things just ate batteries. All of the pocketpc's did have handwriting recognition from a company that built it for the NewtonOS. The problem with those devices is that they usually ran the simple organizer apps much slower than the palm devices and you had to manage the apps since it assumed multi-tasking. I think that androids are like this. You have to close each app you open manually and you really need to go to the settings to do this for each one or download an app that does this for you.

Good things about PocketPC:
However, the advantage of the pocketpc's were they used regular fat filesystems so you could export your text files, calendar appointments, etc to the cards. Also, you could run software

Bad things:
Neither can use TLS 1.3 so networking on the internet is out of the question.
PocketPC's make better computers. Some of the software is still being actively supported/developed. Lots more nostalgia factor.
PalmOS makes the better organizer. It is also still really quick compared to Android or iOS when using it as a simple organizer. I don't know about password protection. The CPU's are probably too simple to give much security.
 
AbendCode12 dijo:
I noticed the nostalgia for Palm's picked up. Even handspring devices are in some kind of demand. For what they are, palm pilots are better organizers and they are great interfaces to use like 80's MacOS. But they are probably difficult to sync with a computer. There is an open source program called jpilot that looks like it is still being developed. http://www.jpilot.org/
And I'm not sure about exporting to the sd card. There really is no way because until Palm 5 it didn't have a filesystem. It just used a database soup like the NewtonOS.

Good things about Palm:
The great thing about the PalmOS was that it only ran one application at a time and it ran it fast. The black and white devices (and the gray scale screens) would last forever on a pair of batteries. But the PocketPc wouldn't work too well even on black and white. Those things just ate batteries. All of the pocketpc's did have handwriting recognition from a company that built it for the NewtonOS. The problem with those devices is that they usually ran the simple organizer apps much slower than the palm devices and you had to manage the apps since it assumed multi-tasking. I think that androids are like this. You have to close each app you open manually and you really need to go to the settings to do this for each one or download an app that does this for you.

Good things about PocketPC:
However, the advantage of the pocketpc's were they used regular fat filesystems so you could export your text files, calendar appointments, etc to the cards. Also, you could run software

Bad things:
Neither can use TLS 1.3 so networking on the internet is out of the question.
PocketPC's make better computers. Some of the software is still being actively supported/developed. Lots more nostalgia factor.
PalmOS makes the better organizer. It is also still really quick compared to Android or iOS when using it as a simple organizer. I don't know about password protection. The CPU's are probably too simple to give much security.
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Didn't think this thread would get anymore replies.

I had thoughts of getting a Palm device since around late last year, and I wanted to use it mostly as a daily organizer for college. I know some posters have mention the palms weren't really good but I'm still pretty curious if that holds any water. As an older zoomer Palms intrigue me because they are very simple devices compared to modern smartphones and even Blackberry's. I ended up finding a blackberry at a random garage one day, used it for a week, and ended up destroying it by leaving it in my pants and putting it through the washer. I had a taste of what a PDA can do, especially compared to smartphones.
 
Turd Cow dijo:
Didn't think this thread would get anymore replies.

I had thoughts of getting a Palm device since around late last year, and I wanted to use it mostly as a daily organizer for college. I know some posters have mention the palms weren't really good but I'm still pretty curious if that holds any water. As an older zoomer Palms intrigue me because they are very simple devices compared to modern smartphones and even Blackberry's. I ended up finding a blackberry at a random garage one day, used it for a week, and ended up destroying it by leaving it in my pants and putting it through the washer. I had a taste of what a PDA can do, especially compared to smartphones.
Presiona para expandir...
Palm pilot's are really advanced for what they are, little macos like devices without a file system until palm os 5 with limited programming constraints. The 680x0 chipsets ran really fast as organizers and lasted a really long time. The software installed on them also recognized apostrophes and capitalized the first word after the end of a sentence. You can play with different versions online : https://cloudpilot-emu.github.io/
I got most of my software from a site like this mirror : https://freeware.palmclub.nl/
And this : http://pilot-db.sourceforge.net/
Just an FYI, I always hated grafiti and prefered an attached mini keyboard like the Palm Treo's.

I don't think WinCE 6 and earlier are worth it. And there really hasn't been a device that runs WinCE 7 and later that works like the earlier versions, so they are probably other kinds of medical or automotive devices. Even the windows phones are incompatible with the famous HTC devices. This is probably the best of the era (2009) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_TyTN_II

But you got a blackberry instead and fate destroyed it. haha. The only people who I saw actually buy blackberries were obese black women. Teenagers of the era had that Danger Sidekick or Hiptop thing for texting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop
 
I tried to recreate this feeling with a planet computers gemini, and then a cosmo communicator. The form factor was just about perfect, let down by the crap software that half-arsedly tried to recreate the Palm feeling, but never lived up to the hope. So close. Not even quite on par with the nokia N900.
 
teriyakiburns dijo:
I tried to recreate this feeling with a planet computers gemini, and then a cosmo communicator. The form factor was just about perfect, let down by the crap software that half-arsedly tried to recreate the Palm feeling, but never lived up to the hope. So close. Not even quite on par with the nokia N900.
Presiona para expandir...
To be fair to those devices that you mentioned using they seem more like a cyberdeck and thus are probably ill suited as organizers. I never used a psion so I can't speak to those devices. But I did use a palmtop computer with wince 2 on it. And my complaint stands, as pocketpc's were underpowered computers and too slow to be useful organizers especially considering they ate batteries like candy. The lithium ion recharagable batteries would last about as long as a laptop battery of the era, 2hrs. That is far too short in the dialup era computing, as even the wifi 802.11b devices would drop like dialup connections, randomly as well as having shit for range.

Jeff Hawkings was behind the palm effort to create a fast loading pocket organizer that can load any application in 3-5 seconds after working for several companies that tried that and failed in the late 80's and early 90's. He even carried around a block of wood shaped like a palm pilot to get the size right before they even started developing the case.


 
I wanted one of these so fucking bad back in the day.

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