Getting Personal...Digitally

by Vince "The TechnoCrat" Cavasin

Ah, Valentine’s day. It’s a time when even the normally lukewarm heart of the Technocrat can swell and sing with the virtues of his latest amour.

I speak, of course, of a sexy little battery operated gadget called the PalmPilotÔ.

Not that Palm Pilot! I’m talking about 3Com Corporation’s PalmPilot Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). PDAs, or "palmtop" computers, are generally small enough to fit in a coat pocket. They have anywhere from .5 to 16 MB of memory, usually split between RAM (Random Access Memory)—used to store data—and ROM (Read Only Memory)—used to store compact applications.

Like everything else in this world, PDAs can be divided into two categories: 1. Those that run Windows (in this case, the compact Windows CE) and 2. Those that run anything else. The PalmPilot runs a proprietary OS.

PDAs come in a range of sizes from the Rolodex Electronics REX—which is literally the size of a credit card—to the 1.5 lb, touch-typable NEC MobilPro 700.

But my current love interest is the 6 oz, wallet-sized PalmPilot. Physically, she’s trim and elegant, with a face dominated by a backlit, black-and-white LCD display. You enter data using a stylus; you can either tap letters on a typewriter keyboard that can be displayed on the screen, or write them using the Pilot’s Graffitiâ alphabet. Graffitiâ is simply a version of the regular alphabet slightly modified to make it easier for the character-recognition software to understand. Neither technique is particularly fast, but then you won’t be writing a novel on this thing.

The Pilot comes standard with typical "PIM" (Personal Information Management) software: an address book, date book, calculator, memo pad, and a few archaic games. While this is probably enough to suit most MBA students’ needs, 3Com includes a 40-page book full of third-party applications and hardware accessories. These include a financial calculator, Excel-compatible spreadsheet, and a modem. Yep, now your email can follow you literally everywhere.

The Pilot also comes with a HotSyncÔ cradle and desktop PC versions of all its applications. With the push of a button, it automatically synchronizes its data with that residing on your PC. This allows you to avoid the writer’s cramp of scribbling it all in manually, while ensuring that anything you jot down on the Pilot is backed up.

The PalmPilot comes in both personal and professional editions, equipped with .5 and 1 MB of memory and selling for about $250 and $350 respectively. It runs on 2 AAA batteries that provide several months of normal use; a handy battery meter tells you when they’re getting low.

While it was love at first site for me and the Pilot, I must admit, I once felt lust in my heart for those Windows CE-based temptresses. CE stands for "Consumer Electronics"—in other words, it’s Bill’s plan to get into everything from palmtops to industrial controllers. Currently, however, CE seems to be having its greatest success in the PDA market. PDAs like HP’s 320LX and Philips’ Velo run CE and do a fair job of looking and acting like a tiny PC (sans disk drives). Compact versions of all the popular Microsoft applications are available for these units, and they typically support 8-16MB of memory, of which CE hogs 4-8.

The problem with CE-based palmtops, ironically, is the size: you just can’t have a computer that fits in your pocket that supports a keyboard big enough to type on. How useful is Word when you’re typing on calculator-size keys?

When I considered this along with the high cost of most CE machines—$500 to over $1000—I couldn’t help but give my heart to my petite little low-maintenance beauty, the PalmPilot.

Vince Cavasin, ’99, is a shy, quiet, sensitive romantic who enjoys an occasional glass of Chardonnay while listening to Tori Amos cds and writing editorials for Greenpeace.