I used to have a Psion 5. This was a neat little personal organiser in a clam shell case with a mini QWERTY style keyboard. The Psion even had a port of the ‘vi’ editor available. However, after the novelty wore off, I didn’t use it much other than a few shortlived pointless games and as a glorified address book when sending out my Christmas cards.
Years later, I worked with some young, trendy individuals who wore Diesel trousers who taunted me as they all gradually acquired new, shiny Palm PDA’s. Of course, I simply couldn’t face them with my aged Psion so I went out and bought a Palm Vx.
Inevitably, the initial novelty soon wore off, the young things upgraded to different designer trousers and yet another trendy mobile phone (with camera) and I didn’t use my Palm Vx much either apart from as a glorified address book for the annual Christmas card list.
Anyway, over the weekend, I decided to dust off the Palm and see whether it might be useful for capturing ideas for blogs. As the Palm had lain unused for so long, the batteries were totally dead and the device had been reset to its factory status. I performed a synchronisation with Palm Desktop using the Infrared link to check the communications were working.
Then I went to re-install Beyond Contacts from DataViz which synchronises data from Microsoft Outlook with the Palm. All my details were stored in my online profile at DataViz, so I was able to quickly obtain my registration key and upgrade to the latest version for free.
So now I can use the Graffiti application to enter information into the Palm, synchronise to my PC and then into the blog. I wonder if this will be quicker and more convenient than scribbling with a pen onto the back of an envelope. We will see.