Re: Palm devices

[Stephen L Johnson <sjohnson@monsters.org>]

On Jan 1, Bennett Samowich wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> First off, let me wish  everyone very Happy New Year...
> 
> 
> I have been contemplating the purchase of some sort of palm device to 
> replace my paper day runner.  However, I am torn between the PDA's and Palm 
> Tops.  My interpretation of the two is that PDA's are pretty much an 
> electronic day runner and the Palm Tops run more of an operating system 
> (e.g. Windows or Linux).

Actually it's more like what kind of hardware is under the hood. A lot of the 
cheaper PDA's are just electronic day runners. You can't do very much with 
them beyond their basic functionality. Where as Palm devices (Palms and 
Visors), Pocket PC's and Palm PC's can more capable. They both have a lot of 
third party programs and applications that can be installed and run. And 
depending on the manufacturer and model, you can install various distributions 
of Linux and BSD.

> I also realize that intended use greatly affects the decision process so 
> here goes.  My primary job function is that of a network administrator.  As 
> such I have quite a few contacts and field notes that get used when calling 
> tech support.  My laptop is outfitted with most of the usual network admin 
> utilities for connection to routers and troubleshooting servers.  I thought 
> that it might be nice to have some of that same functionality in the palm 
> device.  Can palms do SSH or connect to a network and such?
> 
> I would be interested in hearing any experiences or insights with these 
> "palm thingys".

I haven't use any WinCE devices so I can't comment on them. But I have used a 
Palm (Pilot) device on one type or another for the past serveral years. In my 
experience you can almost get rid your laptop.

Palms can connect to the network using PPP via it's serial port or IR port. 
There are telnet and ssh1 applications available. There are several web 
browsers available. There are communication programs you can use to connect to 
the console ports of your network equipment.

Other programs that I can found useful are an IP calculator for figuring 
subnet masks or ranges of IP addresses for a given subnet mask. And a project 
management program.

There are several database applications available. You can take your master IP 
address and subnet databases with you. You can every update the databases and 
hot sync the updates into you main databases.

You can take your documentations with your on your Palm. There are a couple of 
compressed document formats and viewers available. You can take a surprising 
amount of compressed documents in 8 Megs of memory. The document converters 
can deal with text, PDF, postscript and even HTML files with graphics. There 
are even Word and Excel viewers now available for the Palm.

And with the built in applications your can store all of your contact 
information, your todo lists, and take down notes and memos.

A Palm VIIx with the builtin wireless networking, adding a whole new 
dimension. There are Web Clipping Apps that give you access to basic Internet 
tools, ping, traceroute, NS lookup, finger, whois, Host Info, etc. There are 
POP and IMAP mail applications so your can access your e-mail from most 
anywhere. There are web browsing applications that can work like the Lynx 
browser with HTTPS and cookie support. And if your need it there are WAP 
browsers that you get, also.

I'm a Unix Systems Administrator and by using a Palm device, I'm been able to 
hold out from getting a (bulky :) laptop. I've used my Palm III with it's 
cradle to access the console port of RAID controls to configure them and 
diagnose problems. I upgraded to a Palm V it is lighter and thinner. The built 
in LIon battery is very nice. But I recently got a Palm VIIx which I'll never 
give up.

I used my Palm VII extensively at the recent LISA 2000 conference. I kept tabs 
on the status of my servers with my WAP browser and I accessed my personal and 
business e-mail via my IMAP e-mail application. And I followed the all of the  
news about the presidential election. My Palm VII wireless usage exceeded 3 
megabytes for the month of December. That a whole lot considering I did it in 
1-8K chunks. ;>

I hope I've enlighten you a bit on what you can accomplish with a lowly 
handheld.

Happy Holidays,

Stephen L Johnson <sjohnson@monsters.org>