In the case of your mother's flowers, if you waited until tomorrow to find that item on your To Do list, it wouldn't be a problemÐ you would still have time to get on the phone or on the web to order flowers to arrive the next day. But if the case was that your boss was expecting a twenty page report from you tomorrow, and you didn't see the item on your To Do List until then, you might as well start sharpening the guillotine blade yourself. Ouch!

Out, out, brief backlight
Those of you with Pilot 1000 or 5000 organizers can skip this one. If you have a PalmPilot Personal Edition or Professional Edition organizer, however, we'd like to make sure you know how to use one of the favorite features of these models: the backlight.

Believe it or not, many users are quite literally in the dark regarding the backlight feature, using their PalmPilot organizer for quite some time without knowing how to fire up the backlight. All you need to do is hold down the power button for approximately two seconds for the screen to be illuminated. You may also turn off your backlight without turning the unit off by holding the power button down again for another two seconds.

On the other hand, there are other users who don't realize that they don't need to wait for the backlight to come on in order to simply use their PalmPilot organizers. Pilot 1000 and 5000 organizer owners already know that they can use their units perfectly well under normal light, and PalmPilot Personal and Professional Edition organizer owners can go without the backlight just as well under the same conditions. Simply press the power button and quickly release to operate your unit without the backlight.

Like Charlie Brown on Valentine's Day
It's Valentine's Day and you still haven't gotten any love letters, any notes of affection or even death threats in your PalmPilot Mail inbox? Well, unless no one loves you at all, you probably have your Mail preferences set so that you won't be receiving any messages in your inbox.

All you need to do is select HotSync Options from the Options menu in the Mail application. Here you may select settings when performing a Local HotSync or Remote HotSync to send and retrieve your mail. You have probably had them set on "Send only" as your option, which would prevent any messages that have been received by your desktop e-mail client from being synchronized with PalmPilot Mail. Choose which HotSync mode you are using (local or remote), then choose either the "All" or "Filter" option.

Remember that your desktop client needs to have received new mail before you perform your next HotSync synchronization in order for any new messages to show up in PalmPilot Mail. It is always possible that you have not received new mail at all, which would mean that even if your setting above was correct, you would have nothing to put into the inbox on your PalmPilot organizer.

We all scream for clear screens
You were playing SubHunt on your PalmPilot organizer on the train to the office. You turned it off and put it in your pocket when you get to the station, but when you take it out to look at your Date Book calendar at work, you can't see a thing, even with the backlight on!