Applications Launcher
The most visible software change in the Palm III is the new Applications Launcher, shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

The Palm III has a new Applications Launcher.

You can choose to display the application list as icons, or as a list, as you can see in Figure B. To change the style, choose Preferences from the Options menu and then choose either View By List or View By Icon.

FIGURE B

You can view a list of applications.

The new Applications Launcher contains a menu that allows you to delete, beam, categorize, or get information on an add-on application, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

Manage applications from the Apps menu.

One immediately useful addition is the ability to put applications into categories, as shown in Figure D. While there are a number of third-party launcher applications that provide this functionality, it's nice to see it added into the operating system. Hopefully, we'll new third-party launcher utilities that go even further beyond the Application Launcher.

FIGURE D

The Category menu groups applications.

To assign an application to a category, click the menu icon in the Graffiti writing area, and select Category. After a few seconds, the dialog shown in Figure E will be displayed. With a bunch of applications loaded, the Category dialog took four seconds to be displayed on our prototype unit (although subsequent requests for the Category dialog were much faster). Once the dialog is visible, you can use the pop-up menu to assign any application to any category.

FIGURE E

You can place an application into any category.

Losing your Memory

Although the Palm III adds a number of new features over the earlier devices, the one thing that you won't find is a Memory application. The Memory application has been replaced in favor of the Info dialog in the Applications Launcher. To view the Info dialog, shown in Figure F, select Info from the Apps menu.

FIGURE F

The Info dialog takes the place of the old Memory application.

Although the Info dialog is very similar to the older Memory dialog, there are a few subtle changes:

• There's a new scroll bar on the right side
• There's no delete button (this is now a menu item in the Apps menu)
• There's now a version tab that tells you the version of each application

It's important to remember one thing now that Memory isn't a separate application. If you replace Applications Launcher with another product, you'll need to be sure you can check your memory.

Beam me up
Either you're going to love beaming, or you won't care. I'm beginning to think I'm going to love beaming. The idea is that you can send stuff from one Palm III to another, simply by selecting a Beam item from the menu. The key, of course, is that the person you want to beam also has to have a Palm III (because of the new IR port).

Beaming applications

In our office, Denise (our managing editor) and I both have PalmPilots. We carry them everywhere. I'll often download a new application and want to send it to her. With the PalmPilot, I'll have to email it to her, she'll set it up for a HotSync, download it, and install it.