Then, fire up Palm Desktop and see if she sees what she's expecting.

The end of the story
Fortunately, for Fred and his daughter, all was not lost. However, much of it was. He was able to recover, from the old laptop, all but about four months of data. That data never made it to the new laptop.

Fred bought his daughter, who's now up in Alaska, a new Palm III and the PalmPilot sits memorialized in waiting, perhaps with the young woman's erased, but possibly not exterminated data sitting inside.

Is it possible the data still exists, in some raw, unlinked form inside the device? When the data is deleted, the RAM is probably not scrubbed. So the question is, can that data still be recovered? Will downloading a memory dump program, for example, overwrite critical data? And is it possible to upload a complete memory image from the problem PalmPilot to a PC for out-of-body examination?

If you're a programmer familiar with the inner-workings of the PalmPilot and think you might be able to answer these questions, please contact Fred directly or post your suggestions on the PowerBoards.