Staff editor Steve Niles responds
That's true, there's no built-in Expense application, and the plastic stylus has no pointy thing. I also made one other serious omission in neglecting to mention there's no Mail application either. With this in mind, some may argue Palm has made some serious omissions of its own.

I had thought the reason might be that because the Palm m100 will most likely be marketed not to mobile professionals but towards casual, novice users and young people, the applications were deemed unnecessary. I contacted our friends at Palm's PR firm, and this is the response I received:

You are correct in saying that the m100 is aimed at a younger, more consumer oriented segment of the market, where price is more of an issue than [for] a mobile professional. Also, the m100 offers the Note Pad application which adds to [the] ease of use but does take up a bit more memory.

Dig that clock
After reading your review, I like the new m100, too. And I suspect it might sell for just $139. It's also possible that it would compete with any programmable calculator, meaning it probably would sell in drug stores that sell inexpensive electronics. Besides that, Palm, it seemed, just added some "knickknack" changes to it.

But I dig that clock! I typically use Big Clock 2.6 to check the time. If I buy this, I won't need BigClock, except for the alarm.

Gerald Shields

Trouble getting dates
This letter is in response to the tip mailing, "Make Date Book events repeat only on weekdays."

I read your recent newsletter and it reminded me of a problem I had recently. I wanted to set up a repeating event in my calendar that was on the 25th of the month only if that was a weekday. If the 25th was on a Saturday, I wanted it to end up on the 24th. If the 25th was on a Sunday, I wanted the event to show up on the 23rd.

The only way I could get something close to this to happen was to set up the same event on the 23rd, 24th, or 25th. Do you think that any of your readers can come up with a more elegant solution?

Wayne

Thinking outside the box
The following letter was written in response to the article, "Otter Box offers PDA protection" in the June 2000 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200006/ppotterbox001.html.

I was fascinated by your review of the Otter Box sample that fit your PDA so nicely. Very well written.

However, I think you may have missed much of the point of buoyancy calculations:

Buoyancy is a function of both the total weight and the net flotation of the box, the PDA, and the air inside the box.

Unless the same weight of Lebanon bologna (my absolute favorite since I lived in the Philly area as a child!) occupies the same overall volume as the PDA, the amount of air inside the box was significantly different, thereby affecting the buoyancy. You didn't mention the volume of Lebanon bologna compared to the PDA beyond saying that it was "about the same size," but my seat-of-the-pants recollection is that it probably occupies about half to two-thirds the volume, leaving plenty of extra air to be buoyant. Since you are pretty sure that the box is (was?) watertight, it would be very easy to try it with the PDA itself.