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FRESH LOOK
The magnificent, misunderstood Palm VII
By Samuel Brandwein
It is amazing to me that the Palm VII is being overshadowed by other forms of wireless Internet that are much less user-friendly, such as cellular phones. The Palm VII uses the wonderful Graffiti handwriting recognition system for data input. The average cell phone, meanwhile, laughably requires you to use a phone keypad for data entry. I think the Palm VII has for too long suffered from negative perception dating back to its original release.
The ugly duckling
When the Palm V was released, it looked like a revolutionary advancement from the previous Palm device, the Palm III. The Palm V was more compact, it was lauded for its visual appeal, and it had an improved display and rechargeable batteries. The critical analysis of the Palm V was almost universally positive. Compare that to the release of the Palm VII.
The immediate reaction people had when they looked at the Palm VII was, "Hey, this is a big step backwards." The Palm VII is the largest Palm device, it doesn't have rechargeable batteries, and it has a rather unappealing appearance. Then the critics weighed in on it. Unlike the wonderful reviews received by the Palm V, the Palm VII received what I would describe as mixed reviews, at best.
The critics attacked the Palm VII on four key issues:
- The limited number of useful Web clipping applications;
- The Palm VII's inability to browse the Web outside of the available Web clipping applications;
- The inability of the Palm VII to use someone's existing ISP (Internet Service Provider) email address;
- And, most significantly, Palm.Net service pricing that could quickly run into the hundreds of dollars a month.
The purpose of this article is to address those four issues and explain why they are no longer relevant.
Issue one: not enough Web clippings
Web clipping pulls specific bits of information from the Internet in response to a query. Therefore, Web clipping applications are typically called PQAs (Palm Query Applications). PQAs are a great concept because they send and receive information in a format optimized for a handheld computing device. The problem with the original 25 or so Web clipping applications was that they were of limited usefulness.
The original PQAs were constructed with the goal of data transfer economy (something no longer as critical due to pricing changes, as I'll discuss later). For example, when you use the ESPN PQA to access recent sports stories, you get back 20-25 word summaries that impart very little information beyond what's in the headline.
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