Anybody CURRENTLY using a Palm PDA?

[alan1000]

I just ran across this discussion. I still am using a Palm Tungsten E2 (TE2). It was bought on Ebay and was described as "new". I have about five others, all bought on Ebay. My original TE2 was bought together as a package with GPS gear and was used for driving directions on trips. Heavy use of that PDA caused its screen to fail, so I ended up replacing the screen. I then thought of buying more TE2s, so I could use their screens as replacement screens, when necessary. To date, I haven't had a failing screen or battery.

The applications that I use a lot are "Handy Shpr" (i.e. Handy Shopper), "SmartList", Tasks, Memos, Calendar, "Big Clock", "Bell Time" and "Tik Tok". For backup I use "RscBackup". There is an Android Emulator for the Palm TE2 called "Styletap". I use Pilot Link to transfer the data files for "Smartlist", Tasks, Memos, Calendar from the Palm to my Mac Book Air (MBA) computer and then I use a program there called "Commander One" to put them in the right place on the Android phone. The alarms on the Styletap emulator weren't useful, so I wrote a Perl program (on the MBA) to modify the data files to disable the use of the alarms.

I have no inhibition against using Google Calendar on my Android phone, so I often duplicate important events there.

Organization of my activities is currently centered on using Emacs and Org Mode on the Mac computer. This competes with the use of Tasks and Memos on the Palm. There is at times some duplication--but I'm a pretty fast typist. I do use a Palm Bluetooth keyboard with the Palm.

The reason that I found this discussion is that I bought a Bauhn $10 Bluetooth keyboard at Aldi's (a German owned supermarket chain) and couldn't get it to work with the Palm, so I did a Google search "use non palm bluetooth keyboard with Palm pda". A previous experience with a Polaroid-branded $10 bluetooth keyboard worked with the Palm (but I gave that one to my grandson).

 

[JohnForTruth]

To answer the question: Yes, I'm still using two Palm PDAs. One is a Palm Vx, which I use in conjunction with a program for logging and tracking whether or not I have any excessive sleep debt. The other is a Palm Tungsten, which is used mainly for keeping track of gas mileage for our two vehicles, a 99 Honda and a 2007 Ford truck.

 

[peterblaise]

Hey, my precious old Blackberry won't even boot up anymore, waaaa.

I love to use it for photos ( 5 MP ), and reading PDFs ( it would REFLOW !!! I've read 300-page books on it, no problem ), and as an MP3 player.

I guess any modern cheapie cell phone beats it anyway by now.

Used ZTE ( EVIL company ) cheapie cell phones have DIRECT FM radio, and that's nice, no Internet is needed, they use a micro-SD card, and can store tons of stuff for reading and listening.

So I can't rationalize my old PDS/smart-phone gems from way back, like Sony, Compaq, Palm, and so on.

I salute anyone keeping old stuff alive, it all has it's reasons for being.

Play on.

 

[cschuber]

Hey, my precious old Blackberry won't even boot up anymore, waaaa.

I love to use it for photos ( 5 MP ), and reading PDFs ( it would REFLOW !!! I've read 300-page books on it, no problem ), and as an MP3 player.

I guess any modern cheapie cell phone beats it anyway by now.

Used ZTE ( EVIL company ) cheapie cell phones have DIRECT FM radio, and that's nice, no Internet is needed, they use a micro-SD card, and can store tons of stuff for reading and listening.

So I can't rationalize my old PDS/smart-phone gems from way back, like Sony, Compaq, Palm, and so on.

I salute anyone keeping old stuff alive, it all has it's reasons for being.

Play on.

My Palm Pilot's charging port broke. $JOB switched from Blackberry to Pixel years ago.

I had an Excel spreadsheet on my Palm Pilot which kept track of my diet and workout logs (I was a competitive bodybuilder at the time -- 12 first'/second/third place trophies). I used a cyclical low carb diet instead of steroids. Not nearly as effective as steroids but people would blame me for using them when I did not. A cyclical low carb diet tracked on my Palm Pilot did the trick for me.

 

[peterblaise]

Oy, micro-solder, but I also need a scope to see if any components have failed - so instead I just buy used spares off ebay!

 

[cschuber]

That was 12 years ago. That device is long gone.

 

[peterblaise]

12 years old is so young in tech terms, only 2013!

I LOVE my even older tech stuff . . . if it still works.

Yet even the non-working stuff is a pleasure to look at, dwell on, and remember the days when it worked so well, and I was so impressed.

Remember when performance ratings, like for printers, went from minutes per page to pages per minute?

When we went from kilobyte to megabyte to gigabyte and now terabyte?

Gone?

No, it's all still here, someplace.

And not forgotten, either!

Each of us has our own ersatz archive museum and mausoleum, I suppose.

 

[cschuber]

I have so much computer stuff here. Three running servers in the basement, four laptops, and a lot of extra parts, some new some used -- I'm an O/S dev so I collect stuff I work on; multiple APs for dev purposes. Not to mention phones and other things I don't work on. And a storage locker full of old motherboards and NIC cards FreeBSD no longer supports -- we're removing old drivers and have deprecated 32-bit. Old stuff takes time to maintain and it clutters.

Now, if I had an old PDP 11 or VAX 11/70, that would be a different story.

 

[PHolder]

Perhaps someone reading here may want to know about https://github.com/migueletto/PumpkinOS