PalmBlog

My First PDA, and My First Real PDA

My first PDA was a Casio BOSS, with something like 64k (yes, that's kilobytes) of memory, a little thumboard, and a tiny LCD screen. I put some phone numbers and calendar information into it and, like most people with one of those, lost everything the first time the three watch batteries that powered it died. See, the synch cable and software cost more than the unit itself, and weren't readily available. From then on, I stuck to paper organizers (I had a Filofax for awhile), and Levenger Pocket Briefcase notecards to write down my ideas and articles while on the subway. It wasn't a great system, but it allowed me to be basically organized.

In the autumn of 1996, I was in downtown Manhattan, and wandered into J&R Music World near City Hall. On display was something I'd read about in industry magazines, the PalmPilot from U.S. Robotics, created by the folks who'd done that cool Graffiti software for the Apple Newton. I had played a bit with Newtons, and was less than impressed with the standard handwriting recognition, so I was skeptical. I walked over to the PalmPilot, pushed the Memopad button and, with just a few glances at the Graffiti chart next to the demo unit, wrote my name and watched it display on the screen. Correctly. The first time. That did it -- I was hooked. Somehow, I managed to obtain a PalmPilot 1000 with 128k of memory (yes, that's also kilobytes!), hooked up the cradle, entered my contacts and calendar in through Palm Desktop (this was in the pre-Outlook days), and never looked back. The fact that I still have calendar info., address book entries and notes from those early days (I can tell you that I spoke with Sarah Redfield on December 5, 1996 about giving a seminar) testifies not only to the easy progression from PalmPilot 1000 to PalmPilot Professional upgrade to Palm III to Palm IIIxe to my current Tungsten C, but to the true power of this combination of hardware and software that Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky and the rest of the original PalmPilot team created.

(NOTE: Crossposted to PalmAddict.)