Computing on the Road (2): the Saga Continues.
No matter what people say (and I know there are many cultist devotees), the Palm (any Palm as far as I’m concerned) is a pile of shit. Sure, it was never designed to work as an independent unit which will talk to any old computer in any old internet café, but this thing amounts to less than even the minimum bare bones I would expect to see bundled with an old Amstrad or whatever.
Why does the Palm m125 not come with a built-in wordprocessor? And what about general, built-in functionality? It isn’t just me; there are people out there who cannot exchange documents between their PDA and their colleagues’ notebooks. There are solutions, but it helps if you speak German.(I know. I really can’t complain—at least I can do that.)
The Revo (my glorious, incompatible Revo) opens up a program that looks like a Word™ clone at the tap of the stylus and no explanation nor guesswork is required to use it. There is also a fully functional spreadsheet which looks—you guessed it—like an Excell™ clone and works like one. There is no silly restriction on document size either; by all means sit down and tap away at your novel. The keyboard (perfect for my short, stubby fingers) is integrated. Like I said: shame about the compatibility.
With Palm I will have to shell out 30 bucks for a wordprocessor and another five bugs for a device that allows me to convert files to .rtf format. In addition to this, I’ll have to buy special restoration software if I want to keep hold of these applications after a battery-wipe and I have to conduct a laborious series of tests to determine what particular piece of shareware goes with what. Did I say we don’t have a Windoze machine at home so that I can try out this patchy setup? I have already ordered various SD cards, software, readers etc., but before I have even married everything, I’m in danger of running out of free editing sessions on my demo version of Wordsmith. And I still don’t know whether I can save, read, edit and convert one of my short stories let alone the novel I want to work on during my trip. Come to think of it—I could install an old edition of Windoze on the laptop I’ve ordered and stick my Revo software on that and use it in town and the Revo in transit (it holds its charge for about 2 weeks). But nah. I’ve started this, so I finish!
Tags: computers and gadgets, Tag Index
Denni