Palms: Can You Leave Your Laptop Behind?
- Palms: Can You Leave Your Laptop Behind?
- Getting Your Input
- Keeping in Touch
- (In)compatibility
By Jeff Carlson, author of Palm Organizers: Visual QuickStart Guide
This article is provided courtesy of Peachpit Press.
HAVE YOU SPENT TIME IN an airport lately? Once, it was fun to see if anyone else carried a laptop, but now it’s hard to avoid getting jostled by someone’s overstuffed Targus bag. Laptops have freed us from the desktop, letting us get work done on the road (without requiring a satellite office somewhere) and stay connected via email and the Web from nearly any location.
However, even a compact laptop can get heavy when you’ve been carrying it all day at a trade show. As handheld computers become more popular, more people ask me if it’s possible to leave the laptop at home and just carry a Palm organizer. While I was writing Palm Organizers: Visual QuickStart Guide, I had the opportunity to try several programs and technologies and found that they make a handheld much more than just an electronic calendar. (However, there were times when the combined weight of various Palm devices and accessories was more than that of my PowerBook.)
The verdict? Yes, it’s possible to replace your laptop with a Palm device, but, depending on your needs, there may be too many sacrifices to do it well.