Appreciate these retro stuffs. Only those from this Era will understand. It's nothing about I can do this or that on my modern device, etc'. It's about the fun and pleasure to watch it and revive something we loved in the past. Go on mate, please keep on doing more such reviews.
He mentioned AvantGo. That was an offline news and magazine reading app. You would choose your content channels. At night, when you synchronized and charged, your internet connected computer would deliver the latest content for you to read the next day. The variety of content was really impressive. It was free! There was advertising, but it wasn't obnoxious. I also read entire books with my Palm PDA's. There are some great free ebook reading apps for the Palm platform.
I remember in late 2005 when I was on the bus with my youth group some kid had some sort of PDA. I remember being in awe and wishing I had a pocket computer like him! Now everyone and their grandma has a pocket computer with them!
ROFL that's the "UNIX WILL DIE" date :) I thought that was 2038. It's when a 32-bit integer overflows the seconds counter since 0, zero being 1/1/1970.
You miss it because it was so logical and useful? I bought another one recently just for the experience of not being distracted by ... everything that exists on a modern smartphone.
One of the benefits of the PalmOS was you weren't dependent on storing all your data on the internet. You kept your files and all the data on your computer and hotsynced one to the other. In my view we've regressed.
This S320 was my first PDA. It totally rocked, and I used it to keep my personal “blog” 😂. I also had a mint Tungsten T2 from back when I was in school. Used it daily to take notes, and I kept it mint. Kicking myself for letting it go, as I gave it away. However, at the same time clinging to the past only serves to keep you there, while time moves forward. Miss it though… solid construction. ❤🧘🏻
Me too. You could hold it in your left hand, operate the jog with your thumb, and have your right hand free for the stylus. You scroll to the icon you want, then push on the jog dial to select it. Brilliant design. I have the Sony PEG SJ22. It still works, except for the battery.
Those sync noises really brought me back to a great period of my life. I had two Palm Pilots. Never used a Clié but helped set up a few for colleagues. Some of the later color models were great for the time. I also synced with Outlook as I found it a much smoother process. Eventually, laptops got smaller and I found doing most of my mobile work on a netbook than the Palm. That is until the smartphone revolution hit. Thanks for this retrospective look, I really enjoy these videos and your efforts.
Back when I was a kid, and my family had a 386DX sitting on a desk on a room dedicated to it, I thought it was crazy that computers were stuck on desks, that we couldn’t have all of the power and utility of a 33 MHz processor at our command at all times, in every place. The first time I saw a laptop it blew my mind because it was exactly what I’d been raving about, saying that one day computers would be portable. The same year, my class in primary school handed out a class set of Acorn Pocketbooks (rebadged Psion Series 3s) for an assignment, and my mind was blown all over again. Something that could LITERALLY fit in a pocket that could do the work of a computer! Insanity, but exactly the kind of insanity I’d been telling people about. At about the turn of the century, I had a dollar store organiser, but I was fixated on PDAs, Pocket PCs, Palm Pilots and Newtons. Nobody would buy a 10-13 year old a “real” PDA like a Clie, though, and I just had to content myself with the two line 16 character display, and the spongey rubber keys on my organiser. To this day, I’m still in love with mid 90s to mid 2000s mobile tech, though. In all walks of life, I’m a big believer in having single dedicated devices that do one job well, and one day, I’d like to take the smart back out of my phone and put it back into a PDA… My phone is really just a PDA and mobile internet hotspot that gives me anxiety when it makes noise, anyway, so I’d really like to spin those PDA features out into another device again.
You brought back a lot of palm memories, thank you. I did not have a clie but I did have a palm 3 and then a Samsung flip phone with palm software built in. I loved that phone it even had a miniature stylus, did email and the internet. At the time it sure seemed like future was here. I loved playing the game Zap 2016 on that phone.
I collect vintage handhelds ranging from the late 80's up until the mid 2000's. When I find a boxed unit I'm always happy, especially if it's NOS. Anyway, great video and thanks for sharing! I'd recommend getting an "old" laptop running Windows XP to use for testing connectivity and to sync programs to and from your PDA's.
have u ever had a game on one of these where its like age of empires? u could send units at castles. and u had archers and onagers/stone trowers. me and my dad are looking all over for that game :( his old palm died and we loved that. u could capture castles and i always put archers in because that was the best :)
I had a Palm Pilot and I still remember Steve Jobs crowing about Apple never revisiting the Newton form factor after he canned it - I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I bought a Zire72 back in the day and it was so great for the time to just Hotsync in the morning, take the PDA on the commute (by submarine or space ship if you want), listen to my MP3s while reading all the news from my favorite websites offline, because they were automatically put in there by Hotsync. Nowadays most of the features of modern smartphones are relying on a permanent connection to the internet, which we all know is not available all the times.
Plenty of apps you can get for a modern phone that will aggregate data when connected to the Internet and let you read/watch things offline. You can even download the entire unabridged wikipedia and view it off the database.
In theory yes but in reality you have to check and configure all those apps individually if they did all the fetching while you're still able to connect. Whereas with HotSync you just needed to worry about one App doing it all at once and ready to go. I feel it was quite easier to use offline. But I agree that you can somehow put together something similar today if you invest some time in it. With Palm it was just obvious that just everything will work offline no matter what.
That Asus PDA had impressive specs, as I recall. I preferred smaller, more pocketable PDA's and Palm Treo's, but I did buy a Handspring, and liked it, otherwise.
I absolutely loved my handspring Visor!, i was able to do so many things with it. Battery power was not an issue as it ran on 2 Aaa batteries. In fact, back then, it helped me get my business off the ground and really running,, keeping up with notes, contact lists, controlling network router, through its intechangable cards, ( i had one with an rj45 10/100 mb port, a camers, a stronger ir remote than the one it came with, and on and on... By the time, the September 11, Attack happened, i had been using 5 of them daily. Alas for me, the 2 MOST IMPORTANT VISORS were locked up in my office desk, in the newly opened and renovated office space in 4 World Trade Center that day, along with at least, $50,000 in uncashed checks from the night before. 😟 (didn't deposit them, due to a really hellacious migrane attack on the night of sept 10th, and thinking, i'll just leave them all in my desk. It's not not like the building is going to disappear or go anywhere??)... 😔😟😢 Such devastation, from that time period, but also, a lot of hopefulness too! Around 2003-2004, i took the next big leap, With a Dell Axim x5, then, x10... they had color screens, easy to replace batteries, and a wealth of new featues, even if they were windows mobile based. Still, i have fond memories of my old Handspring Visor, and all i did with it.....
I know for sure that the PalmPilot Professional and later Palm-branded handhelds had backlit displays. All the black and white ones used a similar "Indiglo" electroluminescent backlights. Palm III series were great because they had a little rotary wheel to adjust the contrast, which invariably had to be adjusted somewhat when using the backlight. Later models had an on-screen slider for that. The m505, first color Palm, had a horrible color display, which lead them to release the m515 very soon after with an improved screen. I don't know how they thought the m505 was marketable.
Started with Palm III in '98. [ and 2nd gen Pro + Personal ] It's in the wiki ;0) [ has: Palm III, Visor Edge, Visor Pro, Visor Phone Handspring module, and Treo 180g ]
Actually, the Palm IIIc was the first color PDA by Palm inc. I owned the m515. Sorry to hear about your m505. Early adopters always run into this problem.
Used a Palm pilot to take wholesale orders in a showroom in the Atlanta Merchandise Mart for several years. Unit had a barcode scanner built in, and docked to a PC to download the order. Cool for that, but I was never tempted to get the consumer version for day to day use. As for now.....That tech seems so antiquated, and clumsy. I'll stick to my iPad, thank you.
"battery life" was normally "once" if you didn't set up the device properly and hence why so many are still available namely bad batteries. Because as part of the Sony ecosystem however there remains an awesome amount of connectivities still and even today as a media device. Mostly being replaced by Google *Chromebooks* now still makes for a very interesting software/hardware interface.
OMG I can't explain how much I've wanted one of theese! They were like the elite of palms, I had some lower end models, how amazing technology was back then
Nice unboxing, I appreciate that you used to have one back in the day and so you know how these PDAs fit into society at the time. I still use my Palm LifeDrive almost every day and I've collected a ton of software because it is hard to find.
As a fellow Palm collector, I cannot tell you how many times those Cameron Sino batteries have saved my units. They even have ones available for really rare devices like the Tapwave Zodiac if you know where to look!
I had one also and loved it. I still have it too but I don't use it. About a year ago I took it out and the battery still worked and my cover is shot too. I will have to start her up again to see if the battery is still good. Thanks for the memories.
Sure do remember those god awful chips! Never heard them called that before. However, I once had a man ask me about "computer decks". After questioning several times and having him repeat it, I finally figured out he was trying to "aks" me a question. That one left me shaking my head for several days, and a permanent memory that it happened.
I used to mispronounce that before I got my electronics-selling job. I pronounced it "see-rix". The first day I got the job, we had a training on all the easily mispronounceable names... Cyrix, Clie, Vaio, Sansui, and various others I can't remember anymore. It was eye-opening. There was not much internet at the time so you couldn't easily just Google the correct pronunciation of some of these names; it was just people arguing about it and usually nobody really knew who was right. So it was good to have it from a secondhand source, at least, who had gotten it directly from the actual sources. Hopefully all these pronunciations have stuck with me and I haven't forgotten any. I hope there's nothing I mispronounce at this point. The weird thing is when somebody tries to correct my already correct pronunciation with something I know to be wrong, which has happened in a couple of my other videos.
You should do a video of the palm phone that they did it amazes me on how fare we have come with tech! It's amazing on how phones have come compared to what they used to be!! Palm had a phone for a while that had a built in palm pilot and phone together!
I remember an uncle of mine had one of these back in the early 2000s, the thing was mind--blowing, back then the most modern pieces of portable tech you could get here on Brazil was one of those massive Nokia brickphones.
I had a Palm IIIx in somewhere around 2000/2001. You could code lua on that, have database apps, there were apps for overclocking and it could connect to my Nokia 6110 and go online. Awesome thing at the time.
Just catching up with this. I was always envious of folk with a Clié. I started with the translucent green Palm III in Nov '99. Loved the calendar/desktop. Avantgo to scrutinise the daily "papers" I could get up quite a speed with graffiti. My last "palm" was the very slim handspring. Initially I "dialled up" using my Panasonic gd 93 flip phone with infrared, but bought the cell phone back pack for true pre-Windows mobile/Android smartphone internet on the go!
I had this exact same model and used it to its fullest for everything from school to even spreadsheets. It really gave me a zeal for wanting something so much more. Lol i used to get very frustrated with how it synced to the computer
You really have to have the memory stick because the Clie loses everything when the battery dies. I left my apps on the stick so I wouldn't have to sync it again.
Yeah that was the major problem with my Palm M100 and having to remember to backup everything on nightly basis was kind of a pain because it had no way of backing up anything other than syncing it with your computer. Plus the M100 ran on AAA batteries, so I ended up investing in a AAA battery charger, and a keyboard that attached to the sync port to make note taking in meetings easier since I did not have a laptop at that time.
At least swapping the batteries is easy on your m100. I had quite a few Palm devices. My Treo lets me swap batteries just as easily. I had the optional keyboard too. Folded down nice and small, but opened to a very usable size for touch typing. Later Palm devices used the type of memory that didn't require power, but I still used an app that backed everything up to a SD flash memory card automatically every day, just to be safe.
I will never forget the scene of George Clooney using a Sony Clie with a color screen that flipped around with a camera on top. That was in the movie Solaris. Sony NV70 series
I still have one in my desk. Actually, as compared to the other handhelds of the day, the screen and CPU power were very good. As an attorney who appeared in Court, it was great for scheduling and synching my calender with my desktop.
I put the Graffiti 2 sticker for my Tungsten E on the inside of the screen cover. It stay there very long but it only took me a little while to adapt from Graffiti 1 to Graffiti 2.
I owned three different Palm-powered devices. My first was a Palm m100. My next was a Handspring Visor Deluxe. My final was a Palm z22. I also owned a couple of early PocketPC devices. I had a Dell Axim and a Compaq iPaq.
I remember reading the Consumer Reports issue on PDAs and PocketPCs from like 2004 and obsessing over how cool it would be to own one, even though they were way outside my price range and couldn't do much of anything worthwhile. I always got the impression that they never really caught on with the general public; it was more of a thing to have for work if your job made you walk around a lot.
Could you please help us out with the URL links for the things you installed? (The AKIKA driver and the PALM desktop for Windows 10)? Please? Awesome video!
I remember having a PDA when I was in high school. I had one with a color screen though. Also had an IR with remote functions so I could adjust the volume on the TV when we were watching videos in class. My teacher was a bit of a bitch when it came to me adjusting the volume but she knew I was hearing impaired. I told her I could either turn up the volume or turn on closed caption. People complained that the closed caption got in the way, so I'd just turn the volume up. I technically wasn't even supposed to have it in class, but other than controlling the TV, I didn't do anything that would get me in trouble. I wasn't playing games in class, I wasn't cheating on tests, etc..I was pretty good with the hand-writing recognition so when I was taking notes, I could write it on the PDA about as fast as I could on paper. With the long battery life, I only charged it when it over the weekends. Part of the teacher's complaints were me not having a paper and pencil and unable to take notes if the battery died but I did keep paper and pencil in my locker in case it did happen, but it never did.
When one of the first Android devices with an IR blaster in it came out (might have been a Samsung?), someone used it to screw with one of the TVs in my high school science class. Usually it was turning up the volume just a bit louder while the teacher was face-first in their computer trying to get some work done while the video was playing until the teacher realized it was really loud. I asked him once if he could try to send an eject signal to the VCR while we were watching a tape, but that didn't work.
I had a Palm V at one point, and before that a clamshell organizer with a decently sized keyboard (the unit was maybe 7-8 inches long) that I can't find and don't remember the brand of at all. Needless to say I was the only one in probably the entire school with one of those things. Windows Mobile was a huge upgrade when I finally jumped to that.
My first pda was an m515, tungsten t3, tungsten tx. Later, I had an m500 and a palm viix, the kind with an antenna so you could get on the internet via cellular signal.
The Palm OS platform devices had some nice qualities, even as far back as the one in the video. The monochrome screen was easy to read in bright sunlight. There was a ton of free, quality applications to download. No viruses. The game he showed was not as compelling as the puzzle games, like Solitaire, Tetris, and Bejeweled.
Somewhere in a drawer here at home I still have my old Tungsten T5 laying around. The last practical use was that I had a bluetooth GPS device in my pocket and I used it with my T5 to score my golf rounds. But the Golf scoring softwares of the time hadn't really caught up to the potential until the smartphones was the superior choice... It did have an excellent navigation software though. I have spent way too much time just now searching for it... Nostalgia hit hard... :)
Your video made me fish out my old TI-92+ graphical calculator. At the time you were "being productive" I was as well, on my long bus ride to work - I was doing physics and used the symbolic math functions on it, it was really slow but did what I needed! (A little closet industry arose hacking these old TI calculators.) Anyway I dragged mine out and a Duracell battery had leaked! GASP! No permanent damage, it was contained, but your video probably saved my old TI by making me look :) (PS, same LCD screen, higher res actually, 320x240.) Thanks for this video!
I owned one of the crappy clamshell "organizers" (Sharp, I think? I know it wasn't a Psion) in the early '90s. Got a hand-me-down Newton in the late '90s, and bought a Palm V the day it came out as my first Palm. That was my primary PDA until probably about 2005-2006, when I bought a Tapwave Zodiac on clearance to replace it - only to be replaced by an original iPhone a year or two later.
Around 19:40 you say you're amazed at the machine's performance. If you're old enough to remember home computing in the late 80's, you probably know machines like the Commodore Amiga 500, Atari ST and original Apple Macintosh. Those machines were running on a Motorola 68000 CPU somewhere around 7 or 8 MHz. The CPU in these palmtops is a Motorola DragonBall which is actually a mobile-optimized successor to the 68000. It runs at 16 to 33 MHz depending on the PDA-model. So two to four times the speed of those 80's powerhouses.
Watched the video couple of notes, 1. the memory: flash for OS only (like BIOS), some programs could move programs to FLASH but depends on free space and OS, the RAM is the actual storage you get which you can use for programs and databases (in PalmOS it is split in 2 parts code and data) 2. Back-light exists from Palm III device and onward. Used to be a Palm OS developer
Linux still has a PalmOS sync/desktop utility called JPilot. I haven't tried the sync in years because my Clie PEG-SJ22 (on occasions where I can find it) no longer charges. I keep JPilot installed because I still have some old passwords in the Keyring app.
Nice. I remember seeing those at my local Circuit City back in the day. I still have the Palm IIIxe that I bought back in ‘99 or 2000 stashed away. There was a cool app that would download truncated www stuff to your Palm device for reading later that I used a lot, I forget the name of it.
About hand writing recognition in the modern era: Gboard, the Apple Watch and WearOS support it. They’re obviously miles ahead of Graffiti2, since they don’t require any learning of peculiar gestures, and are quiet precise. Also, I’m pretty sure Samsung’s Note line of phones also has a pretty good handwriting recognition.
The psp used memory stick duo, which wasn't as big as that thing being out in on the back of the box. the pspgo later used m2 cards, but they are as dead as anything else
Now actually take it out on the train & have all the phone-drones give you strange looks! As in, last year, I went to an 80s party, via the subway, not only dressed in 80s clothes (including a Members' Only jacket), but I also had a cassette Walkman, complete w/ 80s mixtape! :D
One time at a ham radio show in the parking lot I found a big cardboard box labeled free just sitting there and it was fill of palm pilots including my SONY CLIE TJ27 and all the rechargeable batteries still work.
How are you people getting these kinds of stuff for free? Here in Europe we have to spend a shitton of money to source the retro devices/chargers/docks from ebay. I’ve lost the count on how much money I have spent on my retro cellphone collection, while I see videos and forum posts from people, who get same items for free or few bucks... :(
I remember my first Palm device. And in about 2002, when I was looking for one, I was going back and forth between this one and the Palm equivalent (don't remember what model is was exactly). The pros for this one where of course the back lighting and the Jog Dial (which Sony was using on a lot of their products back then). The cons however, where the price and Memory-Stick (Compact Flash was much cheaper). So I went with the Palm device instead. And I can still remember playing Bejeweled on it for the first time, in black and white. Well, black and green. ;)
Had one of those (might have been a later model) about fifteen years ago; I remember also having a folding keyboard for it. No idea where it's at right now.
I had a Palm Vx... with the multi-folding keyboard, and a WorldWideWidgetWorks Palm GamePad to play Gameboy games. I don't know how often I used it though. I might've used it for the calendar and some notes... but it really didn't get used much.
Was it the Palm M100 or in the M100 series by any chance? as those were the entry level Palm devices at the time. I personally had a Palm M100 which I eventually got a 3rd party keyboard for that fit flush with the device for taking notes in meetings since I did not have a laptop at the time.
I have one kinda like that, it's a sharp calculator , the EL-6890. You can write memos, save contacts, save url pages, check the time, and more. They are pretty cool but the display is bad. But I would probably choose the compaq ipaq over the Clie because it actually runs windows. I actually have a old Compaq Presario
Sony devices looked soooo attractive. But all the cool looking software they included was cobbled together junk, for example on my Clie there 3 apps needed just view photos, whereas on a regular Palm there was just one. They modded the OS, so you couldn't use Palm OS upgrades, you had to wait for Somy to do it, and they didn't. They had a proprietary connector, so no chance to use Palm accessories. Mine had a keyboard, which was worthless. The screen was great, and the rotating function too, and the camera worked well, but in the end I regretted getting a Clie as opposed to a Palm.
You should check out the Casio E-125 or the BE-300, both of those are from that time period, and I used to watch movies and play emulators on them, I remember having the first spiderman movie, brand new on my E-125, the video wasn't even 320x240 but it was still pretty futuristic for the time.
The Franklin Planner system for Palm OS was the greatest organizer software in history. Unfortunately, Franklin Covey was bought out, and the new owners went back to selling leather 3-ring binder planners. The is the sole reason I miss Palm as both Google Android and Apple iOS do a horrible job with their cumbersome built-in calendars that bring the word "basic" back to the phrase "way too basic."
So cool a blast from the past for sure. Brings back a Ton of memories since I had the same model. Used this thing a whole lot use an app Called tinysheet which was a pocket version of excell. One thing I remember was having a lot of difficulties getting it to sync with my computer. I also used it for note taking and really pushed it to its limits. It definitely peeked my interest for something better which was later satisfied by my first android smartphone
Have you noticed the similarity between windows 10 os icons and pda icons?As a windows 10 insider i complained several times but was ignored,why am i not suprised......................?
you say windows 10 like it's something really awesome, that's the OS that made PCs look like service bars in a boring bank where you do exactly as you're told.
Google makes a keyboard that can fairly well recognize natural handwriting and if you have a windows Vista+ laptop that happens to be touch screen it could recognize it as well, even XP had a Pen Computing version of it that didn't even need to recognize your handwriting because it was so good out of the box.
I have a I.B.M. A20M I got some mini disk batteries in the package and they were junk we should get updated batteries that are new off eBay for all older devices
I had two of these from 2006 til my first Ipod in 2010. My cheap one ran on alkaline batteries and my deluxe model had a built in li-ion rechargeable battery and an adapter dock. I used them mainly to play card games and sudoku. I had to find an old model memory stick on ebay because the Clie didn't support sticks with more than 16 meg capacity. I beam transfered software from my Win98 laptop with an infrared modem. I think the transfer software was compatible with my Win XP desktop. Mine were useless for pictures because of the low res screen and the small capacity memory. I can't imagine how the video player could have been practical.
Appreciate these retro stuffs. Only those from this Era will understand. It's nothing about I can do this or that on my modern device, etc'. It's about the fun and pleasure to watch it and revive something we loved in the past. Go on mate, please keep on doing more such reviews.
He mentioned AvantGo. That was an offline news and magazine reading app. You would choose your content channels. At night, when you synchronized and charged, your internet connected computer would deliver the latest content for you to read the next day. The variety of content was really impressive. It was free! There was advertising, but it wasn't obnoxious. I also read entire books with my Palm PDA's. There are some great free ebook reading apps for the Palm platform.
I remember in late 2005 when I was on the bus with my youth group some kid had some sort of PDA. I remember being in awe and wishing I had a pocket computer like him! Now everyone and their grandma has a pocket computer with them!
FYI: Palm OS only supports dates up through 2031.
Is it similar to the year 2038 problem?
Why was that?
same reason a lot of pre 2000 devices cut off at 2000. was just the assumption new technology would be around, which is true
ROFL that's the "UNIX WILL DIE" date :) I thought that was 2038. It's when a 32-bit integer overflows the seconds counter since 0, zero being 1/1/1970.
That's when the world ends, right?
I don't know why, but I REALLY miss using my Palm device.
You miss it because it was so logical and useful? I bought another one recently just for the experience of not being distracted by ... everything that exists on a modern smartphone.
One of the benefits of the PalmOS was you weren't dependent on storing all your data on the internet. You kept your files and all the data on your computer and hotsynced one to the other. In my view we've regressed.
@@nazcaplain I'm thinking of doing the same thing, how did it work out?
This S320 was my first PDA. It totally rocked, and I used it to keep my personal “blog” 😂.
I also had a mint Tungsten T2 from back when I was in school. Used it daily to take notes, and I kept it mint. Kicking myself for letting it go, as I gave it away. However, at the same time clinging to the past only serves to keep you there, while time moves forward.
Miss it though… solid construction.
❤🧘🏻
I really miss that little jog control on the upper left corner that so many Sony gizmos had during that era. It was actually useful.
heck I would love one of these nowadays for rolling through stuff, imagine one with enough mass to keep rolling till you stop it, would be really cool
Yeah. It was great on those early Sony cell phones. I had a couple of goofy looking ones that I really liked. Like the CMD-J5 and CMD-Z1.
Visor 'phones' included the jog :0D
Me too. You could hold it in your left hand, operate the jog with your thumb, and have your right hand free for the stylus. You scroll to the icon you want, then push on the jog dial to select it. Brilliant design. I have the Sony PEG SJ22. It still works, except for the battery.
Oh man i remember when pda’s were the bees knees! Everybody wanted one!!!
Bees don’t have knees.
Love that indigo back light. Used to have a watch like that.
You made me pull out my Clie PEG-SL10 from '02. Oh the memories. Runs on AAAs so no battery problems for me.
Those sync noises really brought me back to a great period of my life. I had two Palm Pilots. Never used a Clié but helped set up a few for colleagues. Some of the later color models were great for the time. I also synced with Outlook as I found it a much smoother process. Eventually, laptops got smaller and I found doing most of my mobile work on a netbook than the Palm. That is until the smartphone revolution hit. Thanks for this retrospective look, I really enjoy these videos and your efforts.
Back when I was a kid, and my family had a 386DX sitting on a desk on a room dedicated to it, I thought it was crazy that computers were stuck on desks, that we couldn’t have all of the power and utility of a 33 MHz processor at our command at all times, in every place. The first time I saw a laptop it blew my mind because it was exactly what I’d been raving about, saying that one day computers would be portable. The same year, my class in primary school handed out a class set of Acorn Pocketbooks (rebadged Psion Series 3s) for an assignment, and my mind was blown all over again. Something that could LITERALLY fit in a pocket that could do the work of a computer! Insanity, but exactly the kind of insanity I’d been telling people about. At about the turn of the century, I had a dollar store organiser, but I was fixated on PDAs, Pocket PCs, Palm Pilots and Newtons. Nobody would buy a 10-13 year old a “real” PDA like a Clie, though, and I just had to content myself with the two line 16 character display, and the spongey rubber keys on my organiser. To this day, I’m still in love with mid 90s to mid 2000s mobile tech, though. In all walks of life, I’m a big believer in having single dedicated devices that do one job well, and one day, I’d like to take the smart back out of my phone and put it back into a PDA… My phone is really just a PDA and mobile internet hotspot that gives me anxiety when it makes noise, anyway, so I’d really like to spin those PDA features out into another device again.
You brought back a lot of palm memories, thank you. I did not have a clie but I did have a palm 3 and then a Samsung flip phone with palm software built in. I loved that phone it even had a miniature stylus, did email and the internet. At the time it sure seemed like future was here. I loved playing the game Zap 2016 on that phone.
I collect vintage handhelds ranging from the late 80's up until the mid 2000's. When I find a boxed unit I'm always happy, especially if it's NOS. Anyway, great video and thanks for sharing! I'd recommend getting an "old" laptop running Windows XP to use for testing connectivity and to sync programs to and from your PDA's.
have u ever had a game on one of these where its like age of empires? u could send units at castles. and u had archers and onagers/stone trowers. me and my dad are looking all over for that game :( his old palm died and we loved that. u could capture castles and i always put archers in because that was the best :)
I loved my Casio PV 200. It used a couple of AAA battery's and the battery life was one or two YEARS.
I had a Palm Pilot and I still remember Steve Jobs crowing about Apple never revisiting the Newton form factor after he canned it - I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I bought a Zire72 back in the day and it was so great for the time to just Hotsync in the morning, take the PDA on the commute (by submarine or space ship if you want), listen to my MP3s while reading all the news from my favorite websites offline, because they were automatically put in there by Hotsync. Nowadays most of the features of modern smartphones are relying on a permanent connection to the internet, which we all know is not available all the times.
Plenty of apps you can get for a modern phone that will aggregate data when connected to the Internet and let you read/watch things offline. You can even download the entire unabridged wikipedia and view it off the database.
In theory yes but in reality you have to check and configure all those apps individually if they did all the fetching while you're still able to connect. Whereas with HotSync you just needed to worry about one App doing it all at once and ready to go. I feel it was quite easier to use offline. But I agree that you can somehow put together something similar today if you invest some time in it. With Palm it was just obvious that just everything will work offline no matter what.
Oh, the memories of those Palm devices...Had a handspring visor before switching to an Asus PDA... Now I feel old :) Mandatory thumb up, of course :)
That Asus PDA had impressive specs, as I recall. I preferred smaller, more pocketable PDA's and Palm Treo's, but I did buy a Handspring, and liked it, otherwise.
I absolutely loved my handspring Visor!, i was able to do so many things with it. Battery power was not an issue as it ran on 2 Aaa batteries. In fact, back then, it helped me get my business off the ground and really running,, keeping up with notes, contact lists, controlling network router, through its intechangable cards, ( i had one with an rj45 10/100 mb port, a camers, a stronger ir remote than the one it came with, and on and on...
By the time, the September 11, Attack happened, i had been using 5 of them daily. Alas for me, the 2 MOST IMPORTANT VISORS were locked up in my office desk, in the newly opened and renovated office space in 4 World Trade Center that day, along with at least, $50,000 in uncashed checks from the night before. 😟 (didn't deposit them, due to a really hellacious migrane attack on the night of sept 10th, and thinking, i'll just leave them all in my desk. It's not not like the building is going to disappear or go anywhere??)... 😔😟😢 Such devastation, from that time period, but also, a lot of hopefulness too! Around 2003-2004, i took the next big leap, With a Dell Axim x5, then, x10... they had color screens, easy to replace batteries, and a wealth of new featues, even if they were windows mobile based. Still, i have fond memories of my old Handspring Visor, and all i did with it.....
Never had a handspring but definitely remember checking them out. My first palm device was the m100, with 2mb of storage!
I know for sure that the PalmPilot Professional and later Palm-branded handhelds had backlit displays. All the black and white ones used a similar "Indiglo" electroluminescent backlights. Palm III series were great because they had a little rotary wheel to adjust the contrast, which invariably had to be adjusted somewhat when using the backlight. Later models had an on-screen slider for that.
The m505, first color Palm, had a horrible color display, which lead them to release the m515 very soon after with an improved screen. I don't know how they thought the m505 was marketable.
Started with Palm III in '98. [ and 2nd gen Pro + Personal ]
It's in the wiki ;0)
[ has: Palm III, Visor Edge, Visor Pro, Visor Phone Handspring module, and Treo 180g ]
Actually, the Palm IIIc was the first color PDA by Palm inc. I owned the m515. Sorry to hear about your m505. Early adopters always run into this problem.
@@philiprowney: The Handspring Visor Deluxe (1999) also has the backlight! (I say 'has', as I own and still use one!)
Used a Palm pilot to take wholesale orders in a showroom in the Atlanta Merchandise Mart for several years. Unit had a barcode scanner built in, and docked to a PC to download the order. Cool for that, but I was never tempted to get the consumer version for day to day use. As for now.....That tech seems so antiquated, and clumsy. I'll stick to my iPad, thank you.
I still have a Sony Clie PEG-NR70V that I've managed to get synched to my Windows 10 PC... after all of these years I still love my Clie.
you can buy memory stick adaptor that lets you use two microsd in it. It's sold for PSP and it's cheap as hell
RIP Palm. I remember you fondly.
I remember I had a Sony Clié that came with a Spiderman video from the movie, it was very similar to this one! Amazing memories.
"battery life" was normally "once" if you didn't set up the device properly and hence why so many are still available namely bad batteries. Because as part of the Sony ecosystem however there remains an awesome amount of connectivities still and even today as a media device.
Mostly being replaced by Google *Chromebooks* now still makes for a very interesting software/hardware interface.
OMG I can't explain how much I've wanted one of theese! They were like the elite of palms, I had some lower end models, how amazing technology was back then
I had one of these! Thank you so much for the walk back down memory lane.
Nice unboxing, I appreciate that you used to have one back in the day and so you know how these PDAs fit into society at the time. I still use my Palm LifeDrive almost every day and I've collected a ton of software because it is hard to find.
As a fellow Palm collector, I cannot tell you how many times those Cameron Sino batteries have saved my units. They even have ones available for really rare devices like the Tapwave Zodiac if you know where to look!
Man, this brings back fond memories when I had my old Palm V.
I had one also and loved it. I still have it too but I don't use it. About a year ago I took it out and the battery still worked and my cover is shot too. I will have to start her up again to see if the battery is still good. Thanks for the memories.
I used to sell these when they came out. Nobody knew how to pronounce them. I've heard "Clee", I've heard "Clay", I've heard Cleye", you name it.
I used to sell them too. That's why I know how to pronounce it :) (It was part of our training.)
Remember the Cyrix processor from way back when? I had a few come in and pronounce them "krix chips". Yeah buddy -- we don't sell "krix chips".
Sure do remember those god awful chips! Never heard them called that before. However, I once had a man ask me about "computer decks". After questioning several times and having him repeat it, I finally figured out he was trying to "aks" me a question. That one left me shaking my head for several days, and a permanent memory that it happened.
Not of course to out-do the "Linskees" routers...
I used to mispronounce that before I got my electronics-selling job. I pronounced it "see-rix". The first day I got the job, we had a training on all the easily mispronounceable names... Cyrix, Clie, Vaio, Sansui, and various others I can't remember anymore. It was eye-opening. There was not much internet at the time so you couldn't easily just Google the correct pronunciation of some of these names; it was just people arguing about it and usually nobody really knew who was right. So it was good to have it from a secondhand source, at least, who had gotten it directly from the actual sources. Hopefully all these pronunciations have stuck with me and I haven't forgotten any. I hope there's nothing I mispronounce at this point. The weird thing is when somebody tries to correct my already correct pronunciation with something I know to be wrong, which has happened in a couple of my other videos.
You should do a video of the palm phone that they did it amazes me on how fare we have come with tech! It's amazing on how phones have come compared to what they used to be!! Palm had a phone for a while that had a built in palm pilot and phone together!
I'm old and love this retro stuff
I remember an uncle of mine had one of these back in the early 2000s, the thing was mind--blowing, back then the most modern pieces of portable tech you could get here on Brazil was one of those massive Nokia brickphones.
I had a Palm IIIx in somewhere around 2000/2001. You could code lua on that, have database apps, there were apps for overclocking and it could connect to my Nokia 6110 and go online. Awesome thing at the time.
Mad memories. I had this and later the monster NZ90
Just catching up with this. I was always envious of folk with a Clié. I started with the translucent green Palm III in Nov '99. Loved the calendar/desktop. Avantgo to scrutinise the daily "papers" I could get up quite a speed with graffiti. My last "palm" was the very slim handspring. Initially I "dialled up" using my Panasonic gd 93 flip phone with infrared, but bought the cell phone back pack for true pre-Windows mobile/Android smartphone internet on the go!
I had this exact same model and used it to its fullest for everything from school to even spreadsheets. It really gave me a zeal for wanting something so much more. Lol i used to get very frustrated with how it synced to the computer
You really have to have the memory stick because the Clie loses everything when the battery dies. I left my apps on the stick so I wouldn't have to sync it again.
Yeah that was the major problem with my Palm M100 and having to remember to backup everything on nightly basis was kind of a pain because it had no way of backing up anything other than syncing it with your computer. Plus the M100 ran on AAA batteries, so I ended up investing in a AAA battery charger, and a keyboard that attached to the sync port to make note taking in meetings easier since I did not have a laptop at that time.
At least swapping the batteries is easy on your m100. I had quite a few Palm devices. My Treo lets me swap batteries just as easily. I had the optional keyboard too. Folded down nice and small, but opened to a very usable size for touch typing. Later Palm devices used the type of memory that didn't require power, but I still used an app that backed everything up to a SD flash memory card automatically every day, just to be safe.
Hello, does anyone know where to get the memory stick for this??
I did a lot of ebook reading on my Palm IIIx. It has the same pale backlight.
I remember playing an epic version of some bricks breaker game on palm back in the early 2k's. Man I miss those days :)
I will never forget the scene of George Clooney using a Sony Clie with a color screen that flipped around with a camera on top. That was in the movie Solaris. Sony NV70 series
All those wrapper sounds in stereo... well done my friend, well done.
I still have one in my desk. Actually, as compared to the other handhelds of the day, the screen and CPU power were very good. As an attorney who appeared in Court, it was great for scheduling and synching my calender with my desktop.
I used to go online with my Palm Tungsten T. I miss the Graffitti input, Best mobile device input ever beats the crap we have today.
I put the Graffiti 2 sticker for my Tungsten E on the inside of the screen cover. It stay there very long but it only took me a little while to adapt from Graffiti 1 to Graffiti 2.
I owned three different Palm-powered devices. My first was a Palm m100. My next was a Handspring Visor Deluxe. My final was a Palm z22. I also owned a couple of early PocketPC devices. I had a Dell Axim and a Compaq iPaq.
I remember reading the Consumer Reports issue on PDAs and PocketPCs from like 2004 and obsessing over how cool it would be to own one, even though they were way outside my price range and couldn't do much of anything worthwhile. I always got the impression that they never really caught on with the general public; it was more of a thing to have for work if your job made you walk around a lot.
Could you please help us out with the URL links for the things you installed? (The AKIKA driver and the PALM desktop for Windows 10)? Please? Awesome video!
I remember having a PDA when I was in high school. I had one with a color screen though. Also had an IR with remote functions so I could adjust the volume on the TV when we were watching videos in class. My teacher was a bit of a bitch when it came to me adjusting the volume but she knew I was hearing impaired. I told her I could either turn up the volume or turn on closed caption. People complained that the closed caption got in the way, so I'd just turn the volume up. I technically wasn't even supposed to have it in class, but other than controlling the TV, I didn't do anything that would get me in trouble. I wasn't playing games in class, I wasn't cheating on tests, etc..I was pretty good with the hand-writing recognition so when I was taking notes, I could write it on the PDA about as fast as I could on paper. With the long battery life, I only charged it when it over the weekends. Part of the teacher's complaints were me not having a paper and pencil and unable to take notes if the battery died but I did keep paper and pencil in my locker in case it did happen, but it never did.
DvdXploitr How popular were PDAs with your classmates?
not popular at all. Just a handful of people in my classes had them and I had different classmates almost every period
When one of the first Android devices with an IR blaster in it came out (might have been a Samsung?), someone used it to screw with one of the TVs in my high school science class.
Usually it was turning up the volume just a bit louder while the teacher was face-first in their computer trying to get some work done while the video was playing until the teacher realized it was really loud. I asked him once if he could try to send an eject signal to the VCR while we were watching a tape, but that didn't work.
I had a Palm V at one point, and before that a clamshell organizer with a decently sized keyboard (the unit was maybe 7-8 inches long) that I can't find and don't remember the brand of at all. Needless to say I was the only one in probably the entire school with one of those things.
Windows Mobile was a huge upgrade when I finally jumped to that.
M100 in high school. Tetris. All day, every day!
My first pda was an m515, tungsten t3, tungsten tx. Later, I had an m500 and a palm viix, the kind with an antenna so you could get on the internet via cellular signal.
The Palm OS platform devices had some nice qualities, even as far back as the one in the video. The monochrome screen was easy to read in bright sunlight. There was a ton of free, quality applications to download. No viruses. The game he showed was not as compelling as the puzzle games, like Solitaire, Tetris, and Bejeweled.
Somewhere in a drawer here at home I still have my old Tungsten T5 laying around. The last practical use was that I had a bluetooth GPS device in my pocket and I used it with my T5 to score my golf rounds. But the Golf scoring softwares of the time hadn't really caught up to the potential until the smartphones was the superior choice... It did have an excellent navigation software though.
I have spent way too much time just now searching for it... Nostalgia hit hard... :)
My first PDA was a Palm Pilot IIe. I miss that thing. It was so "space-age" when I got it. I thought i was just soooo cool! LOL
I loved my Palm m105 which I used a lot at school back then! I kinda want to go back to a Palm device but don't know which one to get...
Your video made me fish out my old TI-92+ graphical calculator. At the time you were "being productive" I was as well, on my long bus ride to work - I was doing physics and used the symbolic math functions on it, it was really slow but did what I needed! (A little closet industry arose hacking these old TI calculators.) Anyway I dragged mine out and a Duracell battery had leaked! GASP! No permanent damage, it was contained, but your video probably saved my old TI by making me look :) (PS, same LCD screen, higher res actually, 320x240.) Thanks for this video!
I owned one of the crappy clamshell "organizers" (Sharp, I think? I know it wasn't a Psion) in the early '90s. Got a hand-me-down Newton in the late '90s, and bought a Palm V the day it came out as my first Palm. That was my primary PDA until probably about 2005-2006, when I bought a Tapwave Zodiac on clearance to replace it - only to be replaced by an original iPhone a year or two later.
I had one of these back in the day. At the time I thought it was amazing, how devices have changed.
Around 19:40 you say you're amazed at the machine's performance. If you're old enough to remember home computing in the late 80's, you probably know machines like the Commodore Amiga 500, Atari ST and original Apple Macintosh. Those machines were running on a Motorola 68000 CPU somewhere around 7 or 8 MHz. The CPU in these palmtops is a Motorola DragonBall which is actually a mobile-optimized successor to the 68000. It runs at 16 to 33 MHz depending on the PDA-model. So two to four times the speed of those 80's powerhouses.
the screen is similar to the sony smartband talk screen, check it out!
Watched the video couple of notes,
1. the memory: flash for OS only (like BIOS), some programs could move programs to FLASH but depends on free space and OS, the RAM is the actual storage you get which you can use for programs and databases (in PalmOS it is split in 2 parts code and data)
2. Back-light exists from Palm III device and onward.
Used to be a Palm OS developer
Linux still has a PalmOS sync/desktop utility called JPilot. I haven't tried the sync in years because my Clie PEG-SJ22 (on occasions where I can find it) no longer charges. I keep JPilot installed because I still have some old passwords in the Keyring app.
I owned one of these in the early 2000s. Clie' was a good Palm based devise.
Ahhhhh I remember well! Great tech memories :-)
I used to have the clie that looked like a tiny laptop! I owned a LOT of Palm OS and then Windows PDA's back then!
Nice. I remember seeing those at my local Circuit City back in the day. I still have the Palm IIIxe that I bought back in ‘99 or 2000 stashed away. There was a cool app that would download truncated www stuff to your Palm device for reading later that I used a lot, I forget the name of it.
That video playback was way better than I thought it would be lol
Shoot I still have my Sony Clie N70 and it still works till this day.
About hand writing recognition in the modern era: Gboard, the Apple Watch and WearOS support it. They’re obviously miles ahead of Graffiti2, since they don’t require any learning of peculiar gestures, and are quiet precise. Also, I’m pretty sure Samsung’s Note line of phones also has a pretty good handwriting recognition.
the screen actually looks really nice and clear in this? I like grayscale screens for their clarity and sunlight visiblity
The psp used memory stick duo, which wasn't as big as that thing being out in on the back of the box.
the pspgo later used m2 cards, but they are as dead as anything else
Now actually take it out on the train & have all the phone-drones give you strange looks! As in, last year, I went to an 80s party, via the subway, not only dressed in 80s clothes (including a Members' Only jacket), but I also had a cassette Walkman, complete w/ 80s mixtape! :D
One time at a ham radio show in the parking lot I found a big cardboard box labeled free just sitting there and it was fill of palm pilots including my SONY CLIE TJ27 and all the rechargeable batteries still work.
How are you people getting these kinds of stuff for free? Here in Europe we have to spend a shitton of money to source the retro devices/chargers/docks from ebay. I’ve lost the count on how much money I have spent on my retro cellphone collection, while I see videos and forum posts from people, who get same items for free or few bucks... :(
I guess you just need to find things that are already in your country.
I remember my first Palm device. And in about 2002, when I was looking for one, I was going back and forth between this one and the Palm equivalent (don't remember what model is was exactly). The pros for this one where of course the back lighting and the Jog Dial (which Sony was using on a lot of their products back then). The cons however, where the price and Memory-Stick (Compact Flash was much cheaper). So I went with the Palm device instead. And I can still remember playing Bejeweled on it for the first time, in black and white. Well, black and green. ;)
Had one of those (might have been a later model) about fifteen years ago; I remember also having a folding keyboard for it. No idea where it's at right now.
I had one with the full size Goldie keyboard in highschool. Was pretty nice for taking notes
I had a Palm Vx... with the multi-folding keyboard, and a WorldWideWidgetWorks Palm GamePad to play Gameboy games.
I don't know how often I used it though. I might've used it for the calendar and some notes... but it really didn't get used much.
I had an early cheap Palm device and mostly used it to play Space Trader, the best Palm game!
Was it the Palm M100 or in the M100 series by any chance? as those were the entry level Palm devices at the time. I personally had a Palm M100 which I eventually got a 3rd party keyboard for that fit flush with the device for taking notes in meetings since I did not have a laptop at the time.
I think you're right - it was the m100!
I have one kinda like that, it's a sharp calculator , the EL-6890. You can write memos, save contacts, save url pages, check the time, and more. They are pretty cool but the display is bad. But I would probably choose the compaq ipaq over the Clie because it actually runs windows. I actually have a old Compaq Presario
That's why I kept a Handspring Neo in my collection as it uses AAA batteries. I'm really surprise they still sell batteries for those old tech
An awesome look in to it, thank you.
Sony devices looked soooo attractive. But all the cool looking software they included was cobbled together junk, for example on my Clie there 3 apps needed just view photos, whereas on a regular Palm there was just one. They modded the OS, so you couldn't use Palm OS upgrades, you had to wait for Somy to do it, and they didn't. They had a proprietary connector, so no chance to use Palm accessories. Mine had a keyboard, which was worthless. The screen was great, and the rotating function too, and the camera worked well, but in the end I regretted getting a Clie as opposed to a Palm.
This kinda makes me wand to hunt down a Casio Cassiopeia and put SimCity 2000 on it, just like I did back when I was in school.
I have a memory stick like that, it was for an old digital camera
You should check out the Casio E-125 or the BE-300, both of those are from that time period, and I used to watch movies and play emulators on them, I remember having the first spiderman movie, brand new on my E-125, the video wasn't even 320x240 but it was still pretty futuristic for the time.
Making video possible on greyscale screen. Brilliant.
The Franklin Planner system for Palm OS was the greatest organizer software in history. Unfortunately, Franklin Covey was bought out, and the new owners went back to selling leather 3-ring binder planners.
The is the sole reason I miss Palm as both Google Android and Apple iOS do a horrible job with their cumbersome built-in calendars that bring the word "basic" back to the phrase "way too basic."
So cool a blast from the past for sure. Brings back a Ton of memories since I had the same model. Used this thing a whole lot use an app Called tinysheet which was a pocket version of excell. One thing I remember was having a lot of difficulties getting it to sync with my computer. I also used it for note taking and really pushed it to its limits. It definitely peeked my interest for something better which was later satisfied by my first android smartphone
palm treo 600 was my first smartphone
It's funny because today I've just got a palm tungsten with palmos 5.2.1
Which one? I had several in the Tungsten series: Tungsten C, E, E2, and TX.
I had 3 of these between 2002 and 2004
That handwriting-recognition is remarkably fast
My parents never bought me one and there's still an empty space in my heart
Hi. I’m looking for some song that was on the default music on the sone palm pilot. Any ideas of how to get the list?
Have you noticed the similarity between windows 10 os icons and pda icons?As a windows 10 insider i complained several times but was ignored,why am i not suprised......................?
you say windows 10 like it's something really awesome, that's the OS that made PCs look like service bars in a boring bank where you do exactly as you're told.
Can someone tell me how to get a memory stick for this because I still have it
although your nostalgic for this device, you should get a tapwave zodiac II, a higher quality of palm device. i think you might like it
Me and a buddy of mine had these in school and we would play ir games from across the room with each other like tic-tac-toe and spades n such
Google makes a keyboard that can fairly well recognize natural handwriting and if you have a windows Vista+ laptop that happens to be touch screen it could recognize it as well, even XP had a Pen Computing version of it that didn't even need to recognize your handwriting because it was so good out of the box.
I have a I.B.M. A20M I got some mini disk batteries in the package and they were junk we should get updated batteries that are new off eBay for all older devices
I had two of these from 2006 til my first Ipod in 2010. My cheap one ran on alkaline batteries and my deluxe model had a built in li-ion rechargeable battery and an adapter dock. I used them mainly to play card games and sudoku. I had to find an old model memory stick on ebay because the Clie didn't support sticks with more than 16 meg capacity. I beam transfered software from my Win98 laptop with an infrared modem. I think the transfer software was compatible with my Win XP desktop. Mine were useless for pictures because of the low res screen and the small capacity memory. I can't imagine how the video player could have been practical.