Palm and Treo Hacks

Connect to the Internet

Just because you aren’t at your desktop machine, it doesn’t mean you have to be disconnected. Depending on your PDA, you have several different choices for getting on the Internet.

All Palm devices can connect to the Internet via modem or serial cable and most can connect via infrared (IR). Bluetooth-equipped Palm devices can connect via Bluetooth. Other options for connecting to the Internet include Wi-Fi (802.11b) and using your cellular data service on a smartphone.

Modem

You can purchase a regular modem for most Palm devices that connects to a standard phone line. For older devices, you might need to lookon eBay (http://www.ebay.com) or at a computer swap meet to find a modem.

Configuring your Palm device to use a modem is easy. Go to the Preferences application and select the Networkcategory. Select your service and enter your username and password. Select Standard Modem in the Connection list. Enter the phone number for your ISP. The Details button brings up a dialog box that lets you select additional options—connection type (defaults to PPP, but you can choose SLIP or CSLIP if necessary), an idle timeout that will hang up after a specified period of inactivity, whether or not to do DNS queries automatically, and whether to use a static IP address or a dynamic address. The dialog box also provides the ability to write a simple script. You can use this to automate certain tasks.

Set additional parameters for a modem by selecting Edit Connections from the ...