PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide, Second Edition

“PalmPilot” in the Name—and the Title

As with any computer, the Palm family is constantly being enhanced. The original 1996 models, the 1000 and 5000, were simply called Pilots. The next generation debuted in 1997 with backlit screens, improved software, email features, and the Palm prefix: the two models were the PalmPilot Personal and the PalmPilot Professional. (More about these model distinctions in Chapter 1.)

But the story didn’t end there. In late 1997, IBM announced that it would begin selling PalmPilots under its own name: the IBM WorkPad . (The WorkPad is identical to the PalmPilot in nearly every way except for the color: it’s black instead of PalmPilot gray.) Symbol then announced its own PalmPilot series—equipped with barcode readers—and TRG and Handspring have since joined the party.

Along the way, the lawyers of the Pilot Pen company got nervous. “We manufacture an inkless stylus for use on PalmPilot computers,” they muttered. “The consumer will get confused!” After a legal tussle in a European court (where name-protection laws are more stringent than in the U.S.), 3Com was forced to drop the word Pilot from subsequent products.

That’s why 3Com’s products are now called the Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, and so on—without the name Pilot. Unfortunately, instead of avoiding confusion, this change only adds to it: Microsoft calls its family of Windows CE-based PalmPilot knockoffs—Palm PC or Palm-sized computers!

So what’s a poor book writer to do? What are we supposed to ...