PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide, Second Edition

What’s New in the Second Edition

You might suppose that 3Com would have a hard time following up the PalmPilot. After all, piling on features, à la Windows CE, would threaten the very simplicity, speed, and elegance that made it a success to begin with.

Fortunately, the designers tread extremely carefully with their crown jewel. The Palm V, for example, doesn’t offer a single change in its software; only the physical design has changed. Similarly, the Palm VII is identical to the Palm III in every way—with the single addition of wireless email and Web programs.

This edition of PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide covers those new models, along with the Palm IIIe and IIIx, Handspring Visor, and so on. (Appendix D, even guides you through writing your own Web search programs for the Palm VII.) For Macintosh fans, 1999’s big news was the long-awaited release of Palm Desktop for Macintosh, described in Chapter 9.

Recognizing the emergence of data collection as a leading PalmPilot use, you’ll find a new chapter on using PalmPilot spreadsheets and databases. The new Appendix E, covers the PalmPilot’s connectivity with Unix and Linux, for the benefit of a growing group of passionate fans.

Finally, every chapter of this new edition offers new tricks, updates, shortcuts, and behind-the-scenes glimpses.

The only chapter you won’t find in this book is the one on writing software for the PalmPilot. Because O’Reilly’s full-length treatment of this topic, Palm Programming: The Developer’s Guide, is now available, ...