A Palm Pilot (and other early 2000s Personal Digital Assistants) Appreciation Thread

[Skel1ingt0n]

Falling down the rabbit hole on Youtube and watching old Sony Clie videos. Totally takes me back to my childhood - for some beyond stupid reason, when I was in middle school, Palm devices were all the rage. This was in 2000-2003 or so, before the iPod was introduced/really took off, and cell phones and the prerequisite cell plan being a hard bargain to push on parents.

Over the course of a few years, I asked for a Palm m100 for my birthday, saved up for an M505 I found on sale, and eventually somehow magically convinced my dope-ass grandpa to buy the most excessively over the top Christmas present I ever got in a Palm Tungsten T3:

... What's really fun looking back on the days of the "mobile planner/mobile computer" is that... there was SO MUCH HARDWARE VARIETY and OS VARIETY. Like, I feel like 99% of people I know have an iPhone, a Samsung phone, or a Pixel. And let's be real, for the most part, they all look relatively the same and navigation/use is relatively the same as well. And, also, each one has an update once a year where they slowly iterate.

In 2001? You hit up Circuit City or CompUSA four months later and the entire lineup of devices had changed. I swear Sony introduced a new Clie and new form factor like... legit... every couple months for a few years:

And the feature-set and general OS was always goofy. You had weird-ass MP3 players. Odd photo viewers. Some had cameras. some played movies. Some had full keyboards. Some had speakers. Some had IR. Some had built in cases. Some had key rings. Some had swivel screens. Some you download games through your PC. Others you downloaded to the device. I remember buying games that came ON AN SD CARD.

And then you also had a bajillion other options:

Handspring Visor:

The Tapwave Zodiac (this thing was dope):

And how could you possibly forget the HP iPaq?!

Did you ever have one? Understanding technology has evolved and cellphones completely obliterate these things in terms of use, navigation, and capability - do you still look back fondly on them like me, or have you very much moved on?

Post a pic of the one you had, and some impressions!!!

 

[DrForester]

I had something that used Windows CE, but I can't remember what model it was.

 

[Jarrod38]

I used to have one until some guy threw it out of a limo because it kept beeping.

 

[RedNalgene]

I LOVED the Sidekick. I had AIM on it, full keyboard, and the internet. It was dddooopppeee

 

[John Rabbit]

My parents got me a pile of crap Handspring Visor for reasons I still don't understand and I barely used it.

 

[Unicorn]

Had a Palm that I used to doodle and play Space Trader


My friends had color ones and made dumb animations I was jealous of. For a while.

Also the weird cursive you could do to type was novel but completely ridiculous as an actual usecase

 

[ascii42]

I kind of wanted an Apple eMate:

That was pre-2000s though. Apple was done with the Newton line after the eMate.

 

[Deleted member 11637]

My dad had an iPaq, but those Vizors look nice.

 

[Senator Toadstool]

No. Things sucked and didn't sync

 

[sfedai0]

I dont know if it was considered a PDA but I had a retangular clamshell organizer as a teen which I never used even once.

 

[Milennia]

I used to take all my moms palm pilots because I was so amazed by the screen that I had to have all of them lol, never actually ended up using any of them, but I had like 3 by the end of it, as a kid that shit was great

Touchscreen anything was a W for fun
Then I got older and got addicted to sidekicks and blackberrys, now that's the good shit

 

[Drain You]

Absolutely loved these. I even held out till the very end. Had a Palm Pre that I absolutely adored. Also had a Blackberry Priv (Android OS with a slide out keyboard, came out long after physical keyboards disappeared) that I loved. Huh, never realized their names were so close.

 

[ForKevdo]

My dad had a Palm Pilot that I would steal and install games on. I remember there was some RPG that had me fighting insects or something and I think it was just a demo cause I recall not being able to get very far in. Maybe I was just bad at games as a kid.

 

[Autumn]

Sony had some cool looking designs in the 00s.

Also when is transparent hardware making a comeback?

 

[AlexMeloche]

I remember my sister and I both having one of those things. No idea what we used them for tbh. I think they had hangman?

 

[bm1677]

Somehow convinced my parents to get me a Palm m100 when I was in middle school - I remember playing a lot of Dopewars and Taipan on it. Also getting shafted by one of those "1001 Games" type discs that was full of garbage.

 

[kamineko]

had a few but never used them much; preferred carrying a notebook.

it was kind of a status symbol where I worked; the company only let managers sync them with company computers

 

[xir]

Kyle's quest was cool

 

[Marvie]

I had a Handspring that I used for about 2 days. It was way easier to just write a quick note than use it.

 

[TrashHeap64]

All I wanted for my 15th birthday was a Pocket PC. I got some janky ass iPAQ one but I loved that thing. Somehow I was able to beat Metroid (NES) on it when I was taking the city bus for a while. It was no easy feat cause those buttons sucked

I LOVED the Sidekick. I had AIM on it, full keyboard, and the internet. It was dddooopppeee

Click to shrink...

Yesss! I remember playing that Worms/Scorched Earth style game online while I was at work. It was so fun. I wish I could still use a sidekick in 2022

 

[blackhawk163]

I had a couple, and then the phone enabled ones came out. I had the treo600/650/700p then I made the switch to pocket pc devices. I remember when the iPhone came out people lost their minds and all I could think about was that I had been doing it for years prior, and I had copy and paste 🤷🏽‍♂️

Also loved having icq++ on that

 

[jman2050]

Playing and beating Mega Man V on a Palm Pilot GB emulator at like 25 fps is one of those fond "You had to be there" nostalgic moments.

 

[neoJABES]

I remember I had a Trio, I think that's what it was called, for a phone for abit. Thing was terrible..

 

[Squirrel Killer]

I had an m125 and my first smartphone was a Treo 755p. I loved the m125 because it let me read Lord of the Rings on the go without having to haul my tome-like dead tree version around.

 

[Dodongo]

Fuckin loved these things. I was playing snes roms and watching flash videos on an iPaq way before smart phones became viable.

 

[louiedog]

I had a Clie and my dad had a Pocket PC. I read The Hobbit and several other books while traveling with my Clie. His was so much nicer. The screen was great for the time and it could run much cooler software.

I always found it weird how business focused these things were. The games and media options were there, but severely lacking. For years I wondered why it felt like push was for calendar, email, etc. on them, especially as they became more connected, and not on media and games. People like me who were students didn't want business focused devices. And then of course the iPhone came out which did that to an extent, but they fucked it up by not allowing third party apps, so I thought it was really stupid (and it was).

 

[UF_C]

Man did I hate my Palm. My office issued it to me before they switched to iPhones. It was such a price of crap and the software made absolutely zero sense. What a disaster of a product.

Any pocket device that was dependent on a stylus should have been a huge red flag from the start.

 

[GearDraxon]

I had two (that I can recall):
One was a Sony Clié, possibly this one?

I think the other was a b&w PalmOS model.

Both were amazing - definitely a "not quite ready for primetime" situation, but learning that Graffiti language was worth it!

 

[Tygre]

I worked in PDA / Mobile / Smartphone development during the 2000s. I saw the industry evolve from Palm being the undisputed king of the PDA, through the Blackberry years, and into the utter dominance of the iPhone.

Windows Mobile / Pocket PC was amazing and the fact that the iPhone took off years later with arguably worse hardware and software was complete dumb luck.

The entire history of the Smartphone industry is a sequence of complete random chance over what becomes popular, retroactively worked into some kind of narrative via nonsense mythmaking. Nobody knew what would be big. Nobody knew what the consumer wanted. Everyone was throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck.

Click to shrink...

This was a fucking nightmare device that ran it's infernal engine on the crushed dreams of children.

Click to shrink...

I used to use one of these as a fidget toy, it was incredibly satisfying to flip and spin the screen into it's various lock positions.

As a PDA it was hot garbage.

Click to shrink...

Rest well sweet prince. Though you died, your spirit lives on stronger than ever.

 

[lunarworks]

PDAs were neat devices, so I had a bit of tech envy, but I had absolutely no real world use for one. My cellphone could store all my numbers, and I didn't have enough going on in my life for a digital calendar or reminders.

I remember having to set up my boss' Palm to sync with his desktop, and it was a terrible experience. Getting it configured in the first place was hit or miss, and it was super finicky even after that.

 

[Lightning Count]

I LOVED the Sidekick. I had AIM on it, full keyboard, and the internet. It was dddooopppeee

Click to shrink...

I remember this being heavily featured in the first Skate game, the devs had licenced it.

 

[polynomial]

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

I LOVED the Sidekick. I had AIM on it, full keyboard, and the internet. It was dddooopppeee

Click to shrink...

I wanted one of these so bad when I was in High School. It was of it's time but had features far ahead of it's time like cloud services.

 

[Chanser]

I use to own:

 

[grang]

I had a crappy kids version of one, Cybiko

 

[Tobor]

I had a Handspring Treo 90 and a Tapwave Zodiac. I even got the Zodiac working long enough to take a pic for another thread a year ago.

 

[Dekuman]

image source: wikipedia

I had a PALM III in the early 2000s I bought off the local university buy/sell, it came with a floadable keyboard. I wanted to use it as a note taking device, but found it was still easier to print out the lecture slides and annotate my notes on the side.

In the time I had it, I played around with it, loaded early PDFs to see if they worked (they did, but poorly), loaded text files and world documents.
I think there was a space trading game I played as well. It was black and white with a green backlight, kind of like the GameBoy Lite.

Back then it was just very novel to have a pocket computer, even tthough Japanese/Asian pocket dictionaries had existed for some years by then, they were very limited, the Palms represented a leap ahead. Very neat concept. I sold the whole thing for the same price I got it for a couple of semesters later but continued to look into it , I think 2003/2004 was when the color screen models came out and I seriously considered one, but ultimately didn't pulll the trigger. A few years after that smart phones came out and made it all obsolete.

 

[secretanchitman]

I always loved seeing PDAs back in the day. All sorts of colors, models and even attachments that had me jealous at all the possibilities - internet on the go on an actual usable screen was awesome! I do remember that Sony had the most expensive PDAs but were high quality.

My family had an HP Jornada but that was quickly replaced with a Treo 650p and then a Treo 700p for myself. Moved onto Windows Mobile 6.1 and then eventually iOS.

Dieter Bohn had a great documentary about Palm that's worth watching, it actually made me bring out my Treo 700p from storage and reminisce about it - https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/...umentary-secret-history-first-real-smartphone

 

[Chitown B]

I worked at Best Buy 2000-2001 in the PC aisles and sold these. I mean mostly I sold printer cables. But these too. And Clie I think. Never touched one though.

 

[Teiresias]

I'm almost certain I owned a knock-off PDA of some vintage back in the day for a very short period of time, but my memory is failing me at the moment of whether I'm just making this up in my head, lol. I kind of always wanted a Handspring Visor though, but my life just wasn't comlicated enough to require a PDA before smart phones became a thing and at that point they were obsolete.

 

[tuffy]

The few games on a Palm V kept me occupied on a short jury duty stint way back in the day. Graffiti was a novel and surprisingly accurate way to enter text, right up until Palm lost some patent lawsuit and had to switch to a crappier multi-stroke version that didn't work as well. But with no networking built-in to most models, there wasn't a lot they could do and keeping data synchronized was a chore and so I used it mostly as a glorified address book and to-do list.

 

[Afrikan]

I was more of a PocketPC person myself back then.

Had the Casio e-115