Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 14:04:05 06/17/01
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On June 17, 2001 at 11:34:09, stuart taylor wrote:
> 1.Can someone explain to me exactly what Palm is good for, what it is and what
>it does?
It is a true computer that fits in your hand and allows you to carry a lot of
your important data with you all the time.
You can easily transfer data from your PC to your Palm, and easily transfer it
back to the PC if you have made any change. By easy I mean really easy. You put
the Palm on its cradle and push ONE button.
The Palms come with various memory sizes, currently 4 or 8Mb is common. That is
plenty of space. You cannot compare PC memory size with Palm memory size. On the
PC, 8Mb is ridiculously small (the system doesn't even fit in!) but on the Palm
it represents thousands of pages of information.
The Palm is also presented as a sophisticated organizer, but it is actually a
true computer.
It has a graphical operating system. I find the Palm Operating System (PalmOS)
to be rather close to the first versions of MacOs. So for me the Palm is a
little bit like a Mac Classic in my pocket. As a matter of facts it uses the
same processor as the first Macintoshs.
The mouse is replaced by the stylus. The keyboard is replaced by handwritting
recognition (or a virtual onscreen popup keyboard).
The PalmOS operating system is well documented and there exists commercial as
well as free tools to write programs for it. So thousands of developpers have
created thousands of applications for it.
If you want to see what it can do, then you need to have a look at the
applications that run on it.
Just go there:
http://www.palmgear.com
it is just one of the sites that offer to download PalmOS applications. Some of
them are free, some of them are not, but generally a Palm application is not
expensive.
There are currently close to 15 million Palm users in the world.
This represents IIRC 70% of the market of handheld computers.
The rest is composed of various handheld models which are not compatible with
each other.
PocketPC represents IIRC someting like 10% of the market at this time.
> 2.Can the best buy be recomended?
3Com, the original creator of the Palm, has been very wise by agreeing to sell
licences of his OS to other companies.
So at this time there are several companies that offer PalmOS computers. A true
"Palm" is the one sold by 3Com/USRobotics, but Sony, Handspring and IBM as well
as other less known companies all manufacture PalmOS computers.
99% of the PalmOS applications will run indifferently on any of these computers.
So you do not need to care about compatibility, you just need to find the right
model for you.
Personally I would suggest that you have a closer look at the Palm Vx (8Mb of
RAM, and currently rather cheap) or one of the high end Handspring models (some
are running faster than their 3Com equivalents, which is better for chess
programs).
Go to:
http://www.palm.com
http://www.handspring.com
> 3.Obviously I'm also interested in chess program(s) for Palm. I'm sorry that I
>never read most of these threads about it, but now I'm asking, in a nutshell,
>what are the features and elo estimate of Palm Tiger?
Chess Tiger for Palm is a COMPLETE port of the Chess Tiger 14 engine (it is
actually more advanced than Chess Tiger 14).
I estimate that on a fast Palm it is between 2100 and 2200 SSDF elo.
Go to my website to find more:
http://www.chesstiger.com
> 4. Others?
Richard Land has ported his 1987 version (Mephisto Roma) to the Palm under the
name ChessGenius. This one does not have hash tables, but plays well.
http://www.chessgenius.com
> 5.Can Palm access internet together with cellphone? If so, how much can be
>displayed on it?
Yes, I can read/answer my emails and access the Web with my Palm.
In order to do so you need:
* a compatible cell phone
* a Palm mail client and Web browser
I'm using a Nokia 8210 cell phone. The good thing with this one is that it is a
Nokia (the best cell phone manufacturer out there), it's very small, and it has
an infrared port. So I don't need to plug any cable in when I want to access the
net. The phone and my Palm are connected together by the IR ports.
If you have another phone, you might need a cable to connect the phone and the
Palm.
The screen is a little bit small to display Web pages, but it works anyway. for
example I can do a search at Yahoo without any problem. With the Web browser I'm
using (Eudora) I cannot see graphics, but some browsers will display them.
There are also WAP browsers for the Palm if you are interested in WAP.
> 6.Is it any good for graphics, or even video?
You can display graphics on the Palm. Most Palms allow grayscale graphics. Some
of them do have color screens.
There are applications that allow you to carry photo albums with you.
Video will be possible later, when the processors of the Palm have been upgraded
to the brand new models from Motorola with an ARM (RISC) core.
>Thanks for answers!
>(The idea is that I'm about to leave for the USA where it is much better to buy
>such a thing than in Israel. I expect to be away for about 5 weeks. Farewell! in
>about another 40 hours, and I'll be checking in until then.)
There are currently real bargains on the Palm market. Palm has big inventories
at this time and is offering special prices. That's the right time to buy a Palm
in the US I guess.
Christophe
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