I didn't originally think I'd have much use for a pocket computer; I'm a pretty good typist with horrible handwriting, and the thought of using a pen for data entry was highly unappealing.

Then I was given a Palm III with a BikeBrain kit, and got instantly hooked!

I started reading books on the Palm and found that I much preferred reading on it to reading actual paper books! It was always there, so any time I had a minute or two to wait for something, out it would come, with the mini-page just where I had left off (as opposed to a paper book where you may need to read quite a bit just to find your place on the double-page spread your bookmark indicates.)

I can even read in bed comfortably, something that had never worked well for me in the past...I tend to lie on my side, and every other page of a paper book is hard to hold and/or poorly lighted. Indeed, with the Palm, I could even read in the dark, since there's a backlight to the screen.

Unlike a book, it can be operated with only one hand, just hold it with your thumb on the scroll button.

The Palm III was a good entry into the PDA experience, but I found the screen hard to read in bright light, and was constantly bumpint up against the 2 mb storage limit. I wound up buying a Handspring Visor Deluxe in July 2000, with 8 mb of memory and a screen that wasn't so much bothered by reflections (though the Handspring's screen isn't as nice in the dark.)

This is my current unit, and I'm never without it.

The Handspring came with a USB cradle that works very nicely with my iBook, and the hot-synching is generally fast and reliable (which was not the case with the Palm III.) The Palm III has become a dedicated cyclecomputer.

Address Book

This is synched with Now Contact

AvantGo.com

This is the main site for online periodicals. They're all free! I've got a whole raft of 'em including:

BBC News

A small channel, mainly headlines and short items.

Boston.com (The Boston Globe)

My hometown paper, and a very good one. The Avantgo version has the front page, with the continuations of all the stories. It also includes the front pages of the Arts & Entertainment, Digital Mass. and Sports sections.

Guardian Unlimited

The Guardian, a fine British paper. They provide quite a lot of content on their Avantgo channel.

Handango

Handspring info, tips and propoganda

Hollywood.com

This lists films playing in my general area (by zipcode) with theatres and schedules...very useful.

Le Monde Interactif

A great French newspaper.

MapBlast

Downloadable maps and driving directions. This doesn't hold a complete database, but if you tell it where you want to go from and to, at the next hot synch it will download a map and driving directions for the trip. The maps are of minimal usefulness, due to the poor resolution of the PDA screen

The New York Times-front page

All of the front page stories, with the continuations. One of my favorite resources.

The New York Times-Technology

Not all that much about technology per se, more about the technology business.

Space.com

Information on launches, other space news. Also listings on science fiction. The actual Web site is quite good and has lots of neat images that don't make it to the PDA.

Suck.com

Satirical e-zine.

My GIST TV listings

This customizable site lists what's on TV in my area, my cable system. I'm able to do some filtering of which channels are shown. Even so, I'm not too thrilled with it--it's not easy to navigate.

The Weather channel

Local weather for my zipcode.

The Onion

A hysterically funny parody site, but I more often go for the Web version (updated on Tuesdays.)

Books:

There is a very large amount of material on the Web. Much public-domain material has been scanned and posted on free sites. If you enjoy 19th century literature, as I do, this is a gold mine. Here are some of my favorite sources:

MemoWare

The major source for free Palm-ready texts.

Byron's Emporium

19th century stuff, Black history, Science Fiction, Karl May (no current or wayback link found)

Nautical Electronic Books

These are mostly in HTML format, would need to be converted for PDA use

Project Gutenberg

The Mother Lode of online texts, in plain ASCII, need to be converted for PDA use

ABU-French E-Textes

French texts in HTML, need to be converted for PDA use

At the moment, my PDA contains:

• 50 Bab Ballads by W.S. Gilbert
• A Child's History of England by Charles Dickens (chapters 4 & 5)
• A Traveler from Altrurua, by William Dean Howells
• A long article on Augustus Cæsar, downloaded from De Imperitoribus Romanis
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (chapters 22-27)
• Les Forceurs de Blocus by Jules Verne
• Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
• The Woman in Del Rey Crater by Larry Niven

With the longer books I generally keep just a few chapters loaded, because even with 8 mb I'm finding things a bit cramped.

Books I've previously read on the PDA include:

HandyShopper

This is a really useful shopping list program. At home, I keep it sorted alphabetically, then, when I see that I'm out of something, I go to the entry for that product and click a check box.

At the supermarket, a couple of simple commands sorts the list by aisle number and shows only the items I need to get. Highly recommended, freeware.

True Term French/English dictionary

This is a fairly expensive item, and I'm sorry I bought it, because I haven't found it all that useful. It would probably be more useful for someone whose French was more limited than mine, but I find that whatever I need to know is never listed in this dictionary.

Memo List

This is one of the default functions, but I use it rather heavily. I've got tons of categories, and, among other things, have the words to a large number of songs I like to sing. Most of this material is downloaded from the Web or typed into the computer, very little is actually written in with the stylus.

Games

Parens

The Palm OS comes with a decent basic calculator function, but Parens upgrades this to a highly capable scientific calculator.

Book Readers

I've got 4 .doc handlers:

iSilo

This is my main book software for reading on the Palm. The companion Mac utility is great for converting HTML documents into .pdb format. I've started doing this with some of my bicycle articles.

Peanut Reader

Peanut Press is a commercial publisher of PDA reading material. Their documents are password protected, and can only be read with their reader software. It is a pretty nice reader, and the latest version works for other documents as well.

Smart Doc

This is a reader that also allows you to write on the PDA. Without such a utility, the only way you can write is in the Memo List, but that has a rather small file size limit.

CSpot run

Another reader that came highly recommended. I haven't used it much as yet.

Date Book

This is quite useful, and will share data with the latest version of Now-Up-To-Date. There is an alarm function on these machines, but I can never hear it.