Meeting #14

General

Wednesday	Saturday
Rob Antonishen	Rob Bowen
Ron Apperley	Paul D'Auvergne
John Cosentini	Sean D. Evans
Scott Currie	Dave Harvey
Jonathan Dietrich	Steve Hetherington
Ernie do Forno	Sam Peralta
Geoff Edgecombe	Russell Scheer
Bruce McKay	Karen Thompson
Rick Stasiak	Ken Waldron
Kim Waddell	Trevor Wilkinson

Topic

For all the Newsletter Members who were thinking of becoming Participating Members, the October meeting was one of those meetings that would definitely have made your decision easier. In any case, for those of you that missed it, here are the minutes of that meeting….and they are no ordinary minutes….

You should have guessed, when the CanadaPUG Website sprouted references to the "Handspring" company as its current sponsor….

You should have guessed, had you been there, when Sean, our fearless leader, at the beginning of the meeting, handed out – along with the most recent issue of Pen Computing magazine – glossy "Handspring" pamphlets and spec sheets….

You should have guessed, when talk began about the relative merits of the Palm V series and the Handspring Visor series, and the difficulties (and with the recent Handspring decision to limit 1999 sales to the US, the near-impossibility) of getting one in Canada ….

And you really should have guessed, when Sean drew out from his jacket, not the usual Palm IIIx, but a brand new HANDSPRING VISOR DELUXE….

….That we would be bringing you….

THE CANADAPUG HANDSPRING VISOR HANDS-ON REVIEW

The Look and Feel. The Visor Deluxe we got to examine was a working, real-life device. It feels very light in your hand, and smaller than the usual Palm III form factor. It actually is a bit longer than the Palm III, but slightly narrower. With this change, it actually slides much more easily into pockets (many tried at the meeting, but Sean was quite alert to see it didn’t stay there!). The Visor also comes in other colours besides the standard grey that we tested – you have a choice of clear (ice), blue, orange and green. In terms of looks, the Palm V remains the Laetitia Casta of handhelds, but the Visor is a perfectly good date.

The Cover. One of the few negatives on the Visor is the cover, you have to remove and clip on the back for action. It is a bit awkward, but the design is supposedly to accommodate the various Springboards that will be available. However, if you are upgrading from one of the original PalmPilots, the cover operation will feel somewhat familiar to you. People still like the Palm III flip-cover best - never underestimate the power of Star Trek.

The Buttons. The buttons have a very tactile, feel, and give you a clicked feedback when pressed. There is a small microphone, which is at the moment not used.

The IR Port. The infrared port is now on one side of the device, moved to make room for the Springboard slot. We tried using the IR beaming capability between Palm devices and the Visor, and things worked as usual. The way you hold the Visor when beaming (like a miniature video camera) does take a bit of getting used to.

The Serial (oops!) USB Port. Okay, there isn’t a serial port on the Visor. Instead, what you’ve got is a standard USB port, which enables HotSync to happen faster than you can say Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky. Sean vouches for the speed, having tried it himself with a ton of files. If you’re out of luck and don’t have a USB port on your computer, you can get an adapter from Handspring.

The Screen. When you turn on the Visor, you notice that the LCD screen has the same clarity as the Palm IIIx screen. This isn’t surprising, since it is the same screen. By the same token, the Palm V series screens seem slightly better.

The Processor. The Visor runs the same processor as the IIIx as well, but technicians at Handspring have tweaked things so that it is faster. We tried this by beaming Qvadis Express Reader GT to the Visor and giving it a workout using the autoscrolling, bookmark finding and text-searching functions, and on all the above functions the Visor seemed to perform noticeably better than a Palm III, and possibly better than a Palm V. It would be interesting to benchmark the speed difference on other processor-intensive applications such as the Quicksheet spreadsheet or the ThinkDB database application.

The Flash RAM (or lack thereof). The Visor has no flash ram (similar to the Palm IIIe), so the operating system is not upgradeable. However, most members didn’t think that this was a big problem. It was pointed out that OS upgrades are not always stable, and that a lot of us didn’t upgrade our OS as a matter of course anyway.

The Built-in Apps. The Visor adheres to the Zen of Palm philosophy of simplicity in its design. Most of the tried-and-tested built-in applications remain the same. This means an Address List, To Do List, Memo Capability, and more. Two of the built-in functions have been improved, as follows.

The Calendar. The usual Calendar function has now been replaced by a version of the popular application DateBk3. This means there are many more ways to see your schedule, and in a more convenient form. It was unanimous among CanadaPUG members that this is a big improvement over the original. Newer enhancements to DateBk3 are not included as a standard, however (such as full small icon capability) – probably to induce users to try out the full application.

The Calculator. The usual simple Calculator function has been replaced by a more feature-filled calculator similar to that offered as Parens. The calculator now has multifunction capabilities such as trigonometric, statistical, metric conversion and other functions. Again, CanadaPUG testers were unanimous that this was a big improvement over the simpler calculator.

The Springboard Slot. The handspring comes with a dummy plastic Springboard that covers the slot. Remove it, and you expose the pin connections, which look like a compact flash configuration, but aren’t (in other words DO NOT try to plug anything but a Springboard in). Unfortunately we didn’t have a Springboard title to test out (not even the Golf game!) so we can’t tell you much except repeat others’ views about the plug-and-play capabilities of the Springboard. It is this slot – with the possibilities for memory expansion, addition of new hardware such as GPS, MP3, a six-pack of applications, and other good things – that really sets the Visor apart as "the infinitely expandable organizer".

In Summary. Like the Palm III except smaller, faster, with more memory, enhanced built-in applications, Springboard-enabled, color-coordinated, and cheaper….the Handspring Visor Deluxe gets 16 thumbs-up from Canada’s Premier PalmOS User Group!

Prizes

The prizes were determined by means of a blind draw from the garlic bread basket.