Sunday, April 1, 2001

CLIE question and PDA group presentation

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

In this month's Letters to the Editor, one reader wonders whether the Sony CLIE can be used with Palm Desktop 4.0, and another is looking for help with a college report on Personal Digital Assistants.

Will procedure work with CLIE?

This letter was written in response to the article, "How to use Palm Desktop v4.0 with your Handspring Visor," by Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz in the February 2001 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200102/visordesktop001.html.

I have a still-new Sony CLIE as a replacement for my trusty PalmPilot Professional with a 2MB upgrade. I would like to know if the procedure you gave for the Handspring device will also work for the Sony CLIE. I'm sticking to what's in the box until I hear from you.

Thanks in advance,
Bonnie Bernardo

Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz responds

Honestly, I have no idea, since I haven't tried that "hack" with a CLIE. However, you can't go too wrong trying it. What I'd do is make a backup (off your computer) of your entire Palm folder. Then try it out. If it works, you're golden. If it doesn't, read the PowerBoards for ideas. And, if nothing gets you where you want to go, restore from your backup. Let us know how the experiment goes! If it works, we'll publish the results in a future issue of PalmPower.

Information for group presentation

I am a student at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, LA., and I have recently been assigned to do a group presentation on PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). My particular concentration is how they would be effective in a newspaper/magazine publishing company. My brother has a PalmPilot, but I am not too familiar with them. If you could please give me some suggestions or other information regarding this particular concentration, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Nick Tuttle

Staff editor Steve Niles responds

Palm devices come with four main applications built-in. These are the Date Book, Address Book, To Do List, and Memo Pad. Each of these features can come in handy for someone in the newspaper or magazine publishing business.

I use my Palm Date Book to keep track of publication dates, article due dates, meetings, etc. I can also schedule calls to authors or companies that I need to make.

With the Address Book, I keep track of all my contact information for authors, co-workers, and companies we write about or review products for.

I use the To Do List to keep a checklist of the various steps I have to go through to bring a magazine from the conception stage to final publication.

Besides functioning as an editorial coordinator, I also do a good deal of writing. Using the Palm Memo Pad, I can work on my writing anywhere. If I'm going to be doing a lot of writing, I like to use the Palm Portable Keyboard (at https://store.palm.com/Catalog/productdetails.asp?productnr=3C10439U&). The Palm device easily connects to this foldable keyboard for typing on the go.