.KEYWORD ultimate
.FLYINGHEAD BOOK REVIEW
.TITLE PalmPilot Guide: The ultimate review
.OTHER
.SUMMARY David Pogue has contributed his first article as a newly minted PalmPower contributing editor. He’s also the author of a brand-new O’Reilly & Associates book called "PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide", which we’ve wanted to review in PalmPower. Of course, the problem was how to do it. We needed to make sure that our association with David as a contributing editor didn’t influence the content of the review. We solved the problem by asking our toughest reviewer, Claire Pieterek, to read the book. Claire’s tough. Claire’s fair. She answers to no one. And she reviewed David’s book. Should you run out tomorrow and buy David’s book? You’ll have to read this review to find out.
.AUTHOR Claire Pieterek
After more than two years of Piloting, I finally bought a book on the subject. Actually, this is fairly typical for me. Being a computer professional by trade, I often spend a long time beating software, networks, and users [users?? Ouch! –DG] into submission before I take the plunge and crack the books. Most of the manuals that come with the product in question just aren’t useful for anything other than taking up desk space, so I usually resort to a third-party book.
.H1 Why I chose PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide?
For me, the answer to that question is the publisher. Computer industry veterans, especially those who work with Unix, have long considered O’Reilly and Associates (ORA) publications to be standard reference works.
While I doubt that someone’s going to drop by my desk and ask to borrow "the flying squirrel book" any time soon, many ORA books have become classics, and are commonly referred to by the names of the detailed animal drawings on their front covers. Figure A shows the cover of PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide.
.FIG A Another cute O’Reilly book cover.
I don’t always have a lot of time to do all the reading I should. As a result, I demand professional books that give me the information I need in the detail I want. There are a lot of publishers in the technical market. Frankly, many of the competition’s books remind me of 3 Musketeers candy bars–lots of fluff and little substance. ORA books are more like Snickers bars–they satisfy. And, getting an ORA book at 40% off is a real treat for my overburdened book budget. I purchased my copy from Computer Literacy Bookstore’s website. In my experience, I have found that ORA books are consistently well-written and thorough.
Please, don’t take this the wrong way. This is not a slam on the authors of other available PalmPilot books, especially Calvin Parker’s. Calvin writes and maintains the excellent Pilot FAQ at http://www.pilotfaq.com.
.H1 What’s in the book?
Don’t let the name fool you. PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide (PP:TUG, hereafter) is a compendium of useful, almost up-to-this-second information about the Pilot, PalmPilot, and Palm III. The book includes a CD-ROM with the complete contents of The Everything CD for PalmPilot, a trial version of Intellisync, and a copy of CodeWarrior Lite. What a deal!
PP:TUG was written by David Pogue, fellow PalmPower Magazine columnist, and author of a number of other computer-related books. The text is copiously illustrated with PC, Mac, and PalmPilot-based screen shots to clarify various points made throughout the book. My favorite illustration is Figure 2-8 on page 27, detailing the Owner Preferences screen. Yes, you’ll have to go look at it for yourself! Sprinkled throughout the text are various tips and hints. Some of these I found obvious as a long-time PalmPilot user, others surprised me.
.H1 Highlights
PP:TUG covers all of the built-ins and more, including third-party software and accessories. Chapters on ebooks, multimedia and web browsing enlightened me on some great programs I have overlooked. I also found the programming tutorial based on the accompanying CD-ROM’s version of Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior Lite fascinating. This tutorial is more than just another ‘Hello World’.
If you don’t have time to post a question to the PowerBoards, the Troubleshooting chapter provides a good overview of many potential PalmPilot problems and their solutions. And, case maven Fredlet’s cameo in Appendix B will help those who want a short list of case recommendations by type and level of PalmPilot protection.
.H1 Low points
PP:TUG could have been edited a little more carefully. There were a number of inconsistencies I spotted (in captions, web addresses, and such) that I found irksome. These will definitely confuse new Piloteers who may not be very net- or computer-literate. Yes, I’m picky–we all know that computers do what you tell them to, not what you mean.
There are a few useful PC-based helper programs that may have been overlooked due to the author’s Mac-centricity. Most notable of these include RoadReloader, which can come in handy if you have to do a modem hotsync after a hard reset on the road, and PalmPC Alarm, which sounds Palm Desktop alarms from the PC. By the way, both RoadReloader and PalmPC Alarm, along with other useful PalmPilot products and programs, can be found at PilotGear, http://www.pilotgear.com, under the Desktop:PC category.
I also expected, but did not find, a brief discussion of the capacitor problem that plagued quite a few PalmPilot Professional owners. These unfortunate people experienced complete data loss when changing batteries because the capacitor failed and did not supply power to the PalmPilot Professional’s memory board. (If you have this problem, the best thing to do is to call 3Com Technical Support for The Box.)
For the sake of thoroughness, it would have been helpful for PP:TUG to have made brief mentions of resources available to Linux and OS/2 users. While Linux and OS/2 users aren’t "officially" supported by 3Com like Mac users, quite a few support options are available. See the product availability section at the end of this article for some resources.
.PAGE
.H1 Is it worth it?
I recommend PP:TUG to any PalmPilot owner who would like instant access to a great deal of expertise and cool software. This is a handy reference that won’t just sit on your desk and gather dust. Now, David, how about a Doc version? PalmOS in a Nutshell, maybe? Just kidding
