By David Pogue
Who was the person who first showed you the PalmPilot? The fact that you probably remember illustrates what's so special about our favorite palmtop. Nobody talks about the first time they saw a Micron desktop computer, or injket printer, or cordless phone. But the PalmPilot is a technology virus: it spreads by face-to-face demo, from one enthusiastic owner to the next. Most people don't buy one because they read about it or heard about it--they get one because they've seen it.
I first saw a PalmPilot in the hands of a friend at the 1997 Macworld Expo. He flipped open a very cool-looking leather cover and showed me how his entire speaking and meeting schedule had been sucked out of his Mac and onto this handheld. He had all these little shareware add-ons and his life was in order -- I rushed straight out to buy one. And since that fateful day, I've perpetuated the PalmPilot bug myself, passing it on to so many friends and acquaintances, I've lost count.
This "You gotta see this thing!" syndrome was recently brought home to me when I was interviewed on a radio show. "You can say anything you want about the PalmPilot," the interviewer said on the air, "but just don't give me a damn demo." Apparently this poor woman was surrounded, at her office, by comrades who incessantly shoved their PalmPilots into her face to show her stuff.
The funny thing was, I had just been about to thrust mine into her face to show her stuff.
It's too bad she didn't let me show her, actually. I give an unbelievable PalmPilot demo. My little guy is loaded up with some of the most stunning and irresistible software doodads imaginable. If you, too, would like to become a more potent spreader of the Word of PalmPilot, stock up your palmtop with programs like these:
ProxiWeb
ProxiWeb is ProxiNet's free grayscale Web browser. It's amazing for two reasons: first, most people are shocked that a machine the size of an audiocassette can browse the Web at all. And second, most people think that the PalmPilot is a black-and-white gadget -- it's not; the screen is actually grayscale, but very few programs take advantage of it. Show people a few Web pages in ProxiWeb and shatter their preconceptions on both counts. Figure A shows a great example. Imagine, The New York Times on your PalmPilot.
FIGURE A
Imagine, The New York Times on your PalmPilot!
