.KEYWORD pplte0900
.FLYINGHEAD LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
.TITLE Tons of letters on a wide range of topics
.DEPT
.SUMMARY The PalmPower mailbag has simply been overflowing of late. In this month’s edition of Letters to the Editor, you’ll find a question about PowerBoard registration, comments on last month’s editorial and Palm m100 review, calendar trouble, and a letter from a reader who put what some might consider too much thought into the relative buoyancy of handheld organizers and lunch meat.
.EDNOTE The PalmPower mailbag has simply been overflowing of late. In this month’s edition of Letters to the Editor, you’ll find a question about PowerBoard registration, comments on last month’s editorial and Palm m100 review, calendar trouble, and a letter from a reader who put what some might consider too much thought into the relative buoyancy of handheld organizers and lunch meat.
.H1 No appetite for spam
I want to find out if my email address will be visible in messages I post to the PowerBoards or be accessible in any other way to the other users of the service. If so, I would not use the service because my work email address has not yet fallen into the hands of spammers, and I would like to keep it that way as long as possible. I noticed with my home email address that soon after I posted to Internet newsgroups, I started receiving large amounts of spam.
Is the email address used for any sort of notification or just for registration?
Thanks,
Don G. Anderson
.H2 Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz responds
Not directly. You have to drill down a bunch of levels to find an email address. However, a diligent Web scraping program might find an email address that way. If you don’t want to have your email address shown, you don’t need to include it when you register. We don’t do email validation and believe your privacy is yours to protect. However, we do ask you register with your real name, rather than a pseudonym or "handle."
Have fun. Enjoy the PowerBoards.
.H1 This link’s for you
The Madison Palm Users Group Web site has a link to you. See http://facstaff.wcer.wisc.edu/pbaker/PUG.htm.
Paul Baker
.H2 Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz responds
Thanks! Of course, so do thousands of other sites. In fact, PalmPower is in the top 2% of all sites linked to on the Internet. But without lots of individual sites like yours linking to us, we wouldn’t be at that exalted place.
.H1 Palm V: the seaman’s choice
This letter was sent in response to an editorial in the August 2000 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200008/ppeditorial0800001.html. In it, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz criticizes the US Navy for implementing the use of Palm V devices onboard the USS McFaul when they could have used the functionally identical Palm IIIe devices and saved taxpayers money.
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Though I generally agree about going for the lower-cost solutions where [the two choices] are identical, in this case, the Palm V’s rechargeable batteries make all kinds of sense aboard a ship… Where do you go to buy AAA batteries when you’re at sea and the ship’s store runs out? If they’re going to use a Palm device in any meaningful way, the Palm V is the better choice.
Thought I’d get in my two cents worth!
Jim Parker
.H2 Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz responds
Damn, you know I never thought of that (and I shoulda)! Good point.
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.H1 Friendly’s envy
This letter was written in response to the same August 2000 article in which Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz described how he set up office in a Friendly’s diner booth thanks to the mobile computing power of the Palm V and the Palm Portable Keyboard.
As a former Connecticut/NYC person and now a Northern California one (12 years: I must be getting soft) I have extreme jealously at the very mention of Friendly’s. Having the Palm Pilot Vx and the Palm Portable Keyboard at a coffee cafe serving gelato is just not the same, but then again the weather is better.
I am a Palm device user with ACT installed-1,875 contacts to date–and paper free calendar user since February 2000. Making the transition was a mental and emotional challenge. Perhaps you can address this issue for your readers.
Terry Prince
.H2 Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz responds
Terry, it’s so funny. I spent nine years in the Bay Area and being able to be at a nice coffee cafe with gelato is something I think I’d about kill for. To us, Friendly’s (or what we generally call Surly’s… as well as something else I won’t reprint here) is just that moderately nasty restaurant next door. But it’s funny, when I was in California, I missed diners and NJ pizza. Now that I’m here, I frankly can’t stand diners, and I barely tolerate the pizza, but dream of homemade Mexican food in a real Taqueria. The grass is always greener.
As for moving to calendaring on the Palm device, we’re always looking for great article concepts. I invite all readers to share their experiences of the emotional traumas and triumphs it takes to become paper free. And for that matter, if there’s a Palm device-wielding psychologist out there with the professional information on such a thing, please write and let us know about it.
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.H1 Questions about the Palm m100
Thanks for your review of the new Palm m100. Two weeks ago I bought a Seiko SmartPad to use with my old, still reliable, Palm III. Two weeks in the real world demonstrated my $200 could be better invested…so in returning it, I purchased a new m100. Loved your article, hit all the right buttons for me…so I bought one. Couple of quick notes you might maybe know the answer to or could use in a follow up:
Where is Expense? This is a very useful application for those of us who travel. Did they not include it to save a few dollars? I’m having immediate crashing problems (already sent email to Palm for help). Anyway, remember the wonderful little pointy end hidden in the Palm stylus so you could reboot? NOT with the m100. Having had to reboot three times already today, I miss that little pointy thing. (Is this yet another case of keeping it under the $149 retail price?) You were right on target about the Note Pad feature. It’s cool (about the same as SmartPad but for $200 less!) The clock window feature is super cool. I don’t wear a watch often and am getting tired of looking at my cell phone to know what time it is. Thanks for the heads up. I’ve now put your magazine in my favorite places and will look for more articles by you.
John Durkee
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.H2 Staff editor Steve Niles responds
That’s true, there’s no built-in Expense application, and the plastic stylus has no pointy thing. I also made one other serious omission in neglecting to mention there’s no Mail application either. With this in mind, some may argue Palm has made some serious omissions of its own.
I had thought the reason might be that because the Palm m100 will most likely be marketed not to mobile professionals but towards casual, novice users and young people, the applications were deemed unnecessary. I contacted our friends at Palm’s PR firm, and this is the response I received:
.QUOTE You are correct in saying that the m100 is aimed at a younger, more consumer oriented segment of the market, where price is more of an issue than [for] a mobile professional. Also, the m100 offers the Note Pad application which adds to [the] ease of use but does take up a bit more memory.
.H1 Dig that clock
After reading your review, I like the new m100, too. And I suspect it might sell for just $139. It’s also possible that it would compete with any programmable calculator, meaning it probably would sell in drug stores that sell inexpensive electronics. Besides that, Palm, it seemed, just added some "knickknack" changes to it.
But I dig that clock! I typically use Big Clock 2.6 to check the time. If I buy this, I won’t need BigClock, except for the alarm.
Gerald Shields
.H1 Trouble getting dates
This letter is in response to the tip mailing, "Make Date Book events repeat only on weekdays."
I read your recent newsletter and it reminded me of a problem I had recently. I wanted to set up a repeating event in my calendar that was on the 25th of the month only if that was a weekday. If the 25th was on a Saturday, I wanted it to end up on the 24th. If the 25th was on a Sunday, I wanted the event to show up on the 23rd.
The only way I could get something close to this to happen was to set up the same event on the 23rd, 24th, or 25th. Do you think that any of your readers can come up with a more elegant solution?
Wayne
.H1 Thinking outside the box
The following letter was written in response to the article, "Otter Box offers PDA protection" in the June 2000 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200006/ppotterbox001.html.
I was fascinated by your review of the Otter Box sample that fit your PDA so nicely. Very well written.
However, I think you may have missed much of the point of buoyancy calculations:
Buoyancy is a function of both the total weight and the net flotation of the box, the PDA, and the air inside the box.
Unless the same weight of Lebanon bologna (my absolute favorite since I lived in the Philly area as a child!) occupies the same overall volume as the PDA, the amount of air inside the box was significantly different, thereby affecting the buoyancy. You didn’t mention the volume of Lebanon bologna compared to the PDA beyond saying that it was "about the same size," but my seat-of-the-pants recollection is that it probably occupies about half to two-thirds the volume, leaving plenty of extra air to be buoyant. Since you are pretty sure that the box is (was?) watertight, it would be very easy to try it with the PDA itself.
Also, I would hesitate to extrapolate your crush test to encompass safe survival of the PDA. The cracking you describe sounds like one edge of the box deformed enough to crack the ABS. Because the Lebanon bologna occupies a smaller volume and is much more flexible than the PDA, it survived nicely. Earlier in the article, you described the PDA as being a "tight fit" in the box. Since the PDA is pretty rigid in construction, I wonder if it would also have survived.
I wouldn’t worry about this problem at all, since the likelihood of dropping the box and having it run over are pretty slim. But, dropping something overboard or taking a wave on a boat is more likely.
Thanks for forcing me to think about the physics involved in this otherwise mundane product.
Tom Russel
.H1 Staff editor Steve Niles responds
Nicely reasoned argument there. I admit physics aren’t my strong suit. You’re right–there might have been some stress placed on the PDA if it had been in the box when I ran it over. Still, I think the Otter Box is a good product and proved itself to be quite durable. And, as always, we must continue to recommend Lebanon bologna, if not as a product testing vehicle, then at least for lunch.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the Palm Portable Keyboard, visit http://www.thinkoutside.com/palm.html.
For more information on the Palm m100, visit http://www.palm.com/products/palmm100/.
For more information on the Otter Box, visit http://www.otterbox.com.
For more information on Friendly’s restaurants, visit http://www.friendlys.com.
To read the editorial by David Gewirtz in the August 2000 issue of PalmPower, visit http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200008/ppeditorial0800001.html.
To read Steve Niles’ review of the Palm m100, visit http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200008/m100001.html.
To read Steve Niles’ review of the Otter Box, visit http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200006/ppotterbox001.html.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
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.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6e78b
