visorcentral.com >> Stories >> Hardware >> Weekend Mailbag #6

visorcentral.com >> Stories >> Hardware
Weekend Mailbag #6


Fri Jan 25, 2002 - 11:13 PM EST - By Michael Ducker

*Now updated to an easier to read bolded format*

Ok, because I am a self-acknowledged “not-so-good” writer I have decided that Weekend Mailbag is now a column, and thus I will write these much less formally. (That sounds better than to say that I was lazy, and couldn't think of an intro... right?) This week I bring you the randomness of what little tidbits I found this week. While there were big announcements and leaks about new Palm devices over at another pda website, there was little Visor news in the fallout of Handsprings comments on the future of the Visor.

Before I go on to what the staff at VisorCentral have discovered online, may I remind you to email us anything that might be useful for Weekend Mailbag. In fact, we might even use your name if you want! [email protected]. OR, if you want to email me directly, click my name at the top. Do you like the new "format" for weekend mailbag? (Also, do you like this thing to be filled with images?)

First off, let’s start with the hardware...

VisorCentral user dabirk discovered that Targus will provide current Visor Stowaway users a $15 adaptor to let them use the Visor Stowaway with the Visor Edge. This part (number PA810) is available only through Targus customer service.

Gomadic recently updated their product line to include more Visor to cell phone cables. The new cables are for the Motorola V60/120, LG wireless, and Touchpoint. This supplements their existing cable line shown here. All Visor cables are $27.95 and versions are available for the Visor Edge at no extra cost.

I really don't know if this is new or not, but I'm posting it anyways. The DataGet RS232 cartridge is a springboard module that provides a true serial port (male) to the Visor. Available for a whopping $299 it enables people to use RS-232 instruments with their Visors. (Pending that software has been written for it)

Now, to bring in the weekly Handspring news.. Handspring market share this quarter was 11.1% in the PDA market according to IDC. While this might not seem much compared to Palms 33%, it does equal 425 thousand Visors! This is 36% better than the same quarter last year.

The Dalles/Ft.Worth PUG posted some Treo/other Palm PDA comparison pictures. The pictures are actually quite accurate IMHO. Look at the last one especially!

Now the oddities...

The New York Times had a review of a service I myself have never heard of, CopyTalk. The gist of CopyTalk is you can call a 1-800 number and dictate an e-mail which is then typed up by a real person and sent. But what they dwell on just as much is the service that allows you to call up and dictate an appointment, instead of having to write it on your Visor (which most likely is in your pocket). CopyTalk can also add address book entries. I could see it useful, I mean maybe a little ;)

Avantgo received a patent for "the system, method and computer program product for synchronizing content between a server and a client." See Yahoo news here, or the actual patent here. Could this mean the death of Coola or most any web to PDA software? Decide it on the boards, I'm not going to comment.

That's all folks!

Actually it's not.. One last thing that VisorCentral user Jupe just discovered.

The makers of Launcher III, which is a replacement launcher program for the Visor, are slowly unveiling a new product called Launcher X. It has all the funciontality of Launcher III, but it has more gadgets, more options and Active Skins, which is their way of skinning the interface for a program. The price has not been set yet, but if you buy Launcher III now, the company is promising that you will pay less to than pay the upgrade price to X,than to buy X outright. (total price including III and X upgrade)

AND! PalmInfoCenter is reporting the Visor Edge is only $199 at J&R computer world. You can either buy it at the store in New York, or you can order it online here.