It seems like the email I sent out announcing the meeting yesterday arrived a little late for some people, so it refers to the meeting being “tomorrow” and you may have received it on a Saturday. Rest assured that our meeting time has not changed, we’ll still be meeting today (December 13, 2003) at 1 PM in our usual place. I’ll try to take some pictures at today’s party and upload them later.
Meeting Time Clarification
December 13th, 2003Holiday PDA Comparison
December 13th, 2003A little bit of the logic behind this table: First off, each table heading is sortable, so if you click any of the table headings you can sort the rows by that criteria. Street price is a rough measure of what I found the lowest price to be online, it may be a little low but is more accurate of what you’ll pay than the list price. Weight is in ounces, memory is in megabytes. The pixels column shows you the total numeber of pixels, which is expressed in the screen dimensions. “MattRating” is a subjective rating of how I think each unit rates as a gift, taking into account all its features, expandibility, the unit in comparison with what else is available, and price.
| Model | Price | Weight | Memory | Pixels | Dimensions | MattRating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palm Zire | $40 | 3.8 | 2 | 25600 | 160×160 | 4 |
| Palm Zire 21 | $70 | 3.8 | 8 | 25600 | 160×160 | 6 |
| Palm Zire 71 | $210 | 5.3 | 16 | 102400 | 320×320 | 6 |
| Palm Tungsten E | $180 | 4.6 | 32 | 102400 | 320×320 | 9 |
| Palm Tungsten T2 | $220 | 5.6 | 32 | 102400 | 320×320 | 5 |
| Palm Tungsten T3 | $345 | 5.5 | 64 | 153600 | 320×480 | 7 |
| Palm Tungsten W | $420 | 6.4 | 16 | 102400 | 320×320 | 2 |
| Palm Tungsten C | $330 | 6.3 | 64 | 102400 | 320×320 | 6 |
| Sony SJ22 | $130 | 4.9 | 16 | 102400 | 320×320 | 4 |
| Sony TJ25 | $160 | 4.9 | 16 | 102400 | 320×320 | 5 |
| Sony TJ35 | $260 | 4.9 | 32 | 102400 | 320×320 | 8 |
| Sony TG50 | $260 | 6.2 | 16 | 102400 | 320×320 | 3 |
| Sony NX73V | $230 | 8 | 16 | 153600 | 320×480 | 7 |
| Sony NX80V | $420 | 8 | 32 | 153600 | 320×480 | 4 |
| Sony NZ90 | $550 | 10.3 | 16 | 153600 | 320×480 | 1 |
| Sony UX40 | $510 | 6 | 104 | 153600 | 480×320 | 2 |
| Sony UX50 | $560 | 6 | 104 | 153600 | 480×320 | 7 |
| Handspring Treo 90 | $135 | 4 | 16 | 25600 | 160×160 | 3 |
chart: Buying a combination PDA/Phone, like the popular Treo series, is an entirely different kind of decision than buying a straight PDA. First of all, the prices on these tend to be rediculously high, but very few people pay anything close to the list price because phone companies subsidize the cost of the phone when you sign a contract or as a reward for being a good customer. Since many people are already attached to a particular phone carrier, their choices will be limited by what their company offers. Second, with a PDA/phone purchase, most people want a phone first and a PDA second, which means things like weight and size are more important to the final decision, while those can be compromises in case of a regular PDA, such as the Handspring Prism, which was a hefty unit but very popular because of the features it offered. Finally, battery life is crucial in making a PDA/phone buying decision, and there is no good objective way to quantify battery life in a way that we could compare each unit side by side except with unit testing, and without access to any of the models that can be tricky.
November Meeting
November 9th, 2003Today’s meeting went pretty well I think, though it was short due to the event next door. We discussed the new HPUG website (you’re looking at it) and some good sources for news and updates about PalmOS software. Finally we covered a bit what a “blog” is and how it’s changing where you can get your news and what sort of information you can get online. Here are some of the sites we covered:
- Palm InfoCenter
- Probably the best PalmOS news site but the quality has gone down a bit lately. Usually good comments on the articles
- PDA Buzz
- Currently experiencing technical difficulties, but a really good all-around site. Very active forums and good timeliness with breaking news.
- PalmStation
- Used to be the best around but is now seldomly updated.
- The Gadgeteer
- Great and very thorough reviews of gadgets in general but they most always cover the latest PalmOS units.
- Visor Central
- Good, but visors themselves are dead, so there’s not a whole lot happening on the site anymore.
- Treo Central
- The best resource I’ve seen for Treo news and resources.
- Palm Gear
- In my opinon, the best place to browse and buy PalmOS software. At the meeting we couldn’t get this site to pull up, but now it seems to be working just fine again.
After that discussion we went to the Microsoft event next door that talked mainly about Office 2003 Personally I was underwhelmed and disappointed, but I’ll write more about that later.
Welcome
November 8th, 2003Welcome to the new HPUG.org, which I hope will become a one-stop resource for PalmOS related news. The new design is highly streamlined to look great and load fast in your browser or handheld device. Currently I’m working on getting “feeds” from the different PalmOS news sites that we can aggregate here. What that means is that instead of visiting 5 or 6 different sites for the news you need, you can visit here and see all the articles in one place and follow links to the ones that interest you. The format that enables this is called RSS, and you’ll be hearing a lot more about it in the future.
September Meeting
September 13th, 2003For tomorrow’s meeting Eli Bensky will be sharing with us some of the best freeware he has found. Here is a list of websites he would like to share:
Abacus: http://solair.eunet.yu/~djajic/palm/ + more freeware
Alpha Bravo: http://www.freewarepalm.com/educational/educational_language.shtml
Bible Reader: www.olivetree.com Install Bible Reader first – then pick version
Bible+: http://palmbibleplus.sourceforge.net
BigClock: www.gacel.de
Black Jack: www.stefan-pettersson.nu
Card Trick: www.anima3d.com
Card Tricks: www.freewarepalm.com – a FREEWARE GOLDMINE
CFB Pong: www.cfbsoftware.com
Cfbtimer: http://www.brothersoft.com/palm.asp
ChemTable: www.palmgear.com – Monochrome is free, color is shareware
Cool Fonts: www.palmgear.com
DataViewer: www.towncompass.com
DB: http://pilot-db.sourceforge.net
Declaration of Independence: http://pdacentral.ozbytes.net.au/palm/preview/33753.html
Diagrams? www.questions.cz
Dictionaries: http://www.palm-dictionaries.com/company/signup.html
Doctor Database: www.freewarepalm.com
e-reader http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/browse.cgi?category_id=
Earth and Sun, Rise and Set, Algebraic Formulas: http://www.40-below.com/palm/
Educational + :http://www.goknow.com/Products.html
English > 7 Language Dictionary: http://www.freewarefiles.com/programs.php?ProgramID=3462&categoryid=16&subcategoryid=177
FileZ * Micro Fluxx: www.nosleep.net
FreeJournal: www.handango.com or http://home.clara.net/curtisfamily/ (No PC edit)
Freeware: http://www.freewarefiles.com/search.php
FXPilot: www.oanda.com
Golf Score: http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2358-8283972.html?tag=lst-0-5
jMileage: www.palmgear.com
Languages: http://www.anki.com/languages.html
List: http://www.magma.ca/~roo/list/list.html
Lucky Draw: www.pdasoftnet.com
Magic Squares: www.palmgear.com
MakeDocW: http://www.cognitiveroot.com/makedoc.htm
McInventory, McRebate, Flights+xt: http://members.networld.com/mcintosh
MileageX: http://www.pdasoftnet.com/
Minibar: http://minibar.sf.net
Miscellaneous: http://www.shesearch.com/pda_freeware.htm
MyCheckbook: www.thequickster.com or http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2360-10130896.html
NoahLite: www.arslexis.com
Omaha Poker: www.palmgear.com
Palm Biorhythms: www.brianapps.net/
Palm Covertor 2.2 – http://www.freewarepalm.com/calculator/converter.shtml
Palm Reader: http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/product/reader/browse/free
Piloy Install: http://envicon.de/e/pinstall/pinstall.html
Sun Compass, Palm Benchmark: http://www.ive-software.com/palm.php3
Vikao: http://www.freewarepalm.com/utilities/vikaoforpalm.shtml
x-Master: http://linkesoft.com/