How the Palm Pilot Changed Personal Tech Forever (Then Disappeared)

Comments · 365

• RE

  @RealGengarTV · 1 year ago

  When you think about it, A smart phone is just a face Palm

  170

• CH

  @christophmuller3511 · 1 year ago

  Fun fact: webOS is still alive and nowadays driving the UI on LG TVs…

  81

• TH

  @The3dist · 1 year ago (edited)

  I traveled every week of 1999 in prep for Y2K and lived out of my Palm Vx!! &nbsp;I’d have missed many flights without it.<br>I went to work at AT&amp;T on the 1G (CDPD) network after that and we had a sled for the Vx to get data connectivity at “19.2Kbps” (9.6Kbs with a tailwind). &nbsp;It was fantastic for checking email when I was in the field.

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• HE

  @hessex1899 · 1 year ago

  My officemate was foolish enough to leave his brand new furrby in my security lab 27 years ago. He was a pen tester, also, and should have known better.<br><br>We bricked it with beamcrack running on a palm pilot. Its eyes drooped and mouth hung open and it just started making a buzzing sound. We put it in his file cabinet for safe keeping. He found it later. It was lulz.

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• SI

  @singebkdrft · 1 year ago

  My wife loved her Palm Pre. It had a lot of the features of modern smartphones. Copy and paste, multitasking, wireless charging, etc. You could even overclock it, and it would be quite snappy, and eventually quite warm too.

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• BU

  @butwhytho6522 · 1 year ago

  The computer tech repair business I worked with in the late 90&apos;s switched from paper invoices to just carrying these things. We&apos;d tick boxes for travel or equipment or time, the client would sign the screen, and when we were back in the office it would dock and auto-upload into the invoicing software. Saved so much money and time.

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• RO

  @robertmaxey5406 · 1 year ago

  Thanks for the video. I worked for Megahertz, US Robotics, 3Com and MSL. We built Palm Pilots. Millions of units. Good times. I was in the traing department.

  7

• TR

  @Trantion · 1 year ago

  In 2003-4 I was a note taker for disabled students, and I used an AlphaSmart Dana. This was effectively an electronic typewriter running PalmOS: it had a full-sized keyboard and a built-in display around 3 times the width of a standard Palm display. It could run any software (though a lot of them couldn&apos;t use the full display), but of course it was intended for text entry and basic word processing. For the time, it was a pretty good system for doing this. It was very lightweight compared to laptops of the time, sipped power from AAs, was pretty responsive if I remember right, and had fewer distractions than a full laptop. And at the end of the day I could Hotsync to a PC and have the notes for the day emailed to the students in about 10-15 minutes.

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• ST

  @Steve_1492 · 1 year ago

  Had several Palms, even did a couple of my own apps for them. I have fond memories of these devices.

  3

• TO

  @toddmcquiston5997 · 1 year ago

  I had a Palm VII, which had an antenna which let you connect to Palm’s proprietary wireless service so you could do emails, etc. I loved that little handheld.

  3

• MI

  @michaelewan8009 · 1 year ago (edited)

  My cousin designed the radio in the Palm VII. &nbsp;The radio needed more power than the AAA batteries could supply, but the president said that it must run on AAA, so the radio runs on a hidden nicad charged from the batteries while the radio is not being used. &nbsp;The idea being that the radio would only turn on when the antenna was extended and only for a short time to download email etc.

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• JO

  @johnwuethrich4196 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Man what a trip down memory lane. &nbsp;Bluetooth was so much better than IRDA when it came out. It was really similar in how you established the connection/You could essentially dial your carriers mobile web via the right dial string from a separate device. &nbsp;I did once IRDA to what phone did I have. I know I&apos;ve done it from leven a laptop... But my favorite was my pocket PC and my &nbsp;Sony Erickson t68i. Both had Bluetooth. And this was like 2001. It would blow people&apos;s minds that I had the internet on a color screen in my hand wirelessly.

  7