...by Rich Hall

By the time you read this, the first of the Palm PCs will have hit the market. Everex and Casio should already be shipping, with Samsung, LG, Palmax and Philips to follow shortly.

Both Everex and Casio were kind enough to loan me pre-production versions of their Palm PCs for a few days of testing. The Casio E-10 and Everex Freestyle I saw were beta units, so this won't be a detailed review of hardware. We'll do follow-up reviews of the Palm PCs they ship to distributors. This review focuses on Windows CE and the built-in applications as they appear on the Palm PC. Since most of our readers are familiar with Windows CE handheld PCs, I'll use the H/PC to compare features.

Not an H/PC

Windows CE seems to be growing in two directions: larger and smaller. H/PCs are getting bigger and more full-featured. It's getting easier to see their screens and type on their keyboards. You can still carry them around in your pocket, but you feel the weight. You can number-crunch in Excel, write memos in Word, and use a growing number of third-party applications to do almost whatever you want to do on the H/PC.

The first thing you notice about the Palm PC is that it's a lot smaller than the H/PC and doesn't have a keyboard. It's smaller, quicker, and simpler than the H/PC. Whip it out, check your appointments, look up a phone number or make a quick note, and slip it back in your pocket. Everything you enter into the Palm PC, you enter with a stylus, via handwriting recognition or a "soft keyboard" (more on this later). You can enter data into the Palm PC, but you won't be doing a lot of that. Instead, you'll do that on your desktop or H/PC and download it to the Palm PC. Third-party applications that come along for the Palm PC better capitalize on its quick, fast nature.

Just a little about the hardware

I can't resist making a few comments about things that probably won't change. Both the Casio E-10 and Everex Freestyle I saw were about 3" x 5" and a little under 1" thick. The specifications sheet says the Casio is 5.5 oz, the Everex 5.3 oz. They are both very lightweight. Either one easily slips in your shirt or coat pocket. You can easily hold a Palm PC in one hand and a stylus in the other.

Both have hardware buttons on the front below the screen to let you quickly access the most important applications. If you don't like the applications associated with these buttons, you can change that. In addition, there are thumb and finger buttons (rocker arms, actually) on the sides of the units to make it easier to navigate through an application once it's open. For example, once you've opened Contacts, you can use these navigation buttons to scroll through the list and click on a name to see the complete contact information.

The Casio E-10 had its navigation buttons on the upper left side of the unit. A right-handed person would probably hold the Casio in the left hand and navigate with the thumb of their left hand. The Everex Freestyle's navigation buttons were on the right side of the unit and would be operated by the fingers of the left hand. A left-handed person holding either unit in the right hand can use these buttons, but not quite as easily as a right-handed person can.

Both have an IrDA infrared port, serial port, and CompactFlash slot; both are backlit; both are powered by two AAA batteries and will come with connectivity cradles, cable and AC adapter. Both have a built-in microphone and speaker.

A quick look at the built-in software

Many of the built-in applications are similar to those on the H/PC, but some are brand new, or have new features. The first thing you see when you turn on your Palm PC is the owner information display. There's a similar screen on the H/PC. Both tell the world who the H/PC or Palm PC belongs to. If you lose your PC Companion, this screen will help the finder find you. You can deactivate this screen, but don't.

Another screen that will pop-up is the "Active Desktop." There is no equivalent to this screen on the H/PC. From the Display Properties option in the main Setup menu this screen can be configured to display owner information, a summary of your appointments and active tasks, Inbox messages and the date. You can access this screen anytime by tapping the clock/house icon located in the very bottom right of the screen.

 The Active Desktop can display owner information as well as a summary of daily appointments, active tasks, Inbox messages, and the current date.

When you're ready to access an application, you can press the appropriate hardware buttons on the front of the Palm PC, or tap on the Start button icon and select the application from the pop-up menu.

Applications can be started by pressing the Start button
icon and selecting them from the pop-up list.

Here's a quick look at some of the applications on the Palm PC.

Calendar

The orientation of the display is changed from horizontal to vertical, but otherwise the application looks very similar to Calendar on the H/PC. The Daily view of Calendar on the Palm PC does not have enough room to display the little month page you see on the H/PC.

Calendar's Daily view looks similar to the H/PC, but without the month calendar.

But you can tap icons at the top for weekly and monthly views of your calendar. You can also pop up a 12-month calendar and "Agenda" view of the day's appointments and active tasks (see Screens below). 

Calendar's Weekly view shows time slots with appointments blocked out in black.  You can change the display to show half-hour time slots and 7 day weeks.

Calendar's unique Monthly view shows two 12-hour clock faces for each day in the month.  Little black slices on the clock faces of a particular day indicate appointments.

Calendar's Agenda view displays a split-screen view of the day's appointments and active tasks.

Handwriting recognition and "soft keyboard"

There are two ways to enter data on the Palm PC. One is through a "soft keyboard" displayed on the bottom third of the display (See Screen below). This is a picture of a QWERTY keyboard. You tap on the desired key to enter the character. The other way to enter data is by using the built-in handwriting recognition capability. On the two versions I tested, this was provided by a version of CIC's  Jot character recognition program, built into the Palm PC ROM. When this feature is selected, a pen-entry area is displayed on the bottom third of the display.

Calendar's new appointment screen, with the "soft keyboard" displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Calendar's new appointment screen with the Jot handwriting recognition screen at the bottom of the display.

I used both methods to enter an appointment, worded "Check email for article." The soft keyboard is faster at first, but I believe that is because I was inexperienced with the character recognition mode. For example, until I got the hang of it, every time I'd write an "f' it would come out a "t" or "g." CIC has thoughtfully provided a help feature that shows you the different ways you can draw a character.

You can access Jot's help screen and have it show you how to draw a character or symbol.

You'll be able to easily figure out most of the letters and numbers. I found the punctuation marks a little more difficult. Entering data using Jot gets easier and faster as you gain experience. If you prefer to train the Palm PC to recognize your way of writing, you might try smART Writer from Advanced Recognition Technologies (www.artcomp.com). A version of smART Writer is available for the Palm PC and may come bundled on CD-ROM with some models. (See separate review of Jot, smART Writer and CalliGrapher; three handwriting recognition programs for the H/PC. )

One thing that speeds things up tremendously is the Word Completion feature built into the Palm PC (from a company named Tegic). As you enter characters (via Jot or the soft keyboard) the Palm PC tries to figure out what you're entering and pops up a list of possible words. If the word you're entering is in the list, all you have to do is tap on the word and the Palm PC completes it for you. This is a simple little feature that is worth its weight in gold! It speeds up text entry considerably and I would like to see Microsoft incorporate it into their H/PCs as well.

Like in the H/PC, you can attach notes to your appointments. Unlike the H/PC, these notes can include handwritten comments or diagrams.

Contacts

The main Contacts screen is similar on both the Palm PC and the H/PC. However, there is a nice improvement on the Palm PC. Highlight one of the names in the list and a summary of the information (name, company name, work phone and fax) appears at the top of the display. This makes it quicker and easier to find phone numbers, and is another feature that would enhance the H/PC.

Highlight any item in the main Contacts list and a summary of the contact information appears at the top of the display.

I discovered something using Contacts that is a general principle for the Palm PC. Don't use the Palm PC to enter a lot of data. Entering a few words for an appointment or note is no big deal, but I tried entering complete contact information for an individual and found it tedious. Based on my present skill level, I think I'd just take someone's business card, enter that contact information in Outlook on my desktop PC and synchronize with my Palm PC. Of course, if the other person has a Palm PC, H/PC, or Auto PC, you can simply "squirt" contact information back and forth using the infrared ports.

Note Taker

There's nothing quite like this one on the H/PC. It's a little memo pad that lets you jot down quick notes, make simple drawings, and store them as separate notes. This is one of the features I've wanted for years ­ to be able to draw a map to someone's house, or sketch out a floor plan. Note Taker lets you enter text as handwriting (i.e., "ink") or in character mode using Jot or the soft keyboard. You can delete or move individual words, sentences, or drawings, and sort your notes in different folders.

Note Taker's main screen lists the title of each note you've created.

Note Taker lets you enter text using the built-in Jot or soft keyboard options. You can also enter notes as handwritten "ink."

Note Taker is handy for sketching simple diagrams and maps.

Tasks

The items on the task screens have been moved around to fit the vertical orientation. One nice improvement is that a drop-down menu has been added to the task description field with one-word descriptions of common tasks (Complete, Buy, Plan, Call, etc.). Let's say you need to buy three-tab folders for a tradeshow. Open a new task and tap on the pull-down list arrow in the Description field. Tap on "Buy" and then type in "folders for tradeshow." This helps further organize your tasks list because the list is alphabetized by the task name. All tasks beginning with "Buy" appear together in the main task list ­ handy when you go out shopping. You can attach text or ink notes to your tasks, to help clarify them. The screen below shows a hand-drawn picture of the three-tab folder you needed to buy for the tradeshow.

You can attach text and ink notes to your tasks to give additional information about the task.

Voice Record

All Palm PCs come with voice record capability. The quality of the recording depends as much upon the hardware as software. This review is based on prerelease "beta" versions of Palm PCs from Casio and Everex. Only the Casio beta unit had the Voice Recorder enabled, but the Voice Record application is a Windows CE application ­ the same on all Palm PCs (see Screen below). It was very easy to use, but a little hard to hear when I played it back, until I realized that the Palm PC's speaker was on the back of the unit. When I turned it over, I could hear the playback. You can tap on the volume controls icon in the top taskbar to access a sliding lever to adjust the volume.

The voice messages you record are listed on Voice Recorder's main screen, which displays the date, time and duration of the message in seconds.  The counter on the bottom right of the screen tells you how many seconds of recording time you have left, based on free memory available.

Settings

Tap on "Settings" from the main Start menu and you get a list of applications that let you configure your Palm PC. The Settings option is much like the Control Panel on the H/PC, with a few new features., including:

Button Properties -- lets you change the programs associated with the hardware buttons on the Palm PC. The manufacturer of the Palm PC will set defaults. For example, the Everex beta unit had Tasks, Contacts, Note Taker and Calendar set as defaults. Casio had Voice Recorder, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks. Whatever the manufacturer sets, you can customize the buttons to launch what you need.

Input Panel ­ lets you modify the input method and the way the built-in Word Completion feature works. I opened this one and tapped on the Options button to go to Jot Options. There were option buttons to select whether you were a left-handed or right-handed writer. I'm right handed and the left-handed button was checked. I doubt this is the default setting. More likely, the person who tested the Palm PC before me was left handed. I selected the Right-handed option and went back to Note Taker to play around with handwriting recognition again. I had better results this time.

This same panel lets you customize the Word Completion feature. You can set it to favor longer words, more common words, learned words, or a balance of the three. You set the Word Completion feature to display a list of up to four words as possible completions. When I first tested the feature it was set to display one word in the list, and it was frequently the wrong word. I set it to four and the correct word appeared in the pop-up list more often.

Radio is the only other option in Settings that doesn't appear in the H/PC's Control Panel. It's used to set up the Palm PC to use a wireless radio to receive pages and incoming messages. I didn't have a wireless receiver so I couldn't test this feature.

Synchronizing the Palm PC with your desktop PC

The Palm PC can synchronize with any PC running Windows 95. You need to install Windows CE Services on the PC and connect the Palm PC to the PC via the synchronization cable that comes with the Palm PC. Some Palm PCs will come with the cable only. Others will have a cable and synchronization cradle (also called the "data cradle") as standard or optional equipment. The Casio beta unit I tested came with a cradle. I already had Windows CE Services installed on my desktop. I connected the cradle to my desktop PC via the synchronization cable, inserted the Palm PC in the cradle and nothing happened. I started to panic, and then remembered to check the physical connection. Sure enough, I didn't have the Palm PC seated in the cradle properly. I pulled it out, slipped it back in and pushed it firmly down into the cradle, and got a message on the Palm PCs screen indicating that it was connecting to the desktop PC.

Synchronization proceeded automatically. My Contacts list and Calendar from Outlook on my desktop PC were transferred to the Palm PC ­ but not my email messages! Fortunately, I'm reviewing a book titled "Windows CE 2 for Dummies" (Publisher: IDG Books; see future issue). I looked in the index and notice a reference for "Synchronization options." Page 246 told me to go to the Mobile Devices screen in Windows CE Services, and select ActiveSync Options from the Tools menu. Sure enough, I didn't have the Message option selected on the Tools menu. I selected it, pressed OK and my email messages downloaded from my desktop PC to the Palm PC. I opened my Inbox and it was full of new email messages.

Only time for a quick look!

I only had three days to look at the E-10 and Freestyle. I didn't have time to live with them for two to three weeks. When you live with something (or someone) for a while, you start to discover not only the dirt under the rug, but the gold under the mattress. I only had time for quick impressions.

One thing I didn't have time to test was the Channel Browser. You set your desktop PC up to get Internet content and it automatically downloads it to your Palm PC when you synchronize. This is going to be a very popular feature of the Palm PC, and I look forward to playing with it when I get a production Palm PC to test. Also, I didn't get to test any hardware or software from independent vendors. I look forward to this in the future.

Again, I want to thank (in alphabetical order) Daryl Scott at Casio and Michael Hu at Everex. Both men bent over backwards to get me a unit to test. Based on what I looked at and what I was told about the final production units, I honestly don't know which one I'd choose (diplomatic, but true).

I'd like to end the review with three bits of Palm PC advice.

First, the Palm PC is smaller and a lot lighter than the H/PC. You won't notice it's there, and you're less likely to notice it's gone! Be consistent about where you keep it. It should be in your pocket, or in the data cradle. And back it up regularly in case you do lose it.

Second, in a pinch, you can use your fingernail to tap on the screen, and write notes. But you leave fingerprints all over the place! (I cleaned the screen three times.) Always put your stylus back ­ then you'll have it when you need it (more on this on page 52).

Finally, don't quit! Literally, DON'T QUIT! Leave the application running and start something else. By all means, press the power OFF button to conserve energy, but forget about quitting. It's good advice for life as well with the Palm PC. *