Next in our Throwback Technology series: the Palm Pilot! Same ground rules apply: I'll share some older "technologies" that I've gathered from the library and from my personal items. I will use a broad definition of technology to include anything people invent to help them accomplish a task or purpose. And, I invite you to share your questions and/or memories about these items.
This is a great technology to follow the Rolodex. The Palm Pilot took the Rolodex mission, easy access to your contacts, and digitized them into something you could carry in the palm of your hand (as it were). But that's not all! The early Palm Pilots could also do so much more: it could store your calendar, keep a to-do list, take notes, use a calculator, and read emails (which you downloaded through your computer). You could easily make updates to any of these while on the go, using the touchscreen and a stylus to tap options and to even write on the screen. It was a type of personal digital assistant (PDA) that you might carry alongside your flip phone that did not yet have any of those capabilities.
The Palm shown in the picture above is a Palm IIIC, which came out in 2000, along with a foldable keyboard (which is pretty close to a full size keyboard like you would find on a desktop computer. The Palm would plug into the slot above the 5, 6, and 7 keys on the keyboard so that you could easily enter text into the Palm. The Palm IIIC is notable because it was the first color Palm Pilot, with 8MB of RAM. It was like a heavy, bulky cell phone, but it actually had no phone or online connection (though later models morphed into smartphones). Any document you wanted to add to the Pam had to travel through a serial cable from your computer. That was how you would update emails, or keep your calendar, memos, and contacts backed up online.
I started using the Palm IIIC in the latter part of 2000, and kept at it until about 2004, when I switched to a Sony Clie PDA. That in turn was replaced by an iPod Touch 2 in 2008 or 2009 (but I will leave some of that for a later Throwback Technology Thursday). It really gave one a sense of freedom from carrying a very heavy laptop, or being tethered to a desktop computer, and also the ability to discard notebooks and pens. It was an interesting transitional device between some cross of paper organizers and a desktop computer on the one hand, and the smartphone or ever-lighter laptop on the other. I moved to the Palm from a Franklin Day Planner, a datebook/to-do list/address book combo, and found that change very freeing.
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