P@L-mate Mini PDA

Gadgeteer Hands On Review by Julie

May 29, 2002

Product Requirements:
Device:
Win95, 98, NT, 2000, XP

This is a review of a mini PDA that is more of a novelty item than a real productivity tool. The P@L-mate is a touch screen PDA (I use that term loosely) that looks like an itty bitty Palm m100.

Made of plastic, the P@L-mate is available in red, blue and grey.

On the front of the device are 4 application buttons and separate up/down scroll buttons which are made of soft rubber and have a dimple in the middle which makes them easy to press with a stylus.

Speaking of styli, being a touch screen device, the P@L-mate has a stylus silo and comes with 2 spares. Be warned, the styli are VERY tiny, thin and hard to use if you have big hands.

The mono display on the P@L-mate is small and similar to that of the Palm m100. The display is separated into three sections. The top section has 28 x 14 large pixels, the middle section has smaller pixels and the bottom area is a silk screened touch input panel. Sorry, no graffiti here folks ;o) Using the small stylus, you can tap letters and numbers to enter phone book entries. It works pretty well all things considered.

Pressing any button will turn the P@L-mate on. It will turn itself off after 2mins of inactivity. Or, you can press the Time button several times.

Powered by two AG13 coin cell batteries, this little guy comes with a mind blowing 3KB of user memory that can store over 100 names, numbers and e-mail addresses.

Built-in applications include:

Phone book
Clock and alarm
Schedule reminder
Calculator
Fortune Teller
Slots game
Car racing game

The Phone Book app is VERY limited. It lists all the entries in one long list that you must scroll thru to find the entry you need. Luckily, you can tap a letter key on the input pad to jump to the first entry that starts with that letter.

The fields that you can enter for each phone book listing are:

Name: 12 character limit
Phone Number: 12 character limit
E-mail Address: 36 character limit

When an entry is displayed, the Name with the phone number under it will be listed. Only the first 7 characters of the phone number are displayed... So, the best way to enter them is without a '-'. Otherwise the last number in a 7 digit local number will be cut off.

Tapping the screen with the stylus or pressing the up/down scroll button will then scroll the corresponding email address underneath the name. Crude, but it works...

The clock / alarm application is just a simple digital time and date display with 1 alarm time that you can set. A song will play when the alarm goes off. I have no idea what the song is, but it reminds of me of something from the movie Titanic... The volume is loud and the song is annoying. It will continue to play until you press one of the buttons on the PDA.

The Schedule reminder application allows you to set date / time alarms with an attached memo of up to 65 characters. The memo will scroll and a melody will play when the reminder time is reached. After the reminder has passed, you have to go in and manually delete the entry.

The Calculator application is a simple easy to use program that  includes a % key and 1 memory.

The P@L-mate also has 3 games included. Hey, it's not a PDA if it doesn't have some games! A simple fortune teller / biorhythm app that uses your birthdate to tell you your current health, luck, and love life points, a simple slots game with animation and a little race car game. The games are pretty crude and would probably only appeal to kids. I liked the slots game the best.

Amazingly, you are actually supposed to be able to 'sync' the P@L-mate to your PC using two LEDs on the back of the PDA. They can read flashes of light from a monitor or NUM Lock LED on a keyboard. Unfortunately, I tried this several times but was never successful.

If you have a friend that also owns a P@L-mate, you can beam a Phone Book entry, a reminder, an animation and compare compatibility with the other person's fortune telling settings. I wasn't able to test any of these functions due to the fact that I didn't have a 2nd unit.

Basically the P@L-mate is a toy PDA mainly suited for teens. It is too limited for real use. Also, at $33, I think it's a little too expensive for what it can actually do. I don't think I'd spend more than $5-10 on one...

 

Price: $33

Pros:
Very small
Supposedly syncs with a PC

Cons:
Expensive for what it does
Very limited