Software

One of the great things about PDA’s is the ability to carry a huge library of books in electronic form. I must have a couple hundred books on mine, ranging from reference to how-to to light fiction. It is sweet to be able to carry 20-30 pounds worth of paper in a few ounces of electronics!

Many Palm users use this ability to carry one or more versions of the Bible with them- makes those cute, little, nearly impossible to read ‘pocket-sized’ Bibles obsolete! There are many options for ‘e-Bibles’, from iPod versions to MP3 spoken versions to e-texts that can be read by most text readers, to dedicated readers with special tools for the job. These last versions are what we will look at here.

A while back, I posted an article about my beloved Palm T/X and how it was doing after a couple years of use. (See the article here.) One major finding was the loss of calibration that was driving me crazy- I had to literally tap the very bottom edge of the screen to access the lower row of buttons.

Being an overweight diabetic is a pain in a lot of ways, but one of the biggest is the ongoing job of trying to lose weight- which always seems to find its way home. I welcome any tool in the fight, and CalorieKing’s Handheld Diet Diary was brought to my attention as a possible ally.

One of my favorite MS-DOS applications was a program called InfoSelect. InfoSelect gave me a functionally endless stack of small note cards and a great search tool. Make a note, any kind- contacts information, scheduling details, grocery list, books to find, phone messages, etc.- and InfoSelect would store it for you, and find it in a heartbeat. To sweeten the pot, you could create reusable forms, color-code things, and much more. It was sweet.

Many of the new Palm software titles over the last couple of years have been targeted for the medical field. You would almost think that every doctor, nurse, technician, and other health-care provider is issued a free Palm upon graduation (which might be a way to boost the sagging visibility of my favorite electronic device!) OK, I was a certified EMT in my state back some 20 years ago and actively teach various first-aid and CPR courses. Why not take some of these texts for a test drive?

During the heyday of the Palm OS PDA, we used to talk about ‘laptop killers’- how to turn your Visor, Clie or Palm into a complete laptop-like device. The keystone issue- the ‘make it or break it’ crux of the problem- was live note-taking in a class or meeting.

In my house, I am the Master of the Five Remotes, Not Including the Universal Remote We Rarely Use or the TV Remote That We Don’t Need Because We Can Control It With the TiVo Remote Besides The Batteries In It Are Usually Dead. The massive responsibility lies heavily upon my kingly head. Just keeping track of all of the remotes is bad enough, but since I have kids, none of my remotes have battery covers. (If you have kids, you’ll understand. If you don’t, thank God your batteries are not always in danger of falling out.)