Sometimes, taking a look at the past can be a great experience. Here are a few images of classic handhelds:
The Palm V
The Palm V is a classic handheld. Its sleek shape and metal housing have insipred generations of industry designers, and the machine’s price and its accompanying advertising campaign(featuring naked women) caused loads of controversy. The power button and the digitizer broke down regularily, but the machine still introduced a few legendary features like the electronically adjustable contrast. In fact, a Palm V can even be upgraded to OS4 to run Tamoggemon BinaryClock as a desk clock…
The Palm IIIc
The Palm IIIc basically was a rehash of the III chassis(in black) with a color screen and a rechargeable battery. The machine was ridiculed for the bigger size, but the battery stamina was incredible:
The color screen was a topic of discussion. It was a TFT, slowed the procesor down and had just 8bit color resolution. Thus, it was difficult to use outdoors and was bad at displaying photos. However, the indoor contrast was incredible, one of the best screns I ever saw and used. By the way, the IIIc could also be updated to OS4:
The Palm Vii
The Palm Vii…was nothing short than a legendary machine. Basically yet another rehash of the trusty III chassis, a model was created with transparent housing for distribution at the DevCon:
The big innovation was the radiotransmitter, it was powered by an internal NiMH battery. A flatrate was offered for the data only service very soon, something that still didnt make it to Europe:
The style of the Vii is unparalelled, too bad that Palm killed off the .net service…
Miscellaneous stuff
The classical Palm Portable keyboard(a prototype) acompanied he Vii. The keyboard was great, much better than the average notebook keyboard. Nobody knows why Palm discontinued it…
These badges were distributed at the DevCons in the USA…
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The Palm Portable Keyboard was OEMed from ThinkOutside; they licened it to other manufacturers to produce versions for different connectors. I’ve got a Targus model that connects to the Visor.
ThinkOutside still produces keyboards using their slider mechanism, but in a redesign, they got rid of the number row. All of the “Stowaway” keyboards are their design. The current IR keyboard Palm ships is by Acer, IIRC, but I prefer the ThinkOutside version..
Like many of other Palm users, I agree the PPK should be the best Palm Keyboard out there, think the hand feeling is the best in Palm Keyboard.
Like Ben, I also own a version of Targus for the Sony CLIE S series.
Just a bit of interest, I have seen some “copy” version of the PPK in USB form for PC in HK market, asking for about 15USD. (should have brought one!…)
Hi ppl,
thank you for the insightful comments!
Does anyone of you know where Belkins keyboards arer from?
Best regards
Tam Hanna
[...] Tam Hanna presents Classic PalmOS handhelds posted at TamsPalm-the Palm OS Blog, saying, “A few really classic Palm OS handhelds that we used to love in the past…it can’t get more old-school than this!” [...]
Very interesting pictures. I particularly like the reminder of the keyboard. A QWERTY keyboard is a much missed accessory for me. As I’m used to using one on a computer, a prefer my handheld to have one too - maybe that’s why I’m still using a long-in-the-tooth Psion Revo Plus at the moment - I love the look of it and enjoy using the keyboard.
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