Last month Larry Anders described the HP Jornada 548 Pocket PC—cost $600 (http://www.tpcug.org/newsletter/nl_2000/june2000/pocket_pc.htm). In June, 1998, he also wrote about the Palm III (http://www.tpcug.org/newsletter/june1998/palm_3.html). This month I will describe the HandspringVisor—cost $179 ($249 for the Visor Deluxe).

The Pocket PC and the Visor are obviously different, the first being a miniature PC with a 133 MHz processor, with 32 MB RAM and a color display. The latter is a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with 2 MB RAM and a gray scale display. However, if you think you might need more RAM to load some heavy-duty software, the Handspring Visor Deluxe comes with 8 MB RAM and a leather case. If you are not going to use it to connect to the Internet, edit Word documents, listen to digital music, or need a color display, then you don’t really need the Jornada, and might just as well get either a Palm or the Visor.

This Visor was developed by the original developers of the Palm at 3COM, and it uses the Palm operating system, version 3.1. Furthermore, all of the software add-ons that work with the Palm can be used with the Visor. The most comparable Palm appears to be the Palm IIIxe. To see a side-by-side comparison of this Palm and the Visor Deluxe, go to http://www.handspring.com/products/vcomparison.asp.

Why get a Visor instead of a Palm? At first, price was a good reason, but Palm has now introduced the Palm IIIxe for $249, and it compares very closely to the Visor Deluxe at the same price. The Visor claims to have enhanced versions of the core applications—date book, address book, memo pad, etc.— used by the Palm, so I suppose this is a plus for the Visor, but the main plus, I think, is the Springboard expansion slot on the Visor that accommodates such plug and play peripherals as extra memory modules, modems, and GPS receivers in a more compact way than does the Palm with its peripherals. Additionally, the Visor comes with a USB connector to sync it with the software on your computer. This is an extra with the Palm. A USB connection is a much faster way to synchronize your PDA with your computer than is a serial connection.

I never thought I really needed such a thing as the Visor until one was given to me by my son for Father‘s Day. Then I found all sorts of uses. The obvious is to import my address book into it from my computer. If you are using Microsoft Outlook, you can import directly. If not, as was the case for me, you first need to export your address data to a comma delimited file and then import that into the Palm Desktop that you have installed on your computer. Once you have your address in the Address Book in the Palm Desktop, you get them into the Visor by Hot Syncing. To do this you simply connect the Visor’s cradle to the USB connection on your computer, put the Visor in the cradle, then press the button on the cradle.

Similarly, you can fill in appointments in the Palm Desktop’s date book , then when you sync with the Visor, this information is added to the Visor’s date book. If you add an appointment to the Visor’s address book, when you sync, that appointment is added to the computer’s date book.

One of my uses of the memo pad is to create shopping lists that I used to keep on paper. For example, I have a Home Depot list where I enter items to get the next time I go there. I could do the same for a grocery list, but I have a much better way of doing that. I am sure you have seen me mention my grocery shopping list compiler before at http://www.lamartin.com. To create my shopping list for my neighborhood Publix, I go to the site, select the items I want and have the web site put the list in walking order of that store. I then have my ordered list on the computer’s screen. In the past, BV, i.e., before Visor, I would have then printed the list and taken it with me to the store. Now I save one sheet of paper by selecting the list and copying it to the clipboard and then pasting it into a new memo in the Palm Desktop and then Hot Syncing with the Visor. I now have my ordered shopping list in the Visor, which I take to the store.

Once you start using the Visor, or the Palm, you soon want to download those extra programs, some shareware, some commercial. I download a free reader called CSpotRun and then downloaded the novel Jungle by Theodore Dresser and a collocation of poems by Carl Sandburg. Now, when I have to sit in a doctor’s office or an airport terminal, I can start CSpotRun, select a document and have it scroll the text as I read.

There are two types of commercial programs, those that are free and those that are not. The free ones are free because they give you some sort of information from which they hope to get some return. This is the case with Vindigo, a program that lists many of the restaurants, shops and entertainment venues in select cities. I chose to download the database for New York City. This package takes up 563 K of memory—a very large amount compared with other Palm programs. This is why at some point you might want an extra memory module. When you run Vindigo, you first select whether you want to eat, shop or be entertained. Then you select your location as an intersection, e.g., Broadway and 61st St. To find a place to eat breakfast, you would select this category of food, and Vindigo then displays a list of restaurants in order of closeness (or by rating or by cost). For each restaurant listed it displays ratings for food, décor, service and costs. There are also reviews and even a place to enter notes that could be sent to Zagat, the provider of the reviews in the program. What I think is the neatest piece of information provided is the walking directions from your location to the restaurant. Similar free modules exist for other major cities—but not for Tampa.

The second type of commercial program, the one you pay for, is represented by two programs: The Jungle Mapping program and the Tiny Sheet spreadsheet program.

For all major cities, again excluding Tampa, you can get a Jungle Map—for about $10. They have a free demonstration using the southern tip of Manhattan. If you want to go further north than 20th ST, then you will have to pay. The map allows you to zoom in and out, and at the higher levels of magnification you get street names. Additionally you can search for an address and place markers on the map. It is quite a nice little program.

The Tiny Sheet ($20) program allows for basic spread sheet functions, including many of the functions in a usual spread sheet. But the program is limited—after all it is on a PDA—in that you can’t do some common things like sort and filter. You can also download an additional free program that runs on your computer and allows you to bring small Excel sheets into the Visor and open them with Tiny Sheet. I now have several spreadsheets useful to me stored on the Visor.

The Jungle demo is good for about 10 days, and the Tiny Sheet demo-using the full features of the program—is good for 30 days.

There are many, many programs you can add. I have only scratched the surface. Of the ones I have viewed, as with anything, some are good and some are so-so. For example, I downloaded a map of the Manhattan subway system that was not particularly easy to read since it apparently originated from a color map, and in gray scale many of the line and stop identifiers were not distinct. By the way, to view the map, I had to find a free viewer and download it. The viewer seemed to work fine on other images.