You might suppose that 3Com would have a hard time following up the PalmPilot. After all, piling on features, à la Windows CE, would threaten the very simplicity, speed, and elegance that made it a success to begin with.
Fortunately, the designers tread extremely carefully with their crown jewel. The Palm V, for example, doesn’t offer a single change in its software; only the physical design has changed. Similarly, the Palm VII is identical to the Palm III in every way—with the single addition of wireless email and Web programs.
This edition of PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide covers those new models, along with the Palm IIIe and IIIx, Handspring Visor, and so on. (Appendix D, even guides you through writing your own Web search programs for the Palm VII.) For Macintosh fans, 1999’s big news was the long-awaited release of Palm Desktop for Macintosh, described in Chapter 9.
Recognizing the emergence of data collection as a leading PalmPilot use, you’ll find a new chapter on using PalmPilot spreadsheets and databases. The new Appendix E, covers the PalmPilot’s connectivity with Unix and Linux, for the benefit of a growing group of passionate fans.
Finally, every chapter of this new edition offers new tricks, updates, shortcuts, and behind-the-scenes glimpses.
The only chapter you won’t find in this book is the one on writing software for the PalmPilot. Because O’Reilly’s full-length treatment of this topic, Palm Programming: The Developer’s Guide, is now available, this book’s programming chapter has been retired.
This book’s CD-ROM has also been significantly enhanced with this new edition. This book has a new software partner—PalmCentral.com, the largest Internet site for Palm programs. The CD-ROM now features over 3,100 programs, including over 500 electronic books, hand-picked from the PalmCentral collection. It’s all organized in a searchable, sortable, categorized database (the PalmCentral CD Catalog) that lets you read about, look at a picture of, and even install each of the programs onto your palmtop. (The database runs on Windows 9x, NT, and Macintosh; a text listing shows Linux and Unix users where the software is filed.) As a bonus, the PalmCentral CD Catalog even has live links to the Web pages of the software authors, plus a Show Me button that instantly opens each program’s folder on the CD-ROM.
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