I just bought a Palm V at J&R ComputerWorld, Park Row, New York City. I was the first person to buy one and my receipt is timestamped 17:19. When I got there they hadn't even had time to charge up one single machine for demo purposes!

I claim this was the first Palm V sold at retail within NYC. Aren't pointless idle boasts fun?

I had checked at the same shop earlier in the day and they were expecting them later. I was out and about in the city all day taking pictures and having fun so I checked in various other shops - nobody had one. Not Circuit City, P.C.Richard, Staples (two shops) nor Nobody Beats The Whiz. I even tried some of the rip-off merchant electronics shops around Times Square. Most of the assistants either didn't know it had been released or thought they might have some next week.

I zipped back to J&R and they had two behind the counter and 88 more in stock. They told me they shifted 200 Palm IIIs in two days when that model was launched. The first ad of theirs featuring the machine will come out tomorrow so I expect they will be sold out again before the weekend. When I walked in I asked the salesman, Charlie Issler, if they had them yet, he said "Yes...", so I said "I'll take one". He rolled his eyes a bit, you are supposed to play a little harder to get than that! He was very knowledgeable and helpful.

Included in the price was a free Cross digital writer pen, but it's a big giant yellow plastic pen, and the V has two stylii so I'm not sure what the point of it is.

Oh yeah, the machine? In the words of Eric Cartman, sweeeeeeet. It is quite a lot of money for what you get though - you pays your money and you makes your choice.

It's so small and light it makes my Palm Pilot Pro seem clunky by comparison, but otherwise it's fairly familiar. This model is so small and slim that not only will it fit in your jacket pocket, it wont even spoil the line of your suit (very important on Wall Street). More later perhaps when I've used it a bit more. My initial impressions tally with the ones linked here.

Update

That 3 hour initial charging time seemed like a very long time to wait!

Installing the new PC software over the old worked flawlessly. I gave the new machine the same name as the old and it faithfully copied over all the data. Don't do this unless you know what you're doing. Better ways are given in PalmPilot The Ultimate Guide - David Pogue. I find the response of the screen to the pen excellent and the software definitely runs a little bit faster _subjectively_.

Althought the manual insists you need a dedicated port plus power supply, I'm not ready to never use the Internet again, so I tried charging it with the serial connector not connected - it works, of course it works!

The backlighting is still a little weird-looking to me, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

If anyone has any questions about this product I'd be happy to answer - I'm not associated with Palm, 3COM etc, in fact I'm not even a really crazed Piloteer, but I do rely on mine totally.

All in all I give it 9/10. One mark deducted for being expensive - more than a 4 head hi-fi stereo VCR!

February 24th 1999

More random jottings :

So I'm getting a visitors pass at a company where I'm about to do an interview. They ask me if I have my contacts phone number. Out comes the Palm Pilot (that's what I still call it). The guy standing next to me looks wide-eyed :

"That's a nice Palm Pilot!"

"Yes it is, I only bought it yesterday"

"Palm seven?"

"No, Palm five, they have them at J&R right now."

"Can I, err, what does it, err"

"look, I've got an interview to get to..." (which was true)

All good fun.

The main problem I have is that since posting this page, my poor little PC has been getting hits on the webserver night and day. So far it's ok, but the thing is, my modem is the same serial port that I use to hook the cradle up, so whilst all the keen Palm users are trying to get this page I can't install all kinds of great new software in my glorious extra 1MB RAM. Quite ironic. Oh well...

The main things I noticed yesterday were about the free pen and the screen. The free Cross pen (Cross Digiwriter - free with my Palm V from J&R) is actually very nice to use. The tip is great (better than the stylii) and it's quicker to just reach over and write on the machine with it than pulling the stylus out first. As for the screen, well, it's just brilliant. I suppose my old Palm Pilot Pro had got a little old and worn and I hadn't spent much time with the Palm III, but each time I use my new machine I still get the feeling of "wow, this is _small_, this screen is _great_" etc.

I didn't charge the thing yesterday and today the battery indicator had dropped a bit. I'm wondering now how long a charge really lasts. I know I'm fine when out for the day, but would I last a two week trip to Britain? The manual is a little coy on this subject but the box says "lasts weeks on a single charge" which sounds pretty good, but I can see that the international kit they offer will become tempting at some point.

February 26th 1999

My big mistake : I left my stylus at home last night for the first time ever since I started carrying a Palm Pilot with me at all times. At first it was a horrible feeling, but I adapted to using my fingernails. They're really short but my little finger, having the smallest nail, turns out to be a reasonable stand-in substitute. I managed to look up a friends address and even to play some minehunter with it. I think, however, that Palm have missed a trick not making the leather cover double as a proper stylus. Although the "spine" of the cover fits in the left stylus slot, it's not really pointy enough (about as good as my fingernail).

I showed a friend of my mine the new model last night. He has an old HP OmniSomething organiser and so has resisted getting a Pilot. The smaller size and better looks and screen of the new Palm V won him over and he said he was very tempted. This machine charms people instantly.

By the way, I don't have any automatic processing of my server log file, but a quick look today reveals I'm on my way to 300 separate hosts requesting this page in four days. That's not bad, especially since Palm users are a cut above the crowd ;). Perhaps I should start selling ad space ... hmmm.

February 28th 1999

Pong caused a fatal error on my Palm V. It was straight off the CD that comes with PalmPilot The Ultimate Guide - David Pogue. Programs that are working include Chinese Checkers, Digi-Guppie, Frotz, PocketChess, Reversi, AportisDoc, BugMe, JFile and RPN. I've got RomanCalc on as well but I can't decide if it crashes or if it's just crap. The About menu leads to a completely blank screen which is worrying but doesn't seem to hurt. DigiPet was working but too demanding. The noises actually woke me up this morning! I deleted the program. Luckily I had not yet become too attached to my little pet.

March 5th 1999

Last night I showed off the new Palm V to a mixed group of old friends at a bar we call the "Wall Street Arm and Leg" due to how much beer costs there. Everyone loved it. The guy who persuaded me to buy my old Pro was there and I think he wont be able to resist much longer. The size and feel of the machine wins everyone over.

I was mean to another friend of mine who has one of those handheld "wince" machines. I asked him if he had it with him (of course he didn't, it's like carrying a hardback around) and when he said no I said "See?!?" like I'd proved some kind of point. Well we had been drinking already. I told my other friend to give his Pro to a friend or relative so that he could more eaily justify buying a new one. At that point the others started making bets on how long he will last.

By the way, if anyone can think of a really good way I can persuade myself to buy the normal modem, CDPD modem, or possibly even the Mitsu phone with the Bell Atlantic Internet package for the Pilot let me know, so far it's looking difficult!

I've come up with an idea for a ridiculous program to write for the Palm Pilot, so now I better learn how to actually program the beast. I'd say watch this space, but you'd only get really bored and hate me.

March 10th 1999 - Plaudits for this page

I've been getting some comments on this page : "Mad", "Sad", err ok I think you get the drift. Actually everyone else said thanks and then normally asked me about Microsoft Exchange. Not to get onto my soapbox on this non-completely-serious page, but I do not use any Microsoft products. Unless I can help you by perhaps reading my Palm V manual, you're "so" out of luck!

By the way, if you've got a friend who "needs" a Palm Pilot but just doesn't know it yet, the Pro is down to $149 on the web - see Pricewatch, or buy.com, or, well, you go look.

Unfortunately I also discovered the Palm V is down to $389 - Argh! No, I take it back, this price is even better value, tell your friends! I'd be surprised if many people have received a Palm V at this price yet, but I've been wrong before (surely?).

March 13th 1999 - Cool stuff with Linux

I got tired of the need to swap my modem for my Palm cradle every time I wanted to back up my data, so I bought a card to get an extra serial port for my PC. Actually the card I got has two serial ports and a parallel port but I turned the second serial port and the parallel port off and jumpered the first serial port to a spare IRQ and bingo, I have one more high-speed serial port. With this in place I decided to finally do the other chore I've been meaning to do and get Linux talking to the Pilot. That wasn't too hard either, and in fact this system is downloading the ROM image from my Pilot onto my hard disk as I type. Unfortunately I didn't take the trouble to set it to a decent speed so it's taking a long long time. The only problem I found was that the Makefile for the pilot-link software wanted to use libieee which is no longer present on Linux. I removed that reference and the software built and installed nicely.

This page helped me out quite a bit with this.

I now have no need to use Windows ever. That's quite nice for me, your mileage may vary!

March 15th 1999 - More cool stuff with Linux

Today I got outgoing email working from my Palm V, but not incoming. I just tell it to set the from: field to my normal email address and then replies arrive in my normal mailbox. This allows me to compose email messages in the coffee shop or bar and then they get sent out some time later. Even my Mum was impressed. It's a great reason to write extremely short emails.

Today I did another bit of advocacy. I was settling down in front of a large black coffee, the New York Times and a "cinnamon chip scone" at Starbuck's minding my own business when I got it into my head to write an email message on it so that I would be motivated to get the email hookup working later on. A chap sitting nearby saw me pull out the machine and came over and chatted. Like me he has a Palm Pilot Professional so he was keen to "have a go" on the new machine. I think he liked it. I gave him the URL for this page. If he had had the 2MB/IR upgrade for the Pro we could have just beamed business cards instead. I think that would have been one of the ultimate geek triumphs of my life, so perhaps it's just as well he didn't.

March 24th - My most popular web page ever.

mihalis:~# cat /var/lib/apache/var/log/access_log | grep palmv.html | wc -l
   1110

Please send me any comments or questions.

Created Feb 22nd 1999