they (or at least the later palm pilot) had a surprisingly robust system for recognizing handwriting! individual characters had to be single strokes, and you needed to write each one a buncha times to calibrate initially so it has something to compare against, but i remember it being notably faster to type with than other contemporaneous tiny keyboards.

Got to put a carefully cut strip of scotch magic translucent tape over the stylus square for both protection and friction enhancing

Always practice safe graffiti

It really is too bad that commercial solutions for true privacy focused syncing and wireless backups will only get worse if they were ever good at all. I think of products like the Ring Doorbell where there's no reason the doorbell itself can't be it's own local server. The only reason to tie you to a cloud is to implement monthly fees while also harvesting your data. The idea of an open standard where multiple devices could connect to any cloud service (self hosted Next Cloud or commercial solution etc) will likely disappear with the direction we're going. It's a sad time for tech and an even more sad time for society worldwide.

Smartphones are nothing more than gentrified PDAs...

Holy crap, I have the exact same model still somewhere in the basement. It was so incredibly cool at the time. I felt like I was living in the future. Until I got my first mobile that is. Carrying two gadgets was just too much.

My t5 tungsten didnt have wifi, but there was bt and ir. and you could buy a wifi card.

They're shockingly useful today as a tool to manage ADHD, since they have a buncha organizational software baked into the OS, with plenty of other productivity apps still available for download off of PalmDB, without the connectivity nor distractions of a modern smartphone. I'm using a Sony PEG-UX50, which uses PalmOS 5, has a built in keyboard, and expandable memory (in the form of Sony Memory Sticks, cause Sony was addicted to format wars at the time.)

Laptops were offline devices that only synced with any computer when put on a phone cable.

On a single charge? The Palm Pilot used 2xAAA batteries. You could use rechargeables, I suppose, but they would have been NiCads, not Lithiums, in the 90’s. More likely you were using disposables.

The III had an IR sync as well, but you had to initiate it and it was line of sight with the IR port on your computer.

I had it working with my Rev. B iMac.

Man, I miss my Palm III. Left it in a jacket pocket too close to a wall heater. :(

I miss my Newton. :(

Those were cool! I inherited my pop's old one when he upgraded.

My palm treo 650 was the most badass phone ever

I still have my m100

Loved my Palm III. Simpler days.

I had a handspring visor and I miss it. Fold out keyboard dock that fit in one shirt pocket, and the visor in another, I was set for the day