Palm™

What’s Palm ™ ?

It’s a huge pda-based company consisting of: PalmSource, Inc., and Palm, Inc. — it has been making PDAs since its foundation in 1992. Well-known for its reasonably-priced PDAs and the ease of use.

This page contains Palm-related stuff; either hardware or software, plus telling my own experiences with Palm software and devices.

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My Palm History

• My first Palm was a Tungsten E2 (my current Palm) — bought on Oct 30, 2005
• Sent in for repair on Feb 7, 2006
• Received by Palm Europe (Czech Rep.) on Feb 13, 2006
• Sent to me (Egypt, North Africa) on the same day
• Received a new unit on Feb 15, 2006

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Useful Articles

• MegaLauncher background similar to ‘Favorites’
• Defects in Palm OS 5
• Making Videos for the Palm Handheld
• Stuck at Palm logo, with a blinking line

View all the articles in the Palm Handhelds category…

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Software List

Multimedia Software

1. TCPMP — a video player which is very fast and easy to use. The interface is simple and intuitive. The real advantage is that it plays native compressed video files (e.g. DivX or Xvid) without the need of conversion to an uncompressed format (e.g. Mpeg) though it plays this as well. Simply and in short, this is the best video player for Palm OS so far. Freeware.
2. PocketTunes — music player; it plays MP3, WMA, and OGG. It’s fast, simple, has a graphic equalizer, and a playlist feature. It’s known to be the most famous music player for Palm OS. Shareware.
3. AcidImage — image viewer; very fast and simple. Can view the pictures as a list, 5 x 4, or single thumbnails. It’s the only image viewer I’ve managed to find that can view 20 thumbnails on one page. SplashPhoto could do 12. It can also save the thumbnails to memory, so that you wouldn’t need to wait for them to load everytime you view them. Shareware.

Text Software

1. iSilo — a text reader that reads iSilo text files. Very fast, and easy to use. One good function is saving where you last left the text you were reading. Has a full screen function, and autoscrolling. Shareware.
2. SiED — reads txt and doc files. Limited functionality. Can open 2 text files at the same time. Freeware.

Dictionaries

1. Concise Oxford dictionary with MS Dict 6 — this is the most complete English dictionary you’d find. With over 240,000 words you won’t be needing any huge 500-page book. The veiwer, MSdict 6 makes it very easy to access, with options like: previous word, next word, history, add note, filter search,…etc. By the way, the most recent version of MSdict is 7. Shareware.
2. Stedman’s Medical dictionary [28th edition] — the most complete medical dictionary so far. More than 102,000 medical terms are defined in it. I think it’s most suitable for undergraduate and recently graduated students. Won’t be enough for specialists, I think. Has almost the same features as the previous dictionary I’ve talked about. One con is that some terms are collected with a more general term (e.g. When you search for “Klinefelter syndrome”, you find it in the search list, but when you tap on it, you get the “Syndrome” page instead. You then have to scroll manually through a list of ALL syndromes to “Klinefelter syndrome”. The ‘instructions’ section says this is due to storage limitations. Shareware. — EDIT : latest version 8.0.9 has have this fixed. Direct links to specific criteria is now working!

Utilties

1. Card Export 2 — enables connecting your memory card with your PC and behaving like a normal hard disk. You can then drag-drop files onto the memory card. Shareware.
2. Filez — a simple file explorer and manager. Limited functionality. Freeware. I prefer Resco Explorer.
3. YAHM — a utility for Palm OS 5 that enables/disables 3rd party hacks, like font modification, smooth-scrolling,…etc. (separate). Freeware.
4. PXA Clocker — a clocking utility if you look forward to overclocking/underclocking your applications. Not recommended to overclock the whole system default though. Shareware.
5. Resco Explorer — a very versatile file explorer and manager. You could change the whole interface the way you like. Recommended. Shareware.
6. MegaLauncher — a launcher that I prefer to all other similar applications (even including the most popular, Zlauncher). It’s not that complicated to turn you off nor is it too simple. It has everything you need. The original theme that comes with it is way more good-looking than that of Zlauncher. Recommended. Shareware.

Games & Fun

1. Bejeweled! 2 — popular puzzle game. Very addicting. Shareware.
2. Falling — a very simple yet addictive game. Freeware.
3. GTS Racing — the best racing game of its genre. Shareware.
4. Juggler — a very neat game. Freeware.
5. Astraware Sudoku — the best Sudoku game. Shareware.