Palm
The Palm device known as the Palm Pilot appeared in the mid nineties and was the first globally succesful pocket computing device. It was designed to be carried in a shirt pocket and data entered by writing with a stylus on the screen of the device. The Palm Pilot's designer, Jeff Hawkins, built the first prototype from wood and carried it round with him, using it for all the day to day activities he would expect such a device to fulfill. As a result, a Palm device is noted for being slim and light in weight with an easy to use user interface. It was also one of the first portable computing devices which came with easy to use synchronisation software and a cable for backing up the data to a PC. The Palm became the top selling handheld computing device worldwide and it still retains that position in North America.
The Palm device was initially manufactured by Palm Computing which was aquired by 3Com. The founders of Palm Computing then went on to form another company, Handspring, which licensed the software within the Palm, the Palm OS and added further innovations to the device. This included the first cellular connected model, the Handspring Treo. With the Treo, the Palm had made the step to a converged device, both a phone and a personal computing device. 3Com subsequently sold its Palm division which became palmOne and Handspring was ultimately merged back into this organisation.
The product range today consists of 3 models, the Zire a low cost entry device, the Tungsten, the high level model, and the Treo a smartphone model.
Synchronisation
The success of the Palm created an entire software industry dedicated to the needs of the Palm user. This ranged from additional utilities which extended the core personal organiser facilities of the device to complete self contained applications for a wide variety of industry sectors. From a business point of view the key element was the ability to synchronise data from the device to the users PC, and this capability was extended to allow synchronisation from a number of users to a central server. The advent of the Treo Smartphone made this synchronisation possible over the cellular network.
Limitations
As a personal organiser it is probably fair to say the Palm is best of breed. It is small, lightweight, long battery life and easy to use. These factors however combine to create some limitations when the device is used as a wireless conencted device running more than one type of application. The software operating system on the Palm, Palm OS, was never designed for running multiple applications. So as applications on the device have become more sophisticated and the user requirements have grown, the Palm has struggled to maintain its original success.
Mobile Email
Using the Palm's synchronisation capabilities email can be retrieved from a user's email application on their PC and copied to the device. Similarly email can be created on the device and sent when the Palm is synchronised to the user's PC. The Palm was therefore one of the first mobile email devices in everyday use. When the synchronisation process became wireless it was possible to send and receive email over the wireless network using one of the wireless email applications. This is still one of the most popular uses for the Palm today.
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