I’m a Palm Vx user, have been a Palm user for some time now, and while I fret the decision on whether or not to upgrade to the new M505 (the fact that they changed the connector AGAIN is making me fret, not the price – all my accessories will become useless), I have to say, there are two killer apps for the Palm – my folding keyboard and the program WordSmith.
After I bought my folding keyboard for the Palm (a must have – seriously), I tried just about every word processing program that could be found over at PalmGear, the one stop shop for every Palm program made. From Documents To Go to QuickWord, they were all kind of sucky – the big problem with all these apps was lag. I’m a fairly fast typist, but even if you only type 20 wpm, you’ll soon be lagging a full screen or more behind because these programs are so s.. l.. o.. w.. to update the screen content.
Then I found WordSmith. This is a true “killer app” for the Palm. Not only will it keep up with my own typing speed (on a good day, as much as 80 or 90wpm), but it doubles as a MemoPad on steroids (breaking the Palm’s anemic 4kb limit for memos), and is a good book reader to boot. These days, I tend to go to meetings with the Palm and keyboard instead of my formerly ultralight ThinkPad notebook (hey, I’ll take the Palm’s 4 oz weight and the keyboard’s 8 oz weight over the 4lbs of my ThinkPad :-)), and bottom line is, it does the job. It also keeps me visible to the client, instead of stuck behind a computer screen.
And I have to admit…. it looks pretty damned cool too.
There are other great apps for the Palm of course, including the awesome web clipping service Avant Go and the DateBk 4 program that replaces the Palm’s built in scheduler and address book, but if I had to only have one killer app, it would be WordSmith… and the folding keyboard. Check them out if you’re a Palm user.
