Palm vs. Handspring

I’ve long been a fan of Handspring’s Visor line of personal organizers. I’ve recommended them to friends, and have been indirectly responsible for the sale of at least a half dozen of the little units.

But lately, they’ve started to frustate me. I use Mac OS X at home, and find it immeasurably superior to the old versions of the Mac OS. Handspring, however, has steadfastly refused to support it, even though Palm finished the desktop software months ago. I finally was frustrated enough that I sent them an email expressing my dismay that they weren’t supporting OS X, to which they responded “We value your input. Thanks for emailing!” (I paraphrase, of course.) So, compounding their lack of support with bad customer service, I made the decision to go back to Palm, which has been doing a good job of supporting my OS of choice.

So, last week I picked up an m130. I installed the OS X desktop software, and have been absolutely delighted with the combination. (Well, at least after I did a hard reset. The memory was a bit corrupted when I got the unit.) The new desktop software works better than the old version ever did, and the addition of color and more memory is a welcome one. CompUSA included a 64MB expansion card as well, which I’m still trying to figure out how to fill.