END OF AN AFFAIR

Dick Pountain/09 November 2000 14:36/Idealog 76

A beautiful affair just came to an end for me, in the bare, white-tiled bedroom of a one-star hotel in Florence. A promising opening for a crime novel perhaps? Happily though, the other party was not my human companion but a little chunk of metal and plastic called a Palm V. My affair with Palm PDAs began more than four years ago, when I found myself being given a sneak preview of the original Pilot at the 1996 CeBit show in Hannover. Within seconds of handling it I knew that the designers of this machine had 'got it' in a way that no-one else up till then had done. It was of a sensible size, unlike the Newton; it had hand-writing recognition that was just good enough, which permitted a low power consumption CPU; there was one-stroke keyboard help for when recognition failed; but best of all, it took the problem of synchronisation with a desktop PC seriously, devoting much software skill to reducing this to a one-press operation.

Several years of using a Pilot 5000, later upgraded to a Palm III, only convinced me more that here at last was a useful pocket computer, and I carried mine everywhere. I even came to appreciate its spartan but utterly obvious user interface (and watched with irritation as the gadget-freaks moaned about wanting this feature and that feature and supinely played along with Microsoft's bloat strategy). Best of all, almost anywhere in the world, if my Pilot gave me a low-battery warning I could go to the chemist, or newsagent or the toddy shop, and buy it a couple of AAA batteries.

The rot set in with the launch of the Palm V. I determined at once that I didn't want one, and tried hard to be contemptuous of its blatant pandering to cosmetic effect at the expense of utility. That is until someone gave me one for a Christmas present, whereupon I was instantly seduced by its marvellous slimness - this one really could live in a shirt pocket without any sag - and its greatly enhanced screen quality. After using the V for even a couple of days it was just impossible to go back to the dim screen of the III. The problem was that damned rechargeable battery. I soon discovered that it lasted barely three days when separated from its cradle, which was OK at home where you can keep it in the cradle, but a nuisance when travelling as it meant packing the cradle in your luggage. And the Palm V cradle is a particularly bulky and unpleasant lump that viciously scratches any other object it comes in contact with in your suitcase. The solution to that one would seem to be the Travel Kit, which contains two bare cables, one for recharging and one for hotsynching. Having gagged for several minutes over its outrageous £50 price for two bits of cable, I took one home with me the day before a trip to Italy.

The first time I tried to use the Travel Kit recharging cable I dimly began to realise that Palm was finally losing the plot. The design of the connector is extraordinarily Heath-Robinson, pressing a bunch of puny pins against the edge-connector by little more than willpower. So I was not too surprised, and only mildly alarmed, when the two flimsy plastic prongs that secure the connector snapped off in that Florence hotel room, just as I was trying to get out of the door to a waiting taxi. It only hit me a few minutes later: the PIN number for my VISA card, upon which I was entirely reliant to draw cash while in Italy, was inside the Palm, protected by a password. I tried to turn it on, to be presented with nothing: no activity whichever button I pressed, which is my V's charming way of telling me that its battery is flat (in stark contrast to the civilised warning the old Pilots used to give). I knew though from previous experience that performing a soft-reset often clears this lockup condition and gives a few seconds of life. I did this and frantically attempted to access the private address-book record that holds my PIN information. I just missed it. Sweating profusely I played a sort of arcade game involving stabbing the stylus pin into the reset hole and then frantically trying to enter the password before it went blank again. Eventually I extracted the PIN number and a couple of vital phone numbers of friends in Italy, before the wretched machine went dead forever. And I mean forever, because I will not be taking the Palm V abroad ever again. The affair is over and all trust has evaporated.

The rational thing to do now would be to go out and buy one of the Palm models that still uses AAA batteries,  but brand loyalty is not a rational matter. I feel as hurt, betrayed and let down as a jilted lover. When Palm dumped function in favour of form with the Palm V, my brand loyalty began to loosen a little, but that shoddy, overpriced Travel Kit suddenly and dramatically stretched it past breaking point. For me a Personal Digital Assistant who goes to sleep on the job, even once, is no assistant at all. Suddenly I find myself ogling leather-bound pocket diaries with an interest I thought had gone for ever...