Dick Pountain/14 December 1996/Idealog 29
Until quite recently I've never had any problem with remembering things. At school I had something that approached photographic recall - when truly stuck in an examination I would try to visualise the page in the textbook that contained the answer, with a fair degree of success. Far more importantly, I've always been able to retain ideas that occurred to me out of the blue, and recall them for use sometime later; handy for someone who writes for a living. I never kept a diary or notebook or anything of that sort. Of course I used reporter's pads to record the facts from interviews and press conferences, but that's a different problem altogether - the point is that I could store internally generated information without recourse to external aids.
It is that ability that has started to desert me, and oddly enough it was taking on this PC Pro column that first revealed the loss. I need to come up with a new column idea every month, and it is extremely frustrating to have a good one and then realise two days later that I've forgotten it. You will probably be thinking, "well write them down then you prat!", and you will be right, but it's easier said than done. Ideas occur to me at all times and places, even in the middle of the night, so I need a medium that is always with me and is extremely easy to use. And as my esteemed colleague Derek C recently pointed out in his column, currently the only medium that adequately fills that bill is pen on paper.
And not just any old pen on paper. A big red book sitting on my desk is no use if I'm 80 miles from my desk; a notebook in the inside pocket of my jacket is no use if I'm in bed; even a notebook surgically stapled into my armpit is no use unless it contains its own pen. The crucial parameter in an idea-jotting application is access time - if it takes more than AT MOST five seconds to assemble a functioning writing system, then you will not bother and that idea has evaporated. Having to leave the room, or even get out of your chair, to search for writing materials is wholly unacceptable. Furthermore there must only ever be one such notebook, so that all the ideas are in the same place. Having different books dotted around the house and the country is not a solution, because I know that I'll never transcribe material from one book to another (I already have a draw full of years worth of reporter's pads, some containing valuable information that I will never find again.)
So I set out to buy a tiny, unlined notebook with a durable binding and a pen stuck down its spine, which could live in the back pocket of my jeans at all times. After weeks searching every stationer and art supplies shop, all the way up to Liberty and Harrods, I glumly had to settle for a small 1996 diary (with lines and day markings that I don't want) and a pencil rather than a ballpen. I've been using this system for successfully for a year now, but it's looking a bit battered. The binding is broken from sitting on it, and worse, many of the notes in it have become badly smudged by the friction of page against page as it flexes. I briefly considered having a special pocket sewed to the leg of my jeans, but then people might think I'm some sort of survivalist weirdo.
All this is by way of a build-up to what may be the solution to my problem, namely the US Robotics Pilot palmtop. I stress that 'may' because I've not been using it nearly long enough yet to be certain it will last the course, but first impressions are very encouraging. This is a pretty exciting state of affairs, the first time any electronic medium has come close enough to toppling pen and paper as a jotting medium to even make this discussion worthwhile. I've been using Psion's lovely little 3a for years as an address book, taking it whenever I travel abroad with 600 or more addresses stored safely on a Flash cartridge. But despite its superb operating system (far in advance of Windows) the 3a is not a jotter for several reasons: its keyboard is just not fast enough for jotting; it's just slightly too big to live in my jacket pocket (I keep it in my shoulder-bag); its clam-shell design is too awkward when standing or in a real hurry; but most damaging, I find the PsiWin file-transfer software so tedious that I only ever update my Flash addresses about twice a year. Apple's Newton I will pass over in semi-silence; too big, too expensive, poor handwrjtink rekognixiom, its launch hype almost killed off whole PDA market for good.
The Pilot scores on all these points. It's small enough to go in my shirt pocket (I don't intend to try sitting on it); it works just like a notepad, as easily standing as sitting; the Graffiti handwriting recognition works very well if you're prepared to practice a bit, which I am; and the applications are 'no-brain' simple to use. But the killer feature (Psion be warned) is the Hot Synch cradle which makes reconciling addresses, appointments and memos with a PC an effortless, one button operation. I can squirt my accumulated jottings into my PC whenever I feel like it, then periodically stuff them into an Idealist database where I can actually find them again. Oh, and the Pilot holds all those addresses too.
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You can now read all the back issues of the Idealog column on my web site at http://members.aol.com/dickp96/
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