Palm Zire 31

Monday, June 17, 2024

11:25 A.M.

image of the PDA PalmOne Zire 31

Back in the early 2000s, I remember getting one of these Palm devices. I also remember that I was frustrated with it. I could never seem to get the writing feature to work properly (though I did suspect that it was operator error). I also didn't have that much going on in my life that I actually needed a personal digital assistant.

The other day, I found this little gadget in one of my bins of miscellaneous electronics, without the cord, of course, so I couldn't power it on. I really wanted to see what, if anything, was on this thing so I resorted to eBay. There were lots of these little guys for sale, so I bought one just to get the cord. It came yesterday.

I charged it up and powered it on, and was transported back to 2004. I immediately fell in love with it (again). Not that it is super functional or anything (though I did manage to write this post in Memo with some effort).

Palm's heyday was a period from about 2000 - 2005, just before the smart phone as we know it came to be. And that is basically what it is - a smart phone without the phone. Ironically, the thing that I like about it is that it's not a phone. Graffiti 2 is still just as frustrating as ever, so I do find myself wishing for a keyboard.

But I suppose that would make this a Blackberry, and that's an entirely different rabbit hole...





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