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Past Meetings: January 11, 2001

Date: Thursday, January 11, 2001
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Kensington Community Church
Attendees: 23

 

We had two main agenda items:

  1. eBooks on the Palm Device

    2. eBooks for Palm OS handhelds are a fast growing application for Palm OS devices. To read a book on your handheld, you need two things:

    • an application, called a reader, that will read the eBook
    • an eBook


    eBooks can be read by a variety of reader's; some are free and some have a price. For a list of various readers that work with eBooks on Palm OS devices, click here. We reviewed the free reader offered by peanutpress.com. This is a very nice reader that comes with lots of features like bookmarks, annotations, quick navigation, and an adjustable auto-scroll feature for hands-free operation. We've seen advertisements for an RCA eBook reader that lists for $299. Why on earth anyone would pay $299 for a device that can only be used for reading eBooks is beyond us!

    eBooks are available on a variety of sites. The two most noteworthy sites are:

    DPUG member Mike Spring mentioned a site called Project Gutenberg. This site is a volunteer effort to convert "all" public domain texts into digital format. It has thousands of texts in the archive. They can be downloaded as .txt files and read in Wordpad on the PC, or converted to .DOC format for reading on palms

  2. Palm OS 3.5 upgrade

    Palm, Inc. has finally made version 3.5 of their operating system available to the general public. Version 3.5 has been shipping for over a year on new Palm IIIc's, Palm IIIxe's, and recent versions of Palm Vx's. It is now available to the general public, but unlike other Palm OS upgrades, this one is not free; it costs $14.95 for the downloadable version and $19.95 plus shipping & handling if you prefer to receive a CD-ROM. However, for Palm Vx owners, the download is free, and available here.

    Note: not all devices can upgrade their OS. Devices that cannot upgrade their OS include:

    • All Handspring Devices
    • Palm IIIe
    • Palm m100
    • Sony CLIE

    So what is the OS? It's the main software that is preloaded on your device that handles the loading and running of the various applications, processes your graffiti input, handles beaming, etc. To determine what OS version you currently have:

    • Go to the main Applications menu (upper left silk-screened button)
    • Press the Menu button (lower left silk-screened button).
    • Click Info on the dropdown menu
    • Click the Version button at the bottom of the screen.
    • A new screen will be displayed, and at the top of this screen will be the current version of your OS. The latest version that most people have is 3.3.

    The following features are what's new in 3.5. If you have a version that is less than 3.3 then there will be even more new features. The main new features are:

    • Agenda view in Date Book- See both your schedule and to do list at the same time for easy, efficient time management.
    • Tappable menus - Quickly activate a menu with a quick tap on the menu text at the top of your screen (same as the functionality provided by Menu Hack)
    • Shortcut Command Bar - Use this simple shortcut to access features such as cut, copy, paste, delete and beam.
    • Improved privacy - Hide records without forgetting their existence or location.
    • Quick duplication of Address Book entries - Enter multiple records of people from the same company or group quickly and easily with this single menu option.
    • Faster HotSyncŪ operation - Synchronize data with your desktop at higher data-transmission rates.
    • Infrared (IR) HotSync operation - Synchronize data with your IR-equipped desktop without using a docking cradle.
    • Euro symbol support - Use the Euro currency symbol in your calculations and notes.
    • Snooze button - Delay alerts for appointments while continuing to use other features of the Palm.

    Other features in 3.5 not listed on the Palm web site include:

    • Auto completion of Address Book field.
    • Easier word/paragraph selection: double tap a word and the entire word is selected. Triple tap on a word and the entire line/paragraph is selected (same as the functionality provided by SelectHack)

    We also discussed some problems that Mac users were having loading the downloadable version. The CD-ROM version is reported to work better for Mac users.

    So is all this worth $14.95? That's really up to you. It does have an awful lot of nice features, so maybe ask for it for your next birthday.

  3. Give Aways

    4. We gave away lots of stuff; everyone in attendance walked out with something. We gave away:

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