During the development of the original Palm Pilot in the mid-1990s, designer Jeff Hawkins demanded that everything be kept simple to the point of declaring that anything that generated error messages was unacceptable. This focus on simplicity and usability became known as the Zen of Palm and played no small role in the product's success (for more, see Hawkins' 1998 essay on design written for BW Online).
Palm (PALM
) has faced pressures (and I will admit that I have contributed to them) to add functions to its handhelds, even though doing more is the enemy of simplicity. The new Palm i705, the sleek wireless successor to the clunky Palm VIIx, is an ambitious effort to do more. The classic Palm features, such as the address book and calendar, are as simple and intuitive as ever. The wireless e-mail, the product's reason for being, is another story.
The i705 ($449, plus $39.99 a month for unlimited wireless service) was designed to compete with Research in Motion's BlackBerry (RIMM
), whose claim to fame is providing simple access to corporate e-mail from a wireless device. The Palm is a lot more flexible than the BlackBerry. The i705 lets you get corporate mail from Microsoft Exchange servers (a Lotus Notes version is planned) as well as mail from standard Internet accounts and from a special Palm.com account. AOL Instant Messenger is also included. With BlackBerry, you have to buy separate versions for Internet and corporate mail or for AOL.
In contrast to the BlackBerry, however, I found setting the Palm up for corporate e-mail a challenge. The mail-forwarding software, which runs on your desktop PC, has to be downloaded from the Web. That's an indication that it was not finished in time to be included on the CD that comes with the i705, and the program shows signs of inadequate testing. The first version would not install on my computer because it connected to the Internet through a security mechanism called a proxy server, a common arrangement for corporate PCs. A hurriedly compiled replacement worked, but was clunky to install and set up. And any configuration problem produces that most unfamiliar of things on a Palm, a baffling message like "Wireless INetLIb Error." Palm plans to offer software that lets corporations forward mail directly to i705s from Exchange servers sometime this summer.
The software difficulties are unfortunate because the i705 is a nice piece of hardware. At 4.7 in. long, 3.1 in. wide, and 0.6 in. thick, it is just a little longer and thicker than the Palm m500 and weighs just 5.9 oz. An optional keyboard ($29 with an i705 purchase) slips over the bottom of the Palm and allows you to type instead of writing in the usual Graffiti shorthand. It works well, but is not as convenient as the integrated BlackBerry keyboard.
Unlike the Palm VIIx, which required flipping up an awkward antenna to activate wireless, the i705's radio can stay on all the time, allowing it to download mail in the background. This hides the fact that the Cingular Interactive network that it runs on, the same used by BlackBerry, is very slow. But the downside of an always-on radio is a heavy drain on the battery. If you schedule the radio to turn off overnight, you can probably squeeze three days' use out of a charge. The best approach is to treat the i705 like a cell phone and plan to recharge it every night.
Unlike the BlackBerry, whose contact and calendar functions can charitably be called primitive, the i705 comes with the built-in applications that Palm users have come to love, plus access to a huge library of games, expense tracking programs, reference works, and other applications. The i705 includes Palm's MultiMail e-mail program, DataViz's Documents-to-Go for reading and editing Microsoft Office files, and a Web browser, though the small screen and the slow network make for a painful combination. The i705 also supports all of the simplified "Web clipping" applications designed for the Palm VII, including news and weather, stock quotes, and flight information.
E-mail-to-go is the main reason to buy an i705 but, especially for corporate mail users, it falls well short of the standard set by BlackBerry. Fortunately, the real problems are in software and should be easily fixable. If the programs are reworked with some of that old Zen of Palm focus, the i705 could live up to its potential as a wireless communicator.
Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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