Take a trip back in time about 20 years ago, visit any city and state you want, find one of the gathering places of some of the smartest people in that state and ask them whether or not they believe that 20 years in the future there will be small computer-type device that you can hold in your hand called a Palm. Chances are, even this educated group of people will probably laugh and tell you that maybe someday it could happen but that in reality it probably won’t.
In the early 90’s, or approximately 20 years ago, many organizations that had historically operated on main frame systems that connected their computers to it and processed the information through that mainframe, larger than life, computer system that a network administrator had to babysit most of the time, were upgrading to the pc. It was both a fascinating and frightening time. No longer was that administrator guy going to be responsible for your work that got lost in the system. No longer would you be using the keyboard to enter all of your commands for the program you were working in.
It was a great time to experience technology as it developed and little did we know that as we began embracing the PC that in a few short years, the very first handheld electronic multipurpose data organizer known as the Palm. The original palm, released to the public market by Palm Computing in 1996. At that time, the first Palms, which were the Pilot 1000 and the Pilot 5000. Although their technology was advanced for the market, these original Palms were quite limited with a RAM size of 128k and 512k respectively. They didn’t have a backlight or infrared port. Those of you who are extremely technically savvy may be giggling at the thought of a Palm that ran on AAA batteries but, believe it or not, the Palm would have to upgrade from these original Pilots before it even got to using the batteries. Like the Virginia Slims commercial brags of their cigarettes, the same can be said of the Palm; you’ve come a long way baby!
Looking back but ahead along the timeline of Palm development, the Palm III group of handheld PDAs dropped the Pilot name and picked up a few features instead. Even so, if you’ve seen any pictures of the Palm III, you might find yourself thinking, wow, I wouldn’t have had any use for that clunker. But in actually, the Palm III series was just the platform built upon the foundation of providing a portable was to carry and convey your information from the palm of your hand. And from the looks of it, the foundation was quite solid as the manufacturers of the Palm have continue to advance and creating cutting edge technology for the Palm that keeps them near, if not at the top of the market. Perhaps you’re reading this from a Palm and thinking, it’s the only way for me.
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