I don't know if anyone will find this interesting, but in the spirit of looking over someone's shoulder and seeing what they've got in their Dock, I thought that I would list a few of my favourite Palm applications.
- TealDoc: It might not be one of the obvious benefits of a Palm, but one of the things I missed most about not having a functioning Palm was the stack of classic novels I used to have loaded up and ready to kill the odd few minutes in a coffee shop or at a bus stop. I've had some surreal moments with my eBooks; I think my favourite was reading Charles Dickens' 'Our Mutual Friend' at night while living in a tent in New Caledonia. The juxtaposition of old and new and the clash of real and fictional geographic locations was very pleasing, and the backlight meant that I didn't even have to hold a torch! In fact, the Treo backlight is so bright that you *can* actually use it as a torch---just make sure that you prepare yourself by putting some kind of light on before turning on the handset, or you'll burn out your retinas. Anyway, I bought TealDoc some time ago, after trying out a number of different Doc readers. It's fairly simple, but has some nice features like custom bookmarks and notes, and it also allows you to read books which are stored on a card rather than the built-in memory---very useful for 'War and Peace'.
- Life Balance: I've used the desktop version for a while, but my old Palm was a bit too feeble to cope with the size of the database (which says something about the ridiculous number of things I haven't done yet), so I stopped using it. On the Treo, it runs brilliantly, so I've actually switched to entering all of my tasks via the PDA, and just using the desktop version get an overview of---well, my life. I've written about it before, so I won't cover the same ground again, but having the database literally at my fingertips makes it even more useful. Sometimes I meet someone in the corridor, and the conversation results in me having to do something (this happens far too often actually---perhaps I should learn how to say 'no'?). If I didn't scribble it down somewhere, I would often wipe the whole thing from my memory before I got back to my desk (pathetic, I know). Noting it down on the spot saves having to make embarrassing excuses later.
- SmartInput: This brings me on to the final bit of software today---SmartInput. If you want to enter some information on the move, it's a bit of a pain to have to navigate to the application you want to use, then set all the information for the time, date, category and so on in multiple dialogues. I looked into a number of applications which allow you to enter lots of pieces of information in the same place, such as Actioneer (which crashed my Treo constantly) and Slap, but SmartInput worked the best for me. Crucially, you can navigate almost all of the dialogues with the keyboard, so you don't have to fumble with the stylus on the move. The application allows you to enter information in a text area, add a note, set the date, time, alarm and category, and then send it off to DateBook, Contacts or the ToDo list. Since Life Balance can import and export to the ToDo list, I can also send tasks to Life Balance from SmartInput.
I think that they key to using a Palm effectively is the speed with which you can enter information, otherwise it becomes so much of a chore that you just don't bother. But it can also be a great repository of information which you can consult quickly. I'm really enjoying using a Palm again, and I'm surprised by how much difference the colour screen makes to the ease of use. Coloured icons are much easier to distinguish than the greyscale versions, especially at the small size necessary on a Palm.