On Friday 22 February 2002 21:23, you wrote:
> So I'd appreciate anyone responding with stories about what you have
> and what you like or don't like about it.
> 
> In particular, I've been considering one of the Handspring Visor
> models.  Does anyone have any experience, positive or negative, with
> them?

I'll see the the B- ranking of Visor + jpilot for connectivity and raise it 
to a B+.  Once I realized that I had to wait a second or so for Mandrake to 
recognize the new USB device before telling jpilot to look for it, jpilot 
became effortless to use.  The main problem is that it only synchronizes the 
four basic Palm OS programs (and installs new software); it doesn't seem to 
back up your databases from other programs you've installed, or even the 
other built-in Palm OS programs such as Mail and Expense.  I could be 
mistaken, but I'm pretty sure.  And I haven't seen any "conduit" programs 
floating around to add functionality to jpilot.  (The solution of course is 
not to put anything important in the databases that don't get backed up.)

I think the biggest advantage of Palm OS over handheld Linux and whatever 
Windows CE is being called these days is that it's so incredibly easy to use, 
and the basic programs are quick and easy to synchronize.  And the Visor's 
Springport is great, too.  But I think what Palm OS needs for any desktop 
platform is a good emulator, so that you can back up all your programs *and* 
run them on the desktop machine.

I'm not offering to write this emulator, but I will beta test it.  :-)  --Ben