PatrickMD.net

I bought a new Palm PDA (Palm Z22, $99 with case and free s/h) last week, and it arrived yesterday. I took the box back to my apartment, tossed it in a corner, and opened it late today.

Ten years ago, I would have ripped the box open the moment my hands touched it. Now, I just see it as Yet Another Electronic Device that fulfills some small role in my life.

Part of my new reaction is because I don’t really like Palm PDAs all that much. I got one as a gift some years ago and tried to make it part of my day. I liked that it could store addresses and phone numbers, since I didn’t have a cell phone back then. I even developed some software for it using the Codewarrior for Palm OS IDE.

Programming for the original Palm units was a real throwback, because they had such limited memory (one MB?) and slow processors. Memory handling was a real trip, since there wasn’t any distinction between storage and ready memory — it was all the same thing. The developers adopted the Macintosh model of grabbing blocks of memory and releasing them once you were done accessing them. If you failed to release a block, the allocator wouldn’t be able to move your block out of the way during the defragmentation pass. For someone who grew up without such sharp restrictions for small applications, it was a real education.

A year or two (and one replacement) after I got my personal Palm, I dropped it on a concrete floor and the glass LCD plate smashed into jagged fragments. The fragments didn’t fall out due to the covering plastic film, and my PDA looked like a jigsaw puzzle. I realized I wasn’t all that upset about breaking it, and decided that this was a sign that I would be wasting money by replacing it.

The PDA originally was my phone book, development platform, and toy. But each of these needs were supplanted. My new cell phone held all the phone numbers, I had a software job with exciting development problems, and as with all boys, I moved on to new toys.

Now, I have a new Palm Z22. I’m told this is useful (but never necessary) for the wards. I loaded ePocrates (free through my medical school), an ABG calculator, the Johns Hopkins Antibiotics Guide, SHOTS 2006, and an OB Wheel. I enjoyed playing with it today — it’s still a new toy, no matter how old I am.

I have a new white coat with a special inside pocket where I plan to keep the Z22. I’ll let you know how often I actually use it.

Tags:   Palm · pda · z22No Comments