Handspring Visor Deluxe and Targus Stowaway keyboard
After talking about it for so long, I just went and did it! Ordered a Handspring Visor Deluxe from eBay and a Handspring 8MB backup module. I have missed my last Visor ever since I converted to a Palm Zire 72 in 2004, which itself didn't stick around long before a Hipster PDA and then the iPod Touch and various iPhones took over.
Notifications, color, scope, ubiquitous wireless data and propensity for addiction all make iOS worse at everything except text entry. Palm OS was like a stone after being chiseled by an artist; all non-essential stuff was removed.
The Visor Deluxe I got looks to have been totally unused. And everything about Palm OS happens instantly. You hit the Calendar button and you're instantly in Date Book (or Date Book+, mi corazón). No animations, no signing in, no cloud. And the batteries last a damn month! It's a quiet and placid operating system that disappears in front of you. The only thing "wrong" with this unit is the electroluminescent backlight has gotten unusably dim. I may buy a burner Visor to practice replacing that panel with a new one at some point.
As soon as I started scribbling into the Memo Pad app, I was astounded at how much Graffiti I remembered after not having used it for 20 years. The muscle memory is strong. But as innovative and efficient as Graffiti is for entering text on the go, I still wanted a faster way to write when I'm at a desk, so of course I ordered a Targus Stowaway keyboard like the one I had in the early 2000s and have since lost. The keyboard got here the other night and I learned that it requires a Stowaway Keyboard app to work. Oops. This keyboard didn't come with any software, and I couldn't find any on the web.
Since I'd been moving apps and blobs of data over from the Zire 72 using the Filez app, I wondered if the Zire might still have a copy of that Keyboard app hidden in its memory. According to Filez, it did! I guess by virtue of HotSyncing the same user profile over the 1999–2005 years (Palm III > Handspring Visor Deluxe > Zire 72), Keyboard.prc traveled along with the Zire even though it was incompatible and didn't appear on any launcher screens. I beamed that file over to the Visor and it appeared on the home screen. I entered the keyboard's serial number into the app while the Visor was docked and... nothing. Keyboard still didn't work. I don't know if I hadn't seated it right or if something was just stuck in a bad way, but the keyboard appeared dead. I googled and ChatGPT'd and didn't find any clues about any steps I'd skipped. By the time I was ready to give up, I tested the keyboard one last time and it worked! Huh. We all know that electronics that fix themselves randomly tend to unfix themselves randomly. For now, this is so much fun and keeps me away from my phone for a few minutes at a time. I'll take that deal.
Update: The keyboard isn't working again. Ah well. Time to open it up and see what's going on.