Blast from the past

As I eagerly await the arrival of my new Treo 700w I was thinking about the last Handspring I owned (yes, I still consider the Treo to be a Handspring and not a Palm One device). I still own a Handspring Visor Deluxe which runs on 2 AAA batteries and was the device that really grabbed my attention in the handheld space. I did have the chance to use a Palm 3e which was given to me by my good friend Ashish Gupta and which we used to work on periodially, and later a 3x, VII and Vc.

Well for people who have forgotten what the Visor looked like, here it is:

The interesting thing about the Visor Deluxe was the expandable PCI slot or the Springboard as it was called. This really brought a ton of possibilities into the mix - for eg. I remember Ashish had a cellphone springboard module that allowed the handspring to be used as a regular cellular phone and also a springboard module that was a dial-up modem.

The differences in philosophy between the Handspring team Jeff Hawkins et al and Palm were obvious right from the start - when all the pundits were stating that no consumer wanted these synergistic devices, the Handspring team went ahead and delivered.
It’s really interesting to see the plethora of options that one got with Handspring Springboard modules.

Even in terms of bringing in the developer community Handspring had done a very good job right from the get-go. They had tied up with some good vendors for the springboard expansion slots and the API’s that were provided to develop your Palm OS applications to use the springboard slots were easy to use and well documented. I remember building an inventory application with my wife on the Visor Deluxe using the The Symbol CSM150 Springboard module and it was fairly interesting and not as complex as I had thought it would be.

If anyone uses Good Technologies today as a push-based email and productivity app - it is intersting to see that they started off with a product which was an mp3 player based on the Springboard slot - :)

If the mantra of the Handspring team has remained after the merger and if the handsprings of the past are any indication I am certain that my new device will absolutely kick-ass!!!