Palm Vx nostalgia
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
So what do I find underneath a power strip behind a desk all dusty and forgotten… a Palm Vx from 3com. I wanted one of these so badly when I was in high school. Having an amazing mobile device just seemed so cool. I ended up getting a far less expensive and less feature rich DaVinci. (Copying a certain older brother. You know who you are! Not the best tech investment.)
Now of course, I’m keen on my iPhone and even my slim and sleek Nintendo DS to compliment it. But nonetheless, this was an incredibly nostalgic moment. I immediately looked up all the old specs for the device. I recall there is still a big following for the Apple Newton. In fact, I know of at least one T-shirt you can buy supporting it. This has got me thinking about how tempting it would be to look into some old mobile devices that I can pick up for cheap that are incredibly hackable. I’m too scared to do anything to my iPhone. $400 is an expensive phone to break. And even if I can restore it fine, this is my main line of communication to the world. As soon as I start tinkering with it, I lose that connection while I’m hacking it.
I’ve got my Nintendo DS setup to play ROMs and games like Doom. It’s also setup to be an MP3 player. Which isn’t of much use with the iPhone.
I’m actually pretty amazed with how thin the Palm Vx was. I hadn’t held one since my hands weren’t fully grown. Soon as I get a chance I’m going to see about getting one and tinkering with it. Although, I’ll have to make sure it will work with my computer as best I can.
I remember considering my TI-86 graphing calculator as one of my awesome mobile devices. I use to program games for it with the scripting language they had for it. I could only view five lines of code at a time. That was pretty hardcore. Paradoxically, spending all my time programming using pretty advanced math for my age is the reason I received a D grade in my algebra class. “Hmm… as Adam’s teacher, I really need to get him to return to doing materiel that he finds remedial and not encourage his gift. Who cares if he’s acing all the tests? He needs to be doing his homework! Programming video games is no different than playing them.” Okay, I never actually heard my teacher say that, but I’m sure that’s what she was thinking.
Anyway, I just wanted to share my nostalgia. 