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Palm Organizers, Third Edition: Visual Quickstart Guide
December 17, 2003
This book, written by Jeff Carlson, is billed as everything you need to “Teach yourself how to use Palm devices the quick and easy way” and for the most part the book does exactly that. Don’t worry about finding some horribly dry, boring, and impossible to understand technical manual here. The Visual Quickstart Guide series is designed to be very user friendly, with lots of pictures, and screenshots to illustrate the text. Most anyone, even those who don’t primarily identify themselves as “visual learners” would agree that it’s much easier to follow along with detailed information when you have something to look at right there with you. There’s generally at least one screenshot on every page, and usually two or three. The text is also very well organized and clearly written, with lots of numbered lists covering all the details.
Just a glance at the table of contents will prove that they thought of just about everything:
As I read through the text I really appreciated all of the hard work that went into this book. Even the greenest “newbie” won’t have any trouble at all following along with everything and really learning the ins and outs of Palm OS handhelds and all of the amazing things that they can do these days. I especially liked the fact that some coverage was given to the Alphasmart Dana, the Kyocera smartphone, Handspring Treo, Sony Clie, and Fossil Watch PDAs, though of course most of the book applies to any Palm OS handheld. I didn’t find any glaring errors either— it’s obvious that this book has been very carefully researched. That doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect though, as I found a few head-scratching omissions and some signs that in many ways this new edition is already a bit out of date. While it does cover Palm OS 5, this book doesn’t include any details about the switch to Graffiti 2 on new handhelds, meaning that those who have one of the newer models might not get anything at all out of the section on handwriting.
And while I was pleased to see some mention of third party software, I was rather surprised to see no mention at all of or Handango, two of the best places to find a wide variety of handheld software applications. The section on “Long Texts” (or ebooks) did not mention Memoware, the largest and oldest source for free ebooks, relative newcomer Fictionwise, or my personal favorite, Baen. Another surprise came with the lack of any mention of places to get online help and instruction. While I can’t expect a plug for my own humble site, it would seem obvious that Brighthand and PalmInfoCenter should be included, as well as the original (and venerable) Pilot Mailing list and the device-specific groups on Yahoo. It’s perfectly understandable that a printed book can’t be as up to date as a magazine or web site, but some of these resources have been around for such a long time that their continued presence is almost a given. If there were some sort of “online resources” section at the back of the book, future editions could be greatly improved.
Slight annoyances aside, the Palm Organizers, Third Edition: Visual Quickstart Guide would be a great gift for beginning and/or intermediate Palm OS device users. A real power user likely wouldn’t get anything out of it, so if you have someone like that on your gift list it’s probably best to go with a new case, stylus, memory card, or other accessory. Be sure you’re getting the most recent version, since this is the second update: ISBN 0321180984, price $19.99. It’s available now from publisher Peachpit Press, Amazon.com, and retail bookstores. There’s a special offer for it right now at the Peachpit web site: a $2 discount and free UPS shipping.
PocketGoddess Rating for Palm Organizers, Third Edition: Visual Quickstart Guide: 
