It is a beautiful sunny spring Sunday here in London so what better way to spend time than sitting indoors blogging? Having said that, I have already been out for a run this morning as I thoroughly enjoy being out and about in gorgeous weather like this. In this hazy but warm sunshine, gentle but fresh breeze, even the local park seemed a world away from it's ultra-urban surroundings. Anyhow, suitably exercised and refreshed, I thought I would spend a few moments on geekish things before thinking about a late Sunday lunch.
I am currently one-third of the way through a trial of The Bat! as a potential long-term mail client. Thunderbird is great but I wanted to try a more fully featured client to see if it would make life a little easier. In conjunction, I have now added Robin Kier's K9 to my anti-spam armoury and have found it to be easily trainable and pretty effective. In fact, K9's effectiveness is no real surprise as it is a natural development of POPFile, the web-based open source spam filter that I have used previously. With an overall accuracy of 95% after nine days (without whitelists or blacklists), I think I'll be sticking with K9 for the forseeable future.
Meanwhile, my foray back into the world of Psion computing has not been what I expected. Firstly, I found that messing around with two PDAs and two desktop companion apps proved to be too distracting and doing so led to a frustrating total loss of my phone's address book when a sync with Outlook went wrong. The evening spent trying tob convert my large Palm contacts file to a slimmer one in a format that Outlook would import (CSV) with a decent amount of success was not what I had in mind when I purchased the 5mx. Likewise, I was not prepared for how hard it was to work on a greyscale PDA after using hi-res colour screens (Clie & Palm) for the last three years. Even with the backlight, which buzzes audibly and annoyingly, it is just not the same as working on a colour machine. That said, the exercise has proved useful in clarifying what I use a PDA for and how it fits in to my daily routine. I spend a lot of time at my desk working on my docked laptop so a lot of my data capture is simply a question of cut & paste or key-entry into three key applications that I use extensively on both my Palm and my PC, Palm Desktop, Bonsai and DayNotez. When I'm in meetings and projects briefings around my centre or offsite, I use a Palm Portable Keyboard to allow me to directly capture minutes and notes - which are always more detailed and relevant than the official ones! Out and about, I can use Notepad or Slap - and the Voice Memo function in the car - to record stuff I can process more fully later.
Having said that, the 5mx is a lovely piece of kit and has re-awakened my interest in the Psion/EPOC combination. This being the case, and taking my preference for colour into account, the sensible move would seem to be selling the 5mx and moving up to the Psion 7 sub-notebook, which I have always fancied owning. Watch this space.
Posted by bignoseduglyguy at April 25, 2004 02:42 PM | TrackBackI was a happy owner for many years of the 3c and 3mx, the latter of which was to me the acme of PDAs. The built-in apps were great, it was cool to whip out and type on, and I could play Infocom games on it -- what's not to like?
I skipped the 5s, stuck my neck out for a netBook and regretted it--not as compact or sleek. For me, not as much fun as the 3mx.
Was gifted with a Clie SJ-33, and have moved my digital life to that. Had a surprising amount of trouble reproducing the 3mx's built-in apps and third-party ware I'd grown dependent on (I mean, come on--the 3mx had a built-in dictionary, anagram finder, *and* crossword puzzle solver -- the Palm world lags in essential word game utilities.)
I love the ease of having the Palm Desktop available for adding and printing information (much nicer sync than the Psion software), DocstoGo is OK, but it still hurts my feelings that the 3mx had a word processor, spreadsheet, and database all built in but I had to *buy* these essentials for use on th Clie. For me, the killer app is iSilo.
Have settled on the CLie as there is only time in life to learn the intricacies one PDA at a time. I still have the 3c and 3mx; I should sell them someday but are still sentimental about them.
Posted by: Mike at May 12, 2004 04:12 PMI was a happy owner for many years of the 3c and 3mx, the latter of which was to me the acme of PDAs. The built-in apps were great, it was cool to whip out and type on, and I could play Infocom games on it -- what's not to like?
I skipped the 5s, stuck my neck out for a netBook and regretted it--not as compact or sleek. For me, not as much fun as the 3mx. And not as powerful as the PocketPC my co-workers kept showing off.
Was gifted with a Clie SJ-33, and have moved my digital life to that. Had a surprising amount of trouble reproducing the 3mx's built-in apps and third-party ware I'd grown dependent on (I mean, come on--the 3mx had a built-in dictionary, anagram finder, *and* crossword puzzle solver -- the Palm world lags in essential word game utilities.)
I love the ease of having the Palm Desktop available for adding and printing information (much nicer sync than the Psion software), DocstoGo is OK, but it still hurts my feelings that the 3mx had a word processor, spreadsheet, and database all built in but I had to *buy* these essentials for use on th Clie. For me, the killer app for my Clie is iSilo.
Have settled on the Clie as there is only time in life to learn the intricacies one PDA at a time. I still have the 3c and 3mx; I should sell them someday but are still sentimental about them.
Posted by: Mike at May 12, 2004 04:14 PMI was a happy owner for many years of the 3c and 3mx, the latter of which was to me the acme of PDAs. The built-in apps were great, it was cool to whip out and type on, and I could play Infocom games on it -- what's not to like?
I skipped the 5s, stuck my neck out for a netBook and regretted it--not as compact or sleek. For me, not as much fun as the 3mx. And not as powerful as the PocketPC my co-workers kept showing off.
Was gifted with a Clie SJ-33, and have moved my digital life to that. Had a surprising amount of trouble reproducing the 3mx's built-in apps and third-party ware I'd grown dependent on (I mean, come on--the 3mx had a built-in dictionary, anagram finder, *and* crossword puzzle solver -- the Palm world lags in essential word game utilities.)
I love the ease of having the Palm Desktop available for adding and printing information (much nicer sync than the Psion software), DocstoGo is OK, but it still hurts my feelings that the 3mx had a word processor, spreadsheet, and database all built in but I had to *buy* these essentials for use on th Clie. For me, the killer app for my Clie is iSilo.
Have settled on the Clie as there is only time in life to learn the intricacies one PDA at a time. I still have the 3c and 3mx; I should sell them someday but are still sentimental about them.
Posted by: Mike at May 12, 2004 04:15 PMI was a happy owner for many years of the 3c and 3mx, the latter of which was to me the acme of PDAs. The built-in apps were great, it was cool to whip out and type on, and I could play Infocom games on it -- what's not to like?
I skipped the 5s, stuck my neck out for a netBook and regretted it--not as compact or sleek. For me, not as much fun as the 3mx. And not as powerful as the PocketPC my co-workers kept showing off.
Was gifted with a Clie SJ-33, and have moved my digital life to that. Had a surprising amount of trouble reproducing the 3mx's built-in apps and third-party ware I'd grown dependent on (I mean, come on--the 3mx had a built-in dictionary, anagram finder, *and* crossword puzzle solver -- the Palm world lags in essential word game utilities.)
I love the ease of having the Palm Desktop available for adding and printing information (much nicer sync than the Psion software), DocstoGo is OK, but it still hurts my feelings that the 3mx had a word processor, spreadsheet, and database all built in but I had to *buy* these essentials for use on th Clie. For me, the killer app for my Clie is iSilo.
Have settled on the Clie as there is only time in life to learn the intricacies one PDA at a time. I still have the 3c and 3mx; I should sell them someday but are still sentimental about them.
Posted by: Mike at May 12, 2004 04:15 PM