The Haus

Hun-Speak

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September 29, 2000 -- Genuinely Helpful Hardware

I've been known to come up with the lamest excuses and rationalizations to justify spending more money on computer-related purchases. My wife either rolls her eyes or gets that nervous tic that tells me I've been thrown clear from frying pan and into the proverbial fire. Thankfully, she realizes that she married a geek so some of this ceaseless upgrading is unavoidable. But since my budget is rather limited, it's hard to justify a hardware purchase when my kids need to eat.

When I brought up the subject of getting a Handspring Visor Deluxe in May, I figured I would get a lot of grief. I had hoped that it would make me more organized so I could finally ditch my "hundreds of sticky notes" method of organization. That alone was enough to convince my wife that a Visor might be worthwhile--that and the fact I could pay for it with mileage reimbursements from a committee I'm on.

Not even I could have imagined how helpful my Visor would be. I can honestly say that it is the best $250 I ever spent on any computer hardware. Ever. And that's saying a lot. There are several reasons for this:

  1. It has made me more organized. To be able to carry my complete schedule, a to-do list, and a bunch of memos along with me wherever I go has been a God-send. I even use Mobile Generation's Mobile AutoLog to keep track of my car mileage and expenses.
  2. I always have reading material handy. Thanks to AvantGo web content and the iSilo Free document reader, I'm never at a loss for something to read when I'm on vacation or bored during a meeting. I've even got a complete copy of the NIV translation of the Bible from Laridian Electronic Publishing. I can search for any phrase and find all the matches in less than 15 seconds.
  3. It helps me with my hobbies. When I'm not writing for The Haus, I enjoy homebrewing beer and playing my recently-acquired guitar. I picked up some very nice brewing calculators from ProMash which are very helpful in the middle of a hectic brewing session as well as a complete list of all the different beer styles. For my guitar, I also have a handy program called FretBoard which will show all the different scales. I've recently been trying PalmChord which displays different chords in different voicings.
  4. Games. I've got way too many on my Visor and they're all a lot of fun. Can someone please explain to me why I rarely play solitaire on my computer but can't stop playing on my Visor?
  5. Coolness factor (in a geek sort of way). There's just something cool about having a computer--even a little one--with you wherever you go. Scribbling on it always seems to attract interest from passers-by.

All this, and I still have 2.85M of my original 8M of memory free. (As an aside, it's kind of scary to think that my Visor has a faster processor and eight times more memory than my first real PC did.)

I hoped when I bought my Visor that I would find it useful and that it would be worth the $250 I was dropping for it. It has been everything I hoped for and much more. It's been helpful, it's been fun, and my wife didn't murder me. You can't get much better than that.