Wednesday, March 3, 2010

'Palm reading' of a different sort

Mobile phones are at once necessary and evil. I embrace the technology because I must.

As a long-time user of Palm devices, my Centro has filled my personal bill perfectly, marrying my needs for a PDA and present-day communications. For two years, I've wished for nothing else.

On Sunday, Mrs. KintlaLake and our spawns went to the cell-phone store, where "new every two" met "buy one, get one free." All three of them decided that it was time to trade up.

Do the math -- I got a new phone, free.

The Palm Pre Plus wants to be an iPhone, but it's not (not yet, anyway). And while it does say "Palm," it's not that, either.

It is, however, way-cool.

The new webOS platform omits much of what I love about Palms, including the desktop interface. I've set up a data sync with the old PC-resident software (using a third-party application) and I'll maintain my Palm TX as a master PDA, but dammit, I miss the old OS already.

Pining aside, I can't seem to put the new phone down. Its flickable touch-screen has me hooked, and the ability to run multiple apps at the same time makes me wonder how I managed before.

What's more, I've downloaded several cheap (or free) apps that turn the Palm Pre Plus into a GPS, a compass, a flashlight -- even a seismograph. (Yes, it has a "Big Brother" auto-locate feature, which fortunately I can turn off, and a built-in accelerometer.)

It's still not a real Palm, but real cool will do.