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Palm OS
Palm OS
is an operating
system made by PalmSource,
Inc. for personal
digital assistants (PDAs) manufactured by PalmOne,
Inc. and other licensees.
History
Palm OS was originally developed for use on the original Pilot
by 3Com. Version 1.0 was present on the original Pilot 1000 and
5000 and version 2.0 was introduced with the PalmPilot Personal
and Professional.
With the launch of the Palm III series version 3.0 of the OS was
introduced. Incremental upgrades occurred with the release of
versions 3.1, 3.3 and 3.5, adding support for colour, multiple
expansion ports, new processors and other various additions.
Version 4.0 was released with the m500 series, and later made
available as an upgrade for older devices. This added a standard
interface for external FS access (such as SD cards) and improved
telephony libraries, security and UI improvements.
Version 5.0 was the first version released to support ARM
devices.
Described as a stepping stone to full ARM support, Palm
apps are run in a emulated environment called PACE, decreasing
speed but allowing great compatibility with old programs. New
software can take advantage of the ARM processors with ARMlets,
small units of ARM code. It was also roughly this time when Palm
began to seperate it's hardware and OS efforts, eventually
becoming two companies, PalmSource,
Inc. (OS) and PalmOne (hardware). Further releases of PalmOS
5 have seen a standardised API for hi-res and dynamic input
areas, along with a number of more minor improvements.
Palm OS 5.2 and 4.2 (and later) also feature Graffiti 2, due to
the loss of a patent infringement lawsuit with Xerox. This is
based on Jot by CIC.
PalmSource,
Inc. have announced they will be releasing Palm OS 6.0 to
licencees in late December 2003. This is to be the completion of
the migration to ARM devices, and allow ARM native applications
along with improved mulitmedia support.
Built
In Applications for Palm OS
Address
The Palm's Address program stores personal information, keyed by
any of several user-definable categories. Entries are displayed
and sorted in last name, first name order (this can be changed
only to Company, Last Name order). There are five slots for
phone or e-mail, each of which may be designated Work, Home,
Fax, Other, E-mail, Main, Pager or Mobile (the slot designations
cannot be changed).
For the Tungsten T3, this application is called Contacts.
Calculator
Calc turns the Palm into a standard 4-function pocket calculator
with three shades of purple and blue buttons contrasting with
the two red clear buttons. It sports square root and percent
keys and has one memory.
Date
Book
Date Book shows a daily or weekly schedule, or a simple monthly
view. The daily schedule has one line per hour, between
user-selected begin and end times. Clicking on an empty line
creates a new appointment. Empty lines are croweded out by
actual appointments, whose start and stop times are shown by
default bracketed in the left margin.
An appointment can be heralded by an alarm, any number of
minutes, hours or days before it begins. These alarms sound even
when the unit is switched off.
Appointments can recur in a specified number of days, weeks,
months or years -- and can contain notes.
For the Tungsten T3, this application is called Calendar and
allows catagorisation of events, as well as featuring a summary
screen similar to that found on PocketPC devices.
Expense
The Expense application allows a user to track common business
expenses. No totals are calculated on the Palm. The user must
synch with a host computer and view the expense data in a
worksheet (templates for Microsoft Excel are supplied).
Memo
Pad
The Memo Pad can hold notes of up to 4,000 characters, keyed to
user-configurable categories. Memos are ordered in two ways:
alphabetically, and manually (which allows the user to choose
the order of the memos). Memo Pad is for text, not for drawings.
For this reason, text in Memo Pad must be entered using the Graffiti
alphabet.
For the Tungsten T3, this application is called Memos, and the
limit has been increased to 32Kb.
Note
Pad
Drawings go in Note Pad. You can squeeze up to 10 words per
page, if your writing is neat. Otherwise, it's better to put
text in Memo Pad. There are three sizes of drawing crayon, plus
an eraser. It's possible to draw a very simple map.
To
Do List
Also referred to as Task
list.
This is a convenient place to create personal reminders and
prioritize the things you have to do.
Each To Do List item may also have: a priority, categories (to
organize and view items in logical groups), attached Note (to
add more description and clarification of the task).
To Do List item can be sorted by: due date, priority or
category.
For the Tungsten T3, this application is called Tasks and alarms
may be assigned to tasks.
Add-on
Applications
There are many successful Palm add-on applications. As of August
2003, there are more that 19,000 add-on applications available
for the Palm platform, including freeware (free for all),
shareware (try before you buy), and commercial applications.
This
content from Wikipedia
is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
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