Review: Palmtop Computers

Dec. 1 -- Glowing with luminous color, the new breed of palmtop computers plays games, finds restaurants and shows off your digital photos.

One thing’s for sure: They’re no longer just electronic day planners. Sure, they still help you organize your life, boiling all of those little pieces of paper that swirl through your world down to a convenient handheld brick. And they’re still not truly independent computers — you still have to connect them to your PC regularly to recharge batteries, synchronize schedules or download new software.

But these hot little machines are slowly maturing into real computers. For as little as $149, you can have pocket-sized power that can take the boredom out of your daily commute and maybe make your life a little more orderly.

To help you sort out which palmtop might work best for you, we’ve taken a subjective look at some of the hottest products in the field and offer our findings below. We look at some of the issues that affect all the units, then walk you through each of the palmtops itself. For a concise clickable version, check out our interactive palmtop guide by clicking on the interactive icon to the right.

Expand Your Hand

Palmtops mainly vary in three ways: memory, screen type and expandability.

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New palmtops nowadays have at least 2 megabytes of memory, which is enough for a social whirlwind of phone numbers and appointments, plus one or two extra fun applications like the Vindigo city guide. But if you really want to load up your Palm with tons of games, e-books and such, you’ll need a more expensive 8-meg model. (Palmtops that use Microsoft’s PocketPC system usually have much more memory, like 16 or 32 megabytes, although PocketPC programs typically take up more room than programs on other palmtops.)

Color screens are easier on the eyes than grayscale, but you pay in battery life. Some palmtops have larger screens than others.

Handspring’s Visor palmtops are expandable with “Springboard” attachments, little cards that provide anything from memory expansion cards to a wireless modem to an MP3 player to a cell phone. No other palmtop is quite that flexible, though there are modem, MP3 player and camera add-ons for the Palm machines, and Compaq’s iPaq accepts standard PC cards for extra storage and communications through a special “sleeve” that fits around the handheld.