In October of 1999, I bought my Handspring Visor Deluxe as they were first loosed upon the technology market. I was attracted by the value: an 8-megabyte, PalmOS-based PDA at a then-unheard-of US$249, with a "Springboard" expansion slot to take the abilities of the Visor as far as developers' imaginations could carry them. A year later, how has the promise of the Visor held up? While mine has proven itself as a capable workhorse for storing everything from my day-to-day reminders to my Web site login passwords, it is the Springboard slot, the very thing that was supposed to vaunt the Visor into unimagined realms of utility, that is the biggest source of frustration.

The Visor Deluxe is a step up from the basic Visor model: For $70 more, you get 8 MB of RAM instead of 2 MB, and your choice of four additional case colors. The RAM is the reason to move up to the Deluxe. If you buy a Visor and you plan on storing lots of data in it (such as with the popular Web-page-downloading application AvantGo), spend the extra $70 on the Deluxe.

To synchronize data between your Visor and your desktop computer, the Visor comes standard with a docking cradle that hooks up to your desktop's USB port. Don't have a USB port? You can buy an additional cradle for hooking up to any 9-pin serial port. (But if your computer and operating system can support USB, I recommend spending the extra money and getting a USB card instead. USB ports are a lot faster than serial ports, and open up lots of new add-on possibilities.)

The Visor comes with enough built-in applications to make it useful right out of the box, and experienced Palm users will recognize most of them: address book, calculator, date book, expense tracking, e-mail, memo pad, and to-do list. Handspring has provided a third-party (not developed by Palm) date book application called DateBook+, which offers more calendar views than the standard Palm date book application (and a few other features that I personally haven't found useful). It also comes with CityTime, a nifty little application that gives you world time in four different time zones as well as a world map with day and night areas charted across it in real time.

Power users with Palm PDAs like the ability to upgrade their devices with new software as well as updates to their favorite software. While it is not possible to upgrade to newer versions of PalmOS on the Visor (its read-only memory is non-"flashable" to trim manufacturing costs), it is relatively painless to add new third-party applications to the Palm. Better yet, PalmOS compatibility seems to be excellent; I have rarely run into a program that wouldn't run on my Visor (even then, I could blame the application for not supporting PalmOS 3.1, which is what's permanently embedded in my Visor).

As I indicated in the opening paragraph, all is not sweetness and light with the Visor. I bought it because I was excited about the expansion possibilities opened up by the Visor's Springboard slot. It is theoretically possible to use this to expand the Visor's capabilities simply by slipping a Springboard module into the back of the Visor, much like slipping an add-on card into a desktop computer. Any software embedded in the module pops right up on the display--stick the module in and you're off and running. What could be better?

Umm... how about some Springboard modules that actually do something useful? The Visor has been out for a year now, and Handspring seems unable to drum up significant support for its Springboard platform. Sure, some software-only and MP3-playing modules that were promised early on have hit the market by now, but where are the truly useful applications? Let's see, there's a wireless Internet module from @ctivelink, which is both expensive and ugly. There's a digital camera module from eyemodule [sic] that takes photos with lower resolution than a standalone digital camera costing half as much. There are a smattering of modems for landline phone connections, but no wireless or Ethernet. Innogear has been promising a killer "Six Pack" module that acts as a standard modem, a bridge to an Internet-enabled wireless phone, a voice recorder, and several other functions--but although it was promised last spring, it has yet to see the light of day and currently has no official release date. Several vendors announced their intentions to release Springboards supporting the emerging Bluetooth wireless standard, but these too are nowhere to be found today.

The lack of Springboard modules has put the Visor in the somewhat ironic position of being, at least in some respects, less expandable than the Palm PDAs with which it competes--and which were never even designed to be expandable in the first place. Case in point: Novatel Wireless is planning to release a Springboard-based Minstrel wireless modem, but currently will only say that "availability [is] to be announced later this year"; meanwhile, you can buy a Minstrel modem for a Palm III or Palm V today.

The Visor Deluxe was a worthwhile purchase a year ago. But the promises made then have lost some of their spring today. Bottom line: if you are buying a new PDA, carefully consider the current Springboard offerings against similar hardware add-ons for Palm PDAs. Maybe you would be better off getting a Palm. A Palm IIIxe today costs the same as a Visor Deluxe and has most of the same features.




Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 249