RIP, Old Palm, my Friend

I’ve had a Palm PDA for so long it’s a little weird to no longer have one in my briefcase. First it was the Palm Pilot, then the breakthrough wireless Palm VII, and finally the innovative and unsung 802.11 enabled Palm Lifedrive. Along the way, several Palm programs became core apps in my life.

1- Contacts: Simple app but available from my PC and the Palm
2- Ebook reader: A few years ago, I downloaded a short story to my LifeDrive, and realized that the bright color screen allowed me to comfortably read ebooks! I opened an account on fictionwise.com, and have accumulated a whole library of books since then.
3- AvantGo: For many years, this great app downloaded the latest New York Times and other news sources each morning when I synced my Palm with my PC.
4- Two games: Bejeweled and Mahjong, to fill in those spare moments when nothing more serious would do!

Well, I’ve been watching the applications for the iPod Touch over the past year, and last month, I took the plunge, treating myself to a 32 Gb ipod Touch 2. All my music transferred from my 30Gb Classic quickly, and I was able to fill my core apps and more!

1- Contacts: I was able to move my Palm contacts over without a problem.
2- eReader Pro 1.3 is a great ebook reader, with more functionality than the Palm reader. Plus I can download books from my online library wirelessly.
3- AvantGo is not available for the Touch but I found something better, a free New York Times application. If I open it each morning while on wifi, all the articles are stored locally to my Touch. I also discovered a great program called Instapaper which allows me to store any web pages for later reading on my Touch or my PC.
4- Games: Bejeweled is there in all its colorful glory, and Moonlight Lite is a 3D Mahjong that is already driving me crazy.

Then there are the amazing number of quality applications for the Touch, with more being added every day. Many are free, others are 99 cents, and none I have seen are over ten dollars.

Anyone need a Lifedrive, and every accessory known to man? It'll be on eBay shortly!