A few weeks ago, I dropped my Palm IIIe, more or less killing the screen. (It became streaky and unreadable.) The fall must have damaged the video card in some way, as I took the whole damn thing apart, but couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. So it was time to buy another handheld.

For the past few months, I’d had my eye on a Sony Clié, the PEG-N760C, mostly due to its awesome color screen, Jog dial, and capacity to double as an MP3 player. Deciding that a really cool Palm was worth blowing some play money on, I bought one on EBay.

It worked just fine, except for one problem: I couldn’t get my desktop computer to recognize the memory stick. The Clié could read and write to the memory stick just fine, but my desktop kept telling me (falsely) that it wasn’t formatted. As a result, I couldn’t transfer anything to the memory stick, thereby rendering the MP3 function basically nil. So yesterday, for the second time, I spent hours trying to get the desktop to recognize the memory stick. I bought and tested out a new 128MB memory stick, in the hopes that the original 16K memory was somehow bad. No luck. I called Sony, but they couldn’t help, as they had never heard of such a problem. And because I bought the damn thing on EBay, the warranty was void. So sending it in for repairs would have cost me big bucks. Augh!

So, I started looking for software that might be of help. I found an amazing little product called BlueSync that sits on top of HotSync and syncs the memory stick with a particular folder on the desktop. Finally, I could transfer stuff to the memory stick! BlueSquirrel also makes such transfers to and from the memory stick much easier than they would be normally. (Of course, a song by my beloved Dave Matthews Band was honored with the first transfer.)

I also recently acquired a Targus Stowaway Keyboard, with which I am quite pleased. Now I’ll be able to work on various writings without taking the laptop. (My laptop is Paul’s old Sony Vaio, so it’s hardly big and bulky. But the Clié with the Targus keyboard will be so much cooler for roaming around town.

I also recently ordered an emergency 9V charger and what promises to be an excellent hard slim case for my Clié from Brando. (Sony’s cover sucks more than you can possibly imagine, as it falls off very easily.)

After all that pain and suffering, I am in love with my Clié again. And I can finally get back to work.