I am a Mac user. I have used a Treo 650 with VerizonWirelss for almost 2 years. Several times I have had my address book on my computer messed up after syncing even if I made sure that the phone could not sync to the computer and only the computer could sync to the phone. Now I want a small phone. Therefore I am wanting a separate Palm Pilot.

Can anybody recommend a separate Palm Pilot (one without a phone) that works very well with Now Software? One that can take as many categories as you might make in Now-Contact?

Which Palm Pilot will you recommend?

I am a diehard Mac user and have used the Handspring, Zire 71, Treo 650, and now have a Treo 700p. All have worked fine with my Mac, other than the common stuff that always happens.

During my Zire 71 stage, I finally bought a Verizon phone, and within a year decided I tired of carrying two devices with me. I used the Treo 650 until I lost it and upgraded to the 700p.

I use Missing Sync which seems to work better than the Palm Hotsync. As for categories, Palm's program will only handle 15 categories which has been a frustrating feature for me. Palm has a new CEO who worked on the iPhone, and he is revamping the Palm line including a totally new software program. His goal is to have it out later this year, and he is revamping the hardware design as well. I suspect it will more in the iPhone direction.

The Zire is the latest Palm Product I used without a phone. I am curious about the problems you described. I suspect you ended up with two of everything when you least expected it. That has happened to me, and once I realized why it happened, I know how to avoid it.

Thanks for your answer. You are right. I did sometimes end up with one or more contacts getting duplicated. Though I would then easily delete the duplicated contacts.

The worst, though, is my category list. I just counted them up. I have 37 categories. They keep on getting "reorganized" when I download my information into the Treo phone. I have at least 4 times gone to my Now Contact list and rearranged them back to what I want them to be just to find that they have been rearranged again or some have gone missing. For example, I keep on getting 4 "personal" categories even if I keep on going in, finding the contacts, change them back to what I want to call them and eliminate all the 4 "personal" categories. The next thing I know is that I again have 4 "personal" categories: 2 contacts in two of them, 3 in another and 6 in the last or something like that ( I do not use the "personal" categories myself at all. I have eliminated all "personal" categories 4 times). Then all my "families" might suddenly be called "Attorneys" or "Airlines". Then my "airline" category might go missing and only two airlines has been redefined as "personal" - and getting 4 "personal" categories again. My business category has duplicated in the in the list, but there a 0 contacts in the two business categories and some of my business contacts are now in a "personal" category. I might have lost some of my businesses - who knows what I might loose. And so on, and so on. Sad Evil or Very Mad Smile

Also, If I change a phone number of a contact, the change will not get downloaded. I will need to change the name (I put an "a" in front of the name for example) download to the phone again, then go in and take off the "a" and download one more time. Then I finally have changed the phone number of that contact. So I am giving up.

Now I have gone out and bought myself a very small phone that I love. And now I would rather drag around with two devises IF I can find a devise that will be able to take my 37 categories and not rearrange them or do anything else foolish to my contact list and/or my calender.

From what you are saying, it sounds like there will be something coming out that is an improvement to "Palm Pilots" sometime later this year.

I know this may not help a lot, and definitely not yet, but Pocket PC's (Windows Mobile devices) don't have any restriction on the number of categories, allow more than one category per item, and sync beautifully with the Mac using the Missing Sync.

The problem for you is that there are not too many non-converged ones around now, and you won't be able to sync with NUDC, though you will be able to with NightHawk when it's out.

If Palms are going the way of the iPhone, then I'd guess the improvements would be UI based, not functionality. From what I've seen the iPhone is a very weak PDA (it has zero categories for example!), though of course that doesn't mean Palms will be as bad.

Mark

A large part of your problem may well be the number of categories. Even after adding in category support to the calendar, Palm still has a 15 category limit. In some references I have seen it listed as '15 + Unfiled', but I tend to see issues any time 15 total is exceeded. Adding category support to the calendar has made it important to have some categories in both Now Up-to-Date and Now Contact share the same name. That stretches the 15 a bit further.