Handspring Gets Colorful
Handspring springs into action with a color Visor to challenge Palm's offering.Yardena Arar, PCWorld.com
In the latest skirmish of the ongoing battle of the Palm OS-based personal digital assistants, upstart Handspring scores with its first color offering, the Visor Prism. It's slightly more compact and has a nicer-quality color display than Palm's competing Palm IIIc. However at $449, the Prism is also a hefty $120 more expensive than the newly-reduced IIIc (which, until the day the Prism launched, sold for $399).
Correction: The paragraph above was modified on October 19, 2000.--Editors
Size First
From a head-on view, the Visor Prism is almost indistinguishable from its monochrome counterparts, the Visor, Visor Deluxe, and Visor Platinum (which is also shipping Monday). The Prism comes with 8MB of RAM and runs version 3.5.2H, a Handspring variant of the Palm operating system.
The only visible differences from the monochrome models are the color of the chassis (the Prism's slate-blue hue isn't available on the other models, nor can you choose any of the original Visor's translucent colors for the Prism) and the positioning of the on-off button on the lower right rather than the lower left; Handspring says this seemingly minor cosmetic change allowed it to preserve the original Visor's footprint. However, turn the unit sideways and you'll notice that, at just over three-quarters of an inch, it's a smidge thicker than a conventional Visor. At 6.9 ounces, the Prism is only a scant 1.5 ounces heavier than its siblings--a difference you can hardly feel. The Palm IIIc weighs a tad less (6.8 ounces) and is slightly thinner than the Prism, but its overall footprint is somewhat larger.
One other matter: We wish the Prism came with a flip-up lid, or a removable lid, to protect the screen (as do the Palm and other Visor models). But with so many flip-open cases around, that omission is hardly a fatal flaw.
The Visor Prism's backlit color screen shines a tad less brilliantly than the Palm IIIc's in a side-by-side comparison. But while the Palm supports 256 colors, the Prism offers a display that supports 65,000-plus colors. For many applications, the increased (16-bit) color depth won't matter at all, but if you plan to use your PDA to store photos or videos, you'll get better-looking images with the Prism. Out of the box, the Prism has color support in its calculator and CityTime world time map.
In Colorful Sync
Like other Visors, the Prism comes with a Universal Serial Bus-based HotSync cradle, but this one also comes with a small AC adapter so that the unit recharges when it sits in the cradle. Note that the USB cradle (which syncs more quickly than the serial-port cable that comes with a Palm) requires Windows 98 or 2000; if you want to HotSync with a PC running Windows 95 or NT 4.0, you'll have to buy a $30 serial-port cradle.
How long you can expect to use the Visor between charges depends on what activities you use it for and the brightness setting you choose. Handspring says its rechargeable internal lithium-ion batteries will last about as long as those on a Palm IIIc--one to two weeks on a full charge with "normal" (noncontinuous) use. Expect more of a drain if you use processor-intensive apps such as the ActiveSky video player or the Zap 2000 arcade-style game Handspring supplied for us to test the Prism's color capabilities. Thankfully, recharging a drained battery takes only about 90 minutes.
The Prism also offers the extras that have helped make the Visor and Visor Deluxe so popular. (Handspring says it now commands 25 percent of the Palm OS market.) The Date Book+ calendar app offers three views you don't get with the Palm--weekly and annual calendars, plus a text list of appointments--on top of the daily and monthly views you do get with a Palm. And you also get Handspring's versatile Springboard slot for additional hardware modules that slide in as easily as video game cartridges. The added functionality you can gain ranges from wireless Internet connectivity to an MP3 player to the recently announced mobile-phone capability of the VisorPhone.
If you'd like a color Palm-based device for photos, and you have money to burn, check out the Visor Prism. But for most users, the Palm IIIc's newly reduced price will be more attractive than the Prism's pretty display.
Correction: The paragraph above was modified on October 19, 2000.--Editors