From TNPC issue #4.03...

Visor Moves to the Head of Its Class

by Al Gordon
February 8, 2001

What a difference a year makes.

At this time last year (TNPC #3.01), I was griping loudly about the technical problems, quality control issues, and distribution woes associated with the Handspring Visor.

The product of the team that launched the original Palm Pilot, the Visor was long on hype and short on product. It is a considerable achievement for Handspring that it was able to survive the Christmas '99 fiascoes and move on into second place in market share among handhelds during 2000.

Quality control, production, and distribution improved. Two new models have joined the product lineup that take the Visor line into technical superiority over Palm, Inc.'s own products. The promise of the Visors' proprietary "Springboard" expansion modules finally is being realized and the Palm line is stagnating.

All of which makes the new Handspring Visor Platinum (monochrome) and Prism (color) my favored choices for the Palm OS platform.

Both the Platinum and Prism are powered by Motorola's DragonBall VZ 33 MHz processor, for a claimed 50% speed advantage over previous generation Visors and double the speed of Palm IIIs. I ran the Quartus Benchmark application for Palm OS on the Prism, and my test unit actually ran a little faster than the claimed performance level. The Prism and Platinum have the latest Palm OS 3.5 and a few more standard applications than Palm provides.

The two new units, like the old workhorse Visor Deluxe, have 8 MB of RAM. The enhanced speed pays dividends with the Prism. The color unit has lead the legion of Palm developers to build color into their apps, which of course, makes the apps bigger and in need of more horsepower to run. Don't expect to see it run like a Pentium IV, but you will see much better performance than Palm's IIIc color unit.

Moreover, unlike the 256-color IIIc, Prism has 16-bit (65,000 colors) color. The display is sharp and entirely more readable than the monochrome Palm OS LCD screens. Color-enabled apps look exceedingly cool. It is a welcome plus for my middle-aged eyes.

As with all Visors, true native USB connections are standard and Sync times are noticeably shortened compared to serial port links.

But there is no free lunch. At $449, the Prism is no cheaper than the IIIc, and color is an energy hog. Handspring, like Palm, compensated by making rechargeable batteries standard in the color unit. Still, you won't be running for a couple of weeks on a single charge like monochrome units. I also found the color screen (and also the one on the IIIc) to be less responsive to stylus input than monochrome screens.

If color is not an issue for you, the $299 Visor Platinum is a cost-effective choice. Same high performance (actually real world performance is higher because it doesn't have to support the overhead of color), same 8 MB RAM, and same USB sync cradle.

There are still things that under whelm me with Handspring. At the price point of the new units, I would like to have seen sturdier construction, with maybe some metal in addition to the plastic. Also I would have liked to see rechargeable cells in the Platinum as well as the Prism.

Nevertheless, the new Visors have moved to the head of the Palm OS class. Next I'll be looking at the major accessories available for these handhelds.

Visor Platinum
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/403/tr.cgi?visor1

Visor Prism
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/403/tr.cgi?visor2

You can reach Al Gordon at:
mailto:al@TheNakedPC.com

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