Welcome to what may be considerd a very nostalgic issue of The HP Palmtop Paper. The nostalgia comes from recalling the names of software companies that dominated the early PC/MS-DOS market: Lotus Development Corp. and WordPerfect Company.
Each of these companies had a flagship product, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, that brought them fame and fortune. However, both companies produced programs that were not quite as famous. For example, Lotus sold Agenda, a PIM, and Magellan, a file manager. WordPerfect marketed DataPerfect, a relational database management system. These products were extremely versatile but required some effort to learn. They may not have gained market share but they did gain a dedicated group of users who continue to support the software to this day.
All of these products are now available as copyrighted freeware. However they come with no documentation and no company support. They require a commitment to learn how to use the programs from other users and/or the built-in help screens.
Ralph Alvy's article will introduce you to DataPerfect and explain why you might prefer it to the HP Palmtop's built in DataBase engine. Steve Bell's article will get you over the hurdle of installing and using Agenda for the first time. Both articles say where to go for more help and all the program files are available on the 1999 CD InfoBase and on our Web site at www.PalmtopPaper.com. We have also provided pre-installed versions of these programs to let you test drive them as effortlessly as possible.
If you want even more nostalgia take a look at my article on programming with Logo. It will bring out the kid in you. To see what others have done with Logo take a look at the article by Thomas Dow on using the HP 100LX's infrared port to control a robot.
Hal Goldstein's User to User column reinforces what we've known all along, namely, Windows CE machines may be state of the art but they have a long way to go to equal the size and functionality of our HP Palmtops.
Next issue we'll get back to basics (or should that be data-basics) and focus on the database applications built into the HP Palmtop. If you have a favorite database tip or technique and would like to see your name in print send me a note at ed@thaddeus.com.