Palm One, Handspring

This article is about the company. The handspring is also a gymnastics move. more...

Handspring was a maker of Personal Digital Assistants using the Palm OS operating system. The original inventors of the Palm Pilot and founders of Palm Computing were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan. Palm Computing later became a division of US Robotics, which was then bought by 3Com. When the founders became unhappy at the direction in which 3Com was taking the company, they left and founded Handspring in June 1998. In 2003, Handspring merged with Palm, Inc.'s hardware division to form palmOne. The Treo 600 was the last product to use the Handspring name.

Handspring Visor

The company launched the Handspring Visor line of products on September 14, 1999 which, unlike most products produced by Palm at the time, used USB to synchronize with the desktop computer and included an expansion port. The USB support made these the first Palm devices to work with the Macintosh operating system out of the box. More liberal than the Palm Pilot, the Visor line featured vibrantly colored handhelds focused more towards average people. The expansion port, called the Springboard Expansion Slot, allowed for addition of modules such as games, ebooks, extra memory, universal television remotes, cellular telephones, modems, MP3 players, digital cameras, and even a device for connecting to an EKG.

Visor and Visor Deluxe

Handspring first introduced the Visor Solo, which was black and contained two megabytes of onboard memory. The Visor Deluxe had the option of translucent colored models, and had eight megabytes of onboard memory. The Visor and Visor Deluxe used Palm OS 3.1H, a modified version of the OS from Palm that included an enhanced datebook, a city time application, and an advanced calculator. Unlike the Palm Pilot, the Visor's infrared port was placed on the side of the device to make room for the Springboard. Critics of the device note the lack of rubber between the buttons and metal contacts making the buttons harder to press. There were also complaints that the screen cover was not connected, making it easy to lose.

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