Handspring Visor Edge

I upgraded from the original (thick, plastic, black) Visor to the (thin, metal, aluminium) Edge PDA.

Overall, the Edge is a big improvement; it is much thinner and easier to hold despite the cunningly-designed ridges on the edge of the original Visor, the stylus is much heavier and better balanced, the metal buttons are far more comfortable than the original clunky plastic ones, the screen is clearer than the original with a far better backlight, and the Edge is considerably faster (33MHz rather than 20MHz); that makes a big difference, particularly with software which does a lot of scrolling such as document readers and AvantGo where the screen display is no longer visibly built up on viewing long news items.

The inbuilt software is the same as that supplied with the original, albeit with minor enhancements, and Palm OS has been upgraded to version 3.5 from version 3.0; again, that doesn't make much difference. Personally, I'm not bothered by the lack of colour or an inability to upgrade the OS (unlike Palms).

The design takes some getting used to; the stylus is held in place in a groove on the outside of the Edge by a clip which obliges you to press a button on the stylus then slide it upwards out of the groove; doing so is awkward to begin with, particularly as the stylus is surpringly heavy. And Handspring has a fatal fascination with hard screen covers; the hinged cover on the Edge is reasonably robust, being aluminium and held on by four screws, but it still worries me that it could break off by accident, particularly as it hinges at an angle to the body of the Edge. Unlike the original Visor there is no leather slipcase provided so, if you remove the screen cover (as you can), you'll either have to buy a separate case or be very careful.

Another minor weakness is that the power cable doesn't plug into the back of the Edge's cradle as I would have expected; it plugs into a socket on the back of the USB connector which attaches to your PC or Mac. The cables going into the USB connector are rather brittle so there has to be a considerable gap between the socket and, say, a wall. That said, by the standards of other electronic goods I have the wall transformer at the other end of the power cable is small and light and both the power cable and the USB cable are reasonably long, say four or six feet.

Overall, despite these minor points, the Edge is very elegantly done: the screen somehow keeps cleaner than the original, the aluminium colouration is a matt treatment of the metal (not a paint, so it cannot become battered or flake off), and there are nice touches such as a muted green light - which, when pressed, doubles as the on-off switch - that flashes when the machine is being charged and can be used as a silent alarm.

No comments yet on battery life as I've only had the Edge for a few days, but it arrives uncharged and you have to charge it for about two hours before you can use it for the first time away from the cradle.

Best of all was that I didn't have to install the desktop software (Palm Desktop 3.1, rather than the 4.0 supplied with current Palms; 4.0 is considerably better but there are ways of using 4.0 with the Handspring... I just set up the cradle, put the Edge into it, pressed the button on the cradle and the Edge synced using the _existing_ desktop software, transferring from the PC the Visor software and data I had previously backed up, and everything worked perfectly thereafter. Remarkable!