But I make my living as an independent consultant, and learned a long time ago that it's important to remember the secretary's name, the client's birthday, and numerous other bits of information. The address book, always in my briefcase, is the logical place to keep this data.

This year, for the first time, I didn't buy a new address book. That's because, during the year, I bought a Palm IIIxe organizer instead, and it's been a better, more productive tool than my address book ever was.

I never had much desire for an electronic organizer. The keys always seemed too small and hard to use, the screen displays were tiny and you had to scroll to see anything at all.

But the Palm is different. For one thing, you can write directly into the Palm, using the Graffiti language built into the operating system. It's a slightly modified version of printing, with fewer strokes. And the Palm recognizes it far better than Apple's Newton organizer did. If you remember to write your letters large, you'll have few input errors.

You can, of course, use the keyboard, which pops up with a keystroke. That's the method my wife prefers (she also got a Palm when I did).

You can even buy keyboards that the Palm will connect to, including one that folds up almost as small as the Palm itself.

The display on the Palm is better than the old organizers, too. It's small, but in most cases the information you're seeking will show on one screen without scrolling.

You use a stylus to enter information, whether you tap on the keyboard or draw letters. The stylus slips into a slot on the back of the Palm case which holds it in place.

There are many add-ons you can get-custom cases and covers, styli that incorporate a pen, and assorted screen covers to protect the surface from scratching.

The Palm has a HotSync slot at the bottom that connects to a holder plugged into a serial port on your computer. That's how you back it up and add new programs.

But where there's a slot, someone will fill it. You can plug a modem into the slot and connect to the Internet.

Or stop SPCUG President Milt Hull and ask to see the Kodak camera he bought that plugs into the slot of his Palm IIIc. Surprisingly, the pictures are recognizable on the Palm, despite its resolution of 160x160.

(Note that Handspring makes a Visor, a Palm "clone," that shows 65k colors. The 16-bit color Palm IIIc doesn't show as many colors, but still looks very good. Palm has announced it will introduce a 32-bit color system this year.)

About the only thing you can't add is more than 8 MB of memory, the most a Palm comes with. But give it time. Sony has already introduced a Palm clone, the Clié, which uses Sony's proprietary memory stick technology to add 8 MB to the built-in 8 MB. There will be a color Clié, probably in the second quarter.

All these clones use the Palm operating system, but sometime offer slightly different features. The Handspring, for example, uses a different kind of slot designed for attaching add-on modules.

But what really persuaded me to get the Palm, and made me a believer in this organizing system, is the Palm's operating system.

If you've been dealing with personal computers since the early days, as I have, you know how exciting it was long ago when everyone involved was really dedicated, and cared more about getting these cool computer tools to do what we wanted than about making money from them.

The best minds were working under DOS, making new programs available for free or low cost. Memory-resident utilities (remember TSRs?) hacked with the system to make possible things we hadn't thought possible. The Palm arena is like that now.

Palmgear, possibly the best site for Palm software, seems to add 50-60 new or updated titles a day. Tucows, the mammoth shareware site, has a section for PDA (personal digital assistant) software. Handango is another popular site, and others spring up daily. (See Click Here in this issue for more Palm sites.) From the ferment of activity have come some terrific applications for the Palm.

The Palm comes with an address book, a date book, a to-do list, a memo pad, and a calculator. Four buttons below the screen of the Palm will start up each of those applications, and the Palm itself if it's not running. In the middle of the four buttons is a PageUp/PageDown button. All the clones have a similar layout.

The Palm also has an infrared port, which can be used, some have discovered, as a TV remote control, with the right freeware program. But the really big news is that this week, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a Palm was used to beam Visa payment information to a Sharper Image storefront. The store beamed back to the Palm a receipt, which could be printed directly to a printer or backed up to a computer.

When I first got my Palm, it didn't take me long to discover DateBk4 from Pimlico Software, which is a great bargain at $24.95, all of which goes to the Dewar Wildlife Trust for wildlife conservation projects.

The program allows you to make type bold or use different fonts; connect icons to events; use colors (on color devices) for events; set alarms to go off at any point before the event; repeat events on the same date or day of the month; link events to entries in your address book; display your to-do list on your calendar; show the datebook in one day, one week, one month, or four month formats.

You can create special views easily-I have one that shows me all birthdays in my calendar in date order. One nice feature lets you insert "floating events" on your calendar. You can make them a larger font, for example, and when you've completed the event, check it off and it disappears from the list.

Another application I bought early on was Address Plus, a $12 enhancement for the address book from Paul Taylor. Address Plus lets you sort on first name, last name, or company name (combined with either first or last name). You can also change a field in a group of records all at once, e.g., for a company name or phone change. An optional letter bar at the bottom of the screen lets you jump to a particular place in your address book.

One program I use a lot is thinkDB, which just moved to version 2.0. thinkDB is a relational database program from Thinking Bytes Technology. The Palm portion of the program is now free, and a desktop version (at $39.95) lets you create and edit databases, which thinkDB calls Tiny Bytes. The program has a form designer and a field editor, six levels of security, data compression, external lookups, and lots more features for professional and amateur developers. Hundreds of Tiny Bytes created by thinkDB users are available at the thinkDB Web site. These are also free.

I mentioned earlier how much enthusiasm there is among Palm users. The number of free applications and their richness is a testament to that.

Another application I find very useful is Strip from Zetetic Enterprises. Strip (Secure Tool for Recalling Important Passwords) lets you store passwords and user names for everything from credit cards to Web sites. It was developed by Stephen J. Lombardo under the GNU Public License, and can be used for free. It was chosen by Time Magazine Digital as one of the Top Five Palm Programs You Should Grab.

Strip is easy to use, has unlimited capacity, 128-bit encryption, automatically locks when you turn off the Palm, and can generate passwords for you if you like.

I've also used Checklist Lite quite a bit. Developed by Mobile Generation (now Handmark), this freeware applicaton is still available at Palmgear and perhaps other sites, but is no longer listed at Handmark. It's been supplanted by version 2.0, and is no longer freeware.

Checklist lets you maintain multiple checklists of things to do, products to buy, or other things. You can attach notes to individual items, and you can set your view to show all items on the list or only those not yet checked. It's a very useful, if very simple, program.

One great, small, free database program I use for many purposes is List. This is another good example of the kind of atmosphere prevailing in the Palm world. The program itself is free. The source code is freely available. And other authors have written add-ons for the program. For example, one author has released WListDB, a free program that allows creating and editing List databases under Windows.

List databases contain only three fields, and the author has stated he will not change that. However, with the full source code freely available, any programmer can change that restriction.

I haven't finished exploring the options for the Palm. There are hundreds of games, of course, which seems a particularly appropriate use for a Palm. But there are also many more productive applications.

For example, consultants can find a host of programs that will record their time spent on a job. And some will let you either enter the time, or start a clock that times the work.

Golfers can find programs, led by Intelligolf, that can not only track the scores in their foursome, but calculate clubs for particular courses (thousands available online for free), keep track of wagers and side bets during the match, and track handicaps.

Pilots have a host of programs to calculate crosswind speed, track air hours for certification purposes, log trips and aircraft maintenance, and much more.

And Quicken users can find multiple programs that allow entering transactions-ATM purchases, for example-which can then be transferred to Quicken on a PC during the HotSync process.

PocketPCs weren't available yet in their current form when I bought my Palm, but I'm not tempted by them. I can do more with my Palm already than I can keep up with. And I frankly don't want a PC in my pocket; I'm happy with a great organizer.