The Visor Deluxe is the second brainchild of the inventor of the original Palm Pilot. When Jeff Hawkins left Palm Computing, he left with a licensing agreement for the PalmOS. It was a while before it was publically known what he was going to do with the licence. Well, now we know, and it's a whopper - the Handspring Visor!

It's a PDA which runs PalmOS. It's actually the first actual product to use PalmOS. I've heard several rumors of products supposed to run PalmOS but they're still "vaporware" as far as I know.

	The Visor Deluxe

It's similar in form factor to the 3COM Palm III series, with some well thought out improvements. First of all, it's easy to grip. The case is a little narrower than the Palm III, with well placed ridges along the sides. It's every bit as rigid as the Palm III. The standard Palm-type buttons for direct access to the ToDo list, Address book, etc are concave (you can push them all with a stylus)and have more pronounced tactile feedback than those of the Palm III. They 'click' when you push them. The up/down buttons are actually two separate buttons, whereas the Palm III has a rocker. I prefer the Visor buttons to the Palm buttons - I've heard conflicting opinions on this point, but, hey....this is my site...and I like them..so there!

The Visor appears to run a little faster than the Palm III. My informal tests confirm this - I ran some large sorts in Jfile, and they completed about 10% faster on the Visor.

One of the cool improvements to the Palm is the long awaited USB HotSync. It's faster and just as easy to set up as it's supposed to be. 'nuff said.

	The Visor Shown Next to Its Case

The contrast wheel is gone. It's replaced with a little dot on on the graffiti area that brings up an on screen slider, a la Palm V. Nice - especially since you don't need a case with a cutout for the wheel.

The speaker is louder than on the Palm - that I really liked.

The built in date book (date book plus) was a welcome improvement over the standard Palm version.

I guess you can see that I got the standard black vesion - well, there's also a number of other colors to choose from - Green, Blue, etc. A very nice touch.

Now, the BIG ONE - The Springboard slot. Handspring has endowed the Visor with infinite expandability using the Sprinboard slot. This means that you can easily add in more memory, or, programs (like a Nintendo Gameboy slot). That's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, though. The Springboard module can be used for just about anything you can think of - there are plans for GPSs, pagers, Cell phones (oh, yeah, the Visor has a built in microphone), BlueTooth (radio) modules, even, get this, an oscilloscope. I can't wait to see that one!

Not quite - there are a few things that cropped up that I found less than perfect. Overall, it's still a killer device.

The Visor comes with a plastic cover that is decidedly different from the Palm III's. The Visor cover clips on the front, and is completely removed in order to use the Visor. It can be clipped to the back fully out of the way, a commonly cited problem with the Palm III's cover which only folds back over the top. While I don't especially like the Handspring solution to Palm's cover problem, it makes sense when you read some of the job openings on the handspring site - one job posting I read stated that the applicant should be able to make design decisions which solve problems and not add functions. With that in mind, this new cover makes sense - still, I don't much care for it. Lucky for me, the Visor Deluxe I reviewed came with a nice leather slip case, and which I liked better.

After all that, I kept in in my Rhinoskin Shocksuit (designed for the Palm III) during my review period. It fit almost perfectly. Rhinoskin has released a case tailored specifically to the Visor, so, using that case (which I haven't tried) should be a perfect fit.

The backlight was noticibly darker on the Visor than on my Palm IIIX. It wasn't so dark that it wasn't useful, but, I prefer the brightness of Palm IIIX screen.

I upgraded the desktop software from my Palm IIIX to the Visor. When I did that, I ended up having to reinstall BackupBuddyNG. No big deal, there, it's just something to note. Overall, the transition was pretty painless.

	The SpringBoard Slot (Empty)

I found the stylus that comes with the Visor to be quite poor. I usually use a 3rd party stylus, anyway, but, on the rare occasion that I forgot it and had to use the built in stylus, I was most unhappy. I suppose it was a cost savings measure - the Visor is significantly less expensive than the Palm series, however, the stylus is a pretty important item in my mind. Also, unlike the Palm organizers, there is no reset pin hidden inside the stylus -if you need to reset, you'd better go find a paperclip. I noticed that the standard Palm IIIX reset pin won't work in the Visor, either - the Visor's hole is smaller and deeper.

• Low price - $249-95 for the Deluxe version. Entry level model at only $149.95!!!
• A full 8MB of RAM in the Deluxe version
• Easily expandable with the Springboard slot

• OS not flash upgradable
• Stylus is unlikeable
• Dim screen backlight

There's no denying that the Visor deserves the TekCool award!!! I want one for myself! Sending it back killed me - and I haven't even had the pleasure of using the springboard slot, yet (besides trying out the Tiger Woods golf game that comes with it in a Springboard module).

Bill Griffith operates TekReview.com, a website dedicated to providing comprehensive, unbiased product reviews from a true user perspective. He can be reached at bigpaws@hotmail.com.