Y'all. GodDAMN! My Palm IIIxe is driving me nuts, and Palm tech support is no help at all.

Here's the gig:

I bought my Palm IIIxe in January 2001. I would be lost without this thing. Originally, I hooked it up to a regular PC with a serial port. When I changed jobs, I hooked it up to a crappy Gateway Astro machine through a USB port with the Palm USB Connect Kit. Last week, I switched to a laptop - but there's no serial port, so I'm using the USB kit AGAIN. (By the way, I have a strong hatred for all things USB.)

So. My new computer. It runs on Windows ME (not my choice). I installed the Palm Desktop software, the PocketMirror upgrade, and I followed the instructions to install the USB serial adapter driver using the Windows ME Driver.

The fucking thing won't sync! This is driving me mad. Seriously, I am so angry, I could spit. Palm now charges $25 for tech support, the fuckers, and their online chat support is nothing more than a glorified chatbot.

Can anyone help? I am desperate!

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Answers

This is killing me, y'all. I tried the chat support AGAIN, and it is worthless.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

T, might this help?

I wish I could do more for you. If you want, email me and I'll pass along The Smoker's number.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Buy a mac.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

Have you tried using your USB port for anything else? That's the first thing I'd check. Make sure that the port itself is working.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

Buy a Mac? And be confined to USB hell forever? No, thanks!

The USB port works. I uninstalled and reinstalled everything - AGAIN - and it syncs, but it syncs weird and there are lots of conflicting edit errors with the Chapura upgrade I installed. Oh, and KERNEL32.DLL errors. I neet to take the time to debug those errors, but I really don't want to deal with it now - I just want to use my calendar and my contacts and my Vindigo. I've been two weeks without a Vindigo update, here! Torture, the lack of Vindigo is.

Oh, and now when I sync, it tells me that it's syncing EVERYTHING - DiddleBug, WineScore, NoahLite, Bejewelled, MineSweep - all these programs that really shouldn't be syncing.

I blame it all on the USB. Die, USB! Die! Whoever invented USB is a masochist, I tell you what.

Thanks for all of the advice so far - if anyone knows what a KERNEL error is, please feel free to share.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

Yeah? Well I hate you too, bitch!

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

Hey, man -- have you tried the "crash when she tries to play a video file, no matter what format it's in" trick yet? When I do it takes me for-fucking-EVER to reboot because I'm laughing so hard.

Of course, the skank spilled green tea all over my keyboard a couple days later. I hate her.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

All you rogue USB ports and video things, be warned. I did something to this maching that made my USB realize who is boss, because now, all of a sudden, I can sync my Outlook AND my Vindigo, AND I can use my mouse in the other USB at the same time.

Schooled you, you USB wanna-be! H to the izz-A. HA!

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

Now that T has properly made her USB her bitch, anyone want to recommend some Palm applications to me (on a Vx, 8 MB, OS 3.5)?

I play way, way too much AckWire.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

You have Vindigo, right?

I've been known to play a lot of Bejeweled when I'm waiting in a line.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

I am a Palm loser because I have yet to sync mine. Oh well.

Is there a program that is just for entering birthdays and anniversaries etc?

I have nothing but the basics.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

The Vindigo is my friend. Though their New York listings are considerably more comprehensive than their Atlanta listings.

Is Bejeweled available on Palmgear?

Hannah, what I do is enter my friends' birthdays in my DateBook and use the "repeat every year" function. You might try something like this, though.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

Handspring Pro, 16 mgs over heya. Love it.

So far I've only downloaded solitaire games which will keep me happy forever. And a day.

The Track Your Girl Stuff download I tried I didn't like and I'm just going to wait until Taking Charge of Your Fertility launches their Palm app to go with the PC app later this year.

Tried two personal library tracking programs so far, dropped them both. The first just had a bad interface and annoyed me. The second was all good until I realized that no matter how many ways I sort the list it still shows me the list by title only. I can not get a list by author name. And when I'm in a bookstore calling up the list of books I want that's really fucking annoying because books aren't shelved by title, dumbasses.

What pray tell is Vindigo?

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

H, there is a program like that. It's called Happy Days, and you can add a custom field in your Contacts called "birthday" or "anniversary", and Happy Days will list them in chronological order so you can look at important dates coming up for the month of February at a glance, say. And it tells you how old the person is turning too! love it.

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002