I have been told there is a way to get a Palm Pilot device or compatible, such as a Sony Clie, to talk to a mobile phone. I think it uses Bluetooth or something like that. If this is true, it would be great for me because I want to keep a record of all my messages, and I find it a lot easier using my Palm device to write messages. One more thing I need (actually, it is for my wife but I will be installing it) is Chinese messaging. Is there software specifically for Chinese, or will it work with anything? By the way, I use a Windows machine and my wife uses a Mac. Does that matter? Name supplied Lantau Most of the latest Palm devices contain an application called 'Messages'. With this you can communicate with other devices, such as a mobile phone, if it is set up properly. The easiest way to set this up is to have a Palm device with Bluetooth and a mobile phone with Bluetooth. Infrared can work, but most people get frustrated with that because you have to line up the devices - and you never quite know what is happening until you get a message that says nothing happened. Once you have set up the devices to talk to each other using Bluetooth (if a problem crops up, the shop where you bought the phone should be able to help), you can write messages on your Palm device and send them to another handset via your mobile phone. This works extremely well if your Palm is easier to use for entering text. You can also get messages from the phone and download them to the Palm device. They can then be moved to your computer for archiving. For Mac users, there is an additional trick that works very well with certain Bluetooth-enabled phones. If you open up the address book, you will see in the upper left a little Bluetooth symbol. Click on that, and it should recognise your phone. When a call comes into your machine, a window should pop up on your screen that asks what you want to do: answer the call, send an SMS, send a voice message - or ignore. You can also click on the mobile phone number and get a pop-up menu that will allow you to send an SMS to that person, or ring the number using your mobile phone. A word of warning: my Sony-Ericsson P800 can send and receive calls but the SMS function is greyed out. This is presumably because there is a version 'incompatibility'. As for Chinese messages, you may have a problem. I tried sending a Chinese message to someone using a Palm device and a mobile phone but the Palm refused to acknowledge there was any message there on the phone, even though we could see it clearly. One of the best sources for Palm software is, of course, PalmSource. The following link has a lot of information on software for handling SMS for the Palm platform. If you go to the site and scroll down, you will find MobileMessenger. It claims to handle Chinese (traditional and simplified), as well as Korean and Japanese. You can download a trial version from www.palmsource.com/interests/mobile_messaging/#sms It is important to check the versions of your software on both the phone and the Palm device. Sometimes it may be necessary to check for Bluetooth versions as well. If you cannot download and use a product for a trial period, you may find you have something that does not work. Questions to Tech Talk will not be answered personally. E-mail Danyll Wills at tech.talk@scmp.com
