This is my cell phone. It's a Handspring Treo 300 running PalmOS 3.5. It's fun and easy to use, and since it's also a PalmOS device, it's convenient in lots of other ways (I'm not worried about losing my address book if I lost the phone, for example). I use it as my main email client when I'm traveling. I've noticed lately that I tend to use the speakerphone feature on this thing a lot, and I hold the phone in front of me as I speak. Then, when I'm done, I flip the cool lid down with a nice satisfying click.

This is my PDA. It's a Sony CLIE NX-80V running PalmOS 5.0. I've found it to be enormously useful in organizing my life. I keep my address book, my calendar, my to-do list, a calculator, a sketch pad, a web browser, another email client, and a notebook for writing. A lot of my work began life as a couple of paragraphs jotted down in the Palm Memo Pad. I haven't written a whole play on this thing yet, but I could if I needed to.

The coolest thing about this PDA, though, is that it's more than just a PDA. It's also a still photo camera, a movie recorder, and a voice recorder. Imagine that: it records three things...

I don't know if anyone's planning to come out with a phaser that runs PalmOS, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a very popular device, and I'd be right in line to get one if I could. I guess once I've started down that road, it's only a matter of time before I started wearing form-fitting shirts in bright primary colors and high-heeled black leather boots, so probably it's all for the best that no such product exists.

I don't think it's an accident that these things look like Star Trek gear. Or maybe the prop guys on Star Trek were just pretty good industrial designers. Either way, I can't open that Treo without wanting to ask Scotty to beam me up, and I can't open the CLIE without wanting to scan for lifeforms. If I had the PalmOS phaser, I guess I'd be looking for Klingons or malevolent computers to shoot, so again, it's probably all for the best that no such product exists.