I finally gave my old Palm Pilot another shot after years of thinking it was junk

I was stuck at a rest stop near Flagstaff with a dead phone, and I remembered the old Handspring Visor in my glove box still had my route notes from 2008... so I popped in a fresh AAA battery and it booted right up, giving me the directions I needed. The whole thing felt like a weird time capsule, but it got me home without a hitch. Has anyone else had an ancient gadget bail them out in a pinch like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_xena2mo ago

weird time capsule" is right... I read an article once about a guy who used a Game Boy Camera to take a photo when his phone died.

kim.grace2mo ago

Remember what else was on that Visor (like old contacts or notes)?

barbaraschmidt25d ago

Piggybacking on that Game Boy Camera idea, I had a buddy who used his old iPod Nano to pull up a saved Wikipedia page about basic car repairs when his phone died and he was stuck on the side of the road. The screen was tiny and scratched to hell, but it had the info on changing a flat tire step by step. He said it felt like using a relic from a museum, but it got his spare on in twenty minutes. I think there's something cool about how those old gadgets just keep working without needing updates or signal. They're like little bricks of backup knowledge sitting in a drawer.