Two-AAA batteries power the PalmModem. The manual states that the batteries will last for about three hours of continuous use. I think that for the typical user, this results in the batteries lasting for months of normal use. Even under the heaviest use, my batteries usually last for at least a couple of weeks. The PalmModem beeps when the batteries fall below 15% capacity.

The PalmModem has an RJ-11 phone jack on its bottom for plugging into a standard phone line. As with all modems, care must be taken to only plug the modem into analog and not digital phone lines. Most office phones and many hotel phones are now digital. Even though the phone jacks may look alike, many digital PBX systems produce a severe over-current that can damage your PalmModem. If you travel a lot and plug into lots of strange phone lines, you should consider buying a "modem saver" device. One company that has a modem saver solution is TeleAdapt, at http://www.teleadaptusa.com/nme/order_solutions.htm. A modem saver will help you quickly identify usable analog telephone lines and protect your PalmModem from damage.

Software
The PalmModem comes with the following software: MultiMail Pro 2.26, AOL Mail 1.2, and Yahoo Messenger 1.0.

The MultiMail Pro software provided is an older version of this application, not the current 3.1 version. Nevertheless, it's a capable email package that will likely meet most users' needs, although it's not the package I use on my Palm IIIc. In a future article in this series, I'll discuss the alternatives available to you.

MultiMail Pro will allow you to pick up and send email using most ISPs and business email servers. It won't work with a secure email server utilizing SSL (Secure Socket Layer), however. In fact, at this time, I'm not aware of any Palm email package that supports SSL. This is unfortunate because I'm finding more and more business email servers becoming security conscious and implementing SSL.

Of course, AOL Mail can be used by AOL subscribers to pick up and send email. I'm not an AOL user, so I can't offer any comment on this software.

Yahoo Messenger allows you to use the free Yahoo instant messaging service. I used it for a while, and it worked just fine. I've since replaced it with AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). AIM is free, even if you're not an AOL customer. There's really not all that much difference between Yahoo Messenger and AIM, except for the fact that far more people use AOL Instant Messaging than use Yahoo's service.

Other uses for the PalmModem
So, what else can you do with a PalmModem? Well, for one thing, you can use it to surf the Web. If you already have AvantGo installed on your Palm device, you can use that program to access Web pages. Just use the Open Page command under the Channels menu. The AvantGo browser supports cookies and SSL.

Alternatively, if you don't have AvantGo on your Palm device, or you would like to use a more sophisticated browser on it, you can try Blazer. It's downloadable for free at http://www.bluelark.com. This advanced browser supports bookmarks, SSL, cookies, and the WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) and CHTML (Compact Hypertext Markup Language, used by Japan's wildly popular i-mode service protocols), in addition to HTML. Neither AvantGo nor Blazer support JavaScript or Java applets.