Palm Desktop is a

personal information manager A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to personal information manag ...

computer program for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, and can be used alone or in combination with a

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provi ...

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in partic ...

Features

Palm Desktop contains four main modules which correspond to the four main modules of the original

Palm Pilot The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, later 3Com). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997. Accessories and pricing Pa ...

: * Contacts, analogous to

index cards An index card (or record card in British English and system cards in Australian English) consists of card stock (heavy paper) cut to a standard size, used for recording and storing small amounts of discrete data. A collection of such cards e ...

in a

Rolodex A Rolodex is a rotating card file device used to store business contact information. Its name, a portmanteau of the words ''rolling'' and ''index'', has become somewhat genericized (usually as ''rolodex'') for any personal organizer performing th ...

card file or

address book An address book or a name and address book is a book, or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address, telephone num ...

* Calendar information as discrete or repeating appointments * Tasks, sortable by priority, date or category in

task list Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves of various demands upon a person relating to work, ...

s * Notes, for reference materials, memoranda or

journal A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

entries Palm Desktop ships with all current Palm devices, and it can synchronize with a variety of devices using Palm's HotSync software. It is also available as a free download and can be used as a standalone application on personal computers. The Macintosh version has a much more sophisticated interface and many more options inherited from its history as Claris Organizer, including extensive printing capabilities for mailing labels and printed pages in various sizes of paper organizer.

History

The original Macintosh and Windows versions were similar, until

3Com 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe ex ...

purchased

Claris Organizer Claris Organizer is a personal information management (PIM) computer program for the classic Mac OS that Claris acquired from a small company called Trio Development and sold during the 1990s. Trio Development was founded by James Harker, Jack Weld ...

(a Mac-only product) from

Claris Claris International Inc., formerly FileMaker Inc., is a computer software development company formed as a subsidiary company of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were ...

and rebranded it as Palm Desktop 2. The four modules of Claris Organizer had influenced some of the original Palm developers, who were familiar with it from earlier work on the Macintosh. Palm Desktop 4.2 for Windows was perhaps the only version of Palm Desktop which was removed from Palm's website. The company removed it because there were problems with its installer. It was replaced by Palm Desktop 4.1.4E, which is identical except for its improved installer. Synchronizing with

Palm Pre The Palm Pre , styled as palm prē, is a multitasking smartphone that was designed and marketed by Palm with a multi-touch screen and a sliding keyboard. The smartphone was the first to use Palm's Linux-based mobile operating system, webOS. Th ...

: some external companies made it possible.

Last release

Palm Desktop 6.2.2 for Windows Vista was released around 2008. Users considering an upgrade to Palm Desktop 6.2.2 should know that this version does not support color-coding of events in the calendar application.

Compatibilities

Palm Desktop 6.2.2 works with: *

Multi-core CPU A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such a ...

s * The following Windows versions: **

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

(64-bits systems needs to manually install drivers, see the incompatibilities section) **

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

- Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate ( 32-bit editions) ** Windows XP Home and

Professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

(32-bit editions) **

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a defunct digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and Ultimate e ...

2005

Incompatibilities

This version is not compatible with the following: * Computers featuring multiple CPUs * 64-bit editions of Windows - 64-bit Windows devices were — for a long time — incompatible with USB cable sync, and must use other options such as serial port, infrared, WiFi or Bluetooth to HotSync. (The desktop software itself — either older version 4.1.4E or newest version 6.2.2 — works fine on Windows 7, 8, or 10 as desktop software without a remote device connected.) Since years, ACEECA developed a 64-bit driver for palm/garnet OS
available here.
*

Windows Server Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a group of operating systems (OS) for servers that Microsoft has been developing since July 27, 1993. The first OS that was released for this platform was Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server. With the r ...

Microsoft Tablet PC Microsoft Tablet PC is a term coined by Microsoft for tablet computers conforming to a set of specifications announced in 2001 by Microsoft, for a pen-enabled personal computer, conforming to hardware specifications devised by Microsoft and runn ...

Linux support

Palm does not provide a version of the software for Linux operating system, nor do they officially supporthttp://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/6503_en.html ''Synchronizing with a Linux Desktop'' — a note at the official technical support Web site of Palm. the ones developed by third parties such as:
ColdSync
(stopped in 2005)
Gnome-Pilot
* J-Pilot
KpilotPilotManager
(stopped in 2006)

References

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