The Palm IIIe is a PDA from

Palm Computing Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 60 ...

released in 1999 briefly after the more expensive and more advanced Palm IIIx. It shared the same screen as the Palm IIIx, which improved upon the

Palm III The Palm III is a personal digital assistant that was made by the Palm Computing division of 3Com. It went on sale in 1998 as a replacement for the PalmPilot handheld. It was the first Palm handheld to support infrared file transfer and a Flash RO ...

's screen by featuring a new enhanced and easier to read LCD. Like the previous models, it offered 2-bit display (4 greyscales). The Palm IIIe had 2MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

, which is the same as the Palm III. It had a 16 MHz

Motorola DragonBall EZ Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor's DragonBall, or MC68328, is a microcontroller design based on the famous Motorola 68k, 68000 core, but implemented as an all-in-one low-power system for handheld computer use. It is supported by μClinux. It was d ...

CPU, said to be faster and more efficient than the 16 MHz

Motorola DragonBall Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor's DragonBall, or MC68328, is a microcontroller design based on the famous 68000 core, but implemented as an all-in-one low-power system for handheld computer use. It is supported by μClinux. It was designed by Mo ...

CPU found in all previous Palm models. The Palm IIIe featured an inverse

electroluminescent Electroluminescence (EL) is an optical and electrical phenomenon, in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field. This is distinct from black body light emission resulting from ...

backlight A backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid crystal displays (LCDs). As LCDs do not produce light by themselves—unlike, for example, cathode ray tube (CRT), plasma (PDP) or OLED displays—they need illumination ( ambient light or a ...

that illuminated the screen text instead of the screen background. This same feature was found on the Palm IIIx. This feature was an area of controversy as many people disliked it while many others found it to be an improvement. Like the Palm IIIx, the Palm IIIe shipped with

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 pro ...

3.1. However, unlike the Palm IIIx, the Palm IIIe did not have an upgradeable

Flash ROM Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use t ...

, instead using a permanent

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

. As a result of this the Palm IIIe had no

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

upgrade path. The Palm IIIe was the only Palm III series model not to ship with Flash ROM. Later a Special Edition IIIe device was released, which had a translucent clear case.

External links

3Com Delivers Palm IIIe Connected Organizer, Full-featured Handheld at Breakthrough Price
3Com/Palm Press Release, July 19, 1999

3Com/Palm Press Release, October 4, 1999 {{Palm Devices Palm OS devices 68k-based mobile devices

See also

External links