Friday, April 8th, 2005, 3:26 am
Top 10 Palm Usability Flaws
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Palm OS is a wonderful platform, but like all others, it exhibits some irrational behaviour.
- #1: Clipboard too small
Example: have you ever tried to copy a portion of one memo onto another?
- #2: No undo stack
Example: erase an entire paragraph, then type in a single letter. Can the paragraph return back to life?
- #3: Limit on memo size
Description: a user runs out of memo space and needs to fragment the text.
- #4: Low-resolution applications
Description: even with high-resolution screens, scrolling is much needed, for example in Date Book.
- #5: No key locking
Example: Palm that powers up in the pocket.
- #6: Unquoted limit on number of categories
Example: hard-core Palm users that accumulate too many items under the restrictive number of categories.
- #7: Error log dismissed automatically
Description: on the PC-side, error logs disappear after 60 seconds; no option to change that exists.
- #8: Repeating events archived just once
Description: those who are fond of archiving will notice that repeating events get archived only once — at the end.
- #9: Searching twice within the same item
Example: ever tried finding all occurrences of a term in one single item? Searching is poor in scope. Only a global search is available and it highlights the first occurrence.
- #10: No alarm priorities/types
Example: loud alarm in the middle of a meeting or quiet alarm when a crucial event comes up.
Cited by: PalmAddict
April 8th, 2005 at 8:35 am
#3: Limit on memo size
With recent palmOne devices, maximum memo size was increased from 4K to 32K.
#7: Error log dismissed automatically
This is actually a feature — if you’re doing a network HotSync to a remote PC, if the error log wasn’t automatically dismissed, the PC wouldn’t be able to handle more HotSyncs. This works a lot better with HotSync Manager 6 — the logs are now HTML files that you can bring up at any time.
April 8th, 2005 at 9:24 am
The built-in application launcher’s “SD card” category is quite stupid too. Why can’t the user assign programs to other categories?
April 8th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
Failure to sense the need for capitals when entering addresses eg: enter 31 Acacia Avenue and you need to make the caps shift stroke twice.