Dear Dr. Bob: What do you do with an old PalmPilot? My husband and I gave each other Handspring organizers last Christmas, and our old gizmos are collecting dust.
Dr. Bob: Martha Stewart devotes an entire show to tiling your bathroom with discarded Philips Ninos, the once-popular Windows CE handheld. I wouldn't advise that - the LCD screen probably doesn't hold a glaze anyway.
If you're not going to use it as a PDA, you should probably just toss it out, but there are a million other uses for an old Palm. OK, dozens. You can convert it into a dedicated eBook reader for your bedstand by clearing out its memory, save for the free Peanut Reader. You can also pair it with an infrared extender like OmniRemote ($40 from www.pacificneotek.com) to create a universal remote control for your electronics.
I've turned my retired Palm III into a control panel for a simple home network that lets me select MP3 songs remotely on my desktop PC. For this project, you'll need a long serial cable (around $20 for 25 feet) and a piece of software called Busker (free trial version or $7.95 for license at www.hausofmaus.com/busker.html). With the Palm secured in its docking station, use the cable to connect the Palm to your desktop's serial port and run MP3 software on your PC to serve music. I've mounted an old pair of speakers in the kitchen so now, when I'm cooking, I can order up songs from the desktop without leaving the countertop.
Got a tech question? Ask Dr. Bob at askdrbob@wiredmag.com.
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