I read all of The HP Palmtop Paper over and over. I would like to see more on the use of the Palmtop as a sales/marketing tool and on how to install software.
I already use Phonebook for this purpose. My Phonebook database has 600 entries and I can't imagine how I ever got along without it. I vaguely remember constantly paging through my DayTimer phonebook and stacks of phone lists from various organizations within our company.
I'm very interested in utilizing the 200LX Palmtop more completely as a database reference tool in the performance of my job responsibilities. I'm a Marketing and Sales representative for Exxon Chemical Company and I market all of our polymer and film products to the Healthcare industry.
As you can imagine, the knowledge base required is fairly technical and requires that I carry with me a large amount of reference material particularly when I travel. In addition to my laptop and palmtop I probably carry with me 8-12 inches of reference material and in-progress work. Needless to say it is a real pain to drag all this paper with me.
The HP Palmtop has reduced some of this paperwork but not nearly as much as I would like.
Probably the greatest barrier to reducing this paperwork for me is that I'm a very slow typist. Some of the information can be downloaded via floppies to my Palmtop but most of the information needs to be input into a database on my Palmtop to make it more user friendly than just a series of documents.
Most of my co-workers have the same problem I do regarding the input of data into a personal organizer or palmtop. I believe that I'm the only one using a Palmtop though a couple are using "Wizards". It occurred to me several months ago that what this industry needs is for a third-party provider or supplier to market a service to Palmtop users that would create custom databases and input the data into the databases created. Such a service would be a "godsend" to all of us short on time and expertise in creating "custom databases" on the Palmtop. It would be a great way to offer packages of Palmtops to large companies with marketing and sales forces.
William D. Patrick
Exxon Chemical Company