LaRosa Johnson {dot} com

After much debate & personal thinking, I was finally convinced to get a palm by my friend Antoine of Mobile Ministry Magazine. The result was a starter Palm that would suit my needs for the time being, as well as being a very nice Palm for a beginner; the actual model was the brand new, sleek and very affordable Palm Z22.
For the longest time, I looked at my life and thought I was one of those people that wouldn’t ever need a palm pilot to organize my life. Well, it wasn’t until I began to talk with Antoine, whom I met at the Holy Culture Mixtape Radio forums a few months ago, that he began to reveal some of the things that I could do with a PDA. One of the primary things he showed me was the open source software Palm Bible+, whose web site he maintains. I was very intrigued by the idea of having an electronic Bible at my fingertips that I could easily carry around without always having to lug around a heavy Bible. Then I figured that I could use it to take notes at church instead of having to carry around my notebook. And then use it for the normal PDA uses that any other person would use it for to organize their life.
Well, being the techie that I am, I figured that I wouldn’t have a very hard time getting this setup and working. Quite to my liking, the product was very easy to setup; the software installed quickly & easily. After charging the Z22, I went ahead and sync’d it with my computer for the first time; pieace of cake! I then ran through the tutorial that came pre-installed on the Z22 so that I could learn my way around the Palm OS and get a grasp on the Graffiti shortcuts for writing. That didn’t take long and I got the hang of it without much effort. The only real problem I have is writing my t’s with the graffiti because i tend to do the cross before the vertical line, which doesn’t work on the Palm. Once I did all of that, I downloaded Palm Bible+ (http://palmbibleplus.sourceforge.net) and was able to get that installed on there without any problems. I then downloaded a KJV version of the Bible to start with (before learning to make my own Bibles). I also installed other software such as Adobe Acrobat Reader so that I could read PDF versions of some e-books.
Well, after playing around with everything, I felt that I was ready to go. It just so happened that our trip to Detroit was coming up and it was the perfect opportunity to really test this thing out. On the trip to the airport, I did some reading via Adobe, as well as on the plane. While in Detroit, I used it to study the Scriptures, and even take some notes for some album reviews that I needed to write. I had my MP3 player (Zen Sleek) on as I listened to the albums, and was actively taking down my notes with Palm’s Memo application. While I was in Detroit, I also decided to go ahead and try to fill in the calendar and tasks so that I could get more use out of it. I was quite surprised to find out that I had more stuff to fill into the calendar than I thought I did. It’s quite useful for remembering those things that I often forget. I’ve even got it setup to keep track of my daily Bible reading plan as I attempt to read through the Bible in a year; I have them setup as daily tasks for myself.
I really looked forward to today because it gave me the opportunity to finally use the Palm Z22 for one of the primary reasons that I had planned on using it: at church! I’ll admit that I was pretty anxious to use it, and when I finally did it was great. It was a lot easier to get to the Scriptures with the Z22 than it is flipping pages. Taking notes was pretty interesting; I didn’t take the quantity of notes that I take with my pen & paper, but I feel that the quality of the notes is very comparable. It took some getting used to trying to write quickly and making several typos & having to go back & fix them. Thankfully, my pastor (Bishop A.G. Mullen, Jr.) preaches in a way that it’s very easy for me to take notes. Overall, I’d count it a success.
When I first got the Palm Z22, I wasn’t quite sure if I’d really get any use out of it, but after my trip to Detroit, I’ve been using it daily. I’m getting to the point that I can’t leave home without it, just like my cellphone. I’m pretty sure that within a few months or a year down the road I’m going to have to upgrade to a better model, or get something like the Palm Treo where I can have my cellphone & PDA in one device. It’s definitely a great tool to have, especially when I consider being able to use it as a conversation starter that can lead to a gospel presentation (being that I have the Bible on the device). I’m glad that I have one, and I’m starting to wonder how I went so long without one!