Name: IBM WorkPad 20X: The 1998 Palm PDA Experience
Uploaded: 2020-03-07T00:41:36.000Z
Duration: 14 min 41 s
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Greetings and welcome to another LGR thing about IBM personal computing!

This time with a pleasant sprinkling of Palm OS thrown into the mix

cuz today we’re looking at the IBM WorkPad PC Companion.

The two megabyte model to be specific, that being the WorkPad 20X,

costing $399 when it launched in June of 1998.

This delightful little handheld was IBM’s second entry into the realm of Palm personal

A series of products IBM dubbed “WorkPads”

keeping in line with their ThinkPad series of laptops.

Even if, confusingly, IBM made another WorkPad that looked more like a ThinkPad, the model Z50.

That WorkPad was an odd Windows CE machine that’s a topic for another day, whereas

this WorkPad is more along the lines of a Palm PDA.

And by that I mean that’s exactly what it is: a rebadged 3Com Palm III, built for IBM

by 3Com just a couple months after the Palm III came out.

Same specs, same case, same software, same accessories.

The biggest difference is that IBM’s WorkPad had a black plastic

shell instead of the Palm’s charcoal-colored one.

And of course, it’s an IBM, which means...

Professional things, respectable business person things!

Things that mattered to a company’s existing relationship with Big Blue, meaning that businessy

business folks could bring about business with IBM PDAs matching their IBM laptops and

IBM desktops and IBM servers and IBM IBM mlenuneh!

Yeah, from IBM’s perspective, that was the strategy: forge an agreement with 3Com subsidiary

Palm while keeping IBM customers under the IBM umbrella.

While you could buy your own WorkPad through an authorized reseller, chances are more people

received one instead, as part of a package deal through IBM or through their employer.

Like, purchase a five thousand dollar IBM desktop, get a four hundred dollar WorkPad

Either way though, end users were nestled into the massive Palm ecosystem that boasted

And ended up with a rather capable Palm OS 3.0 PDA,

without or without the IBM WorkPad branding.

Just like the Palm III, it’s a more streamlined, rugged case design compared to its predecessors,

while remaining super lightweight at 147 grams or 5.2 ounces.

Ideal when recording haphazard b-roll and dropping it from eye level to the floor.

This thing is almost Nokia levels of bulletproof.

The LCD screen is basically the same as the earlier Palm Pilots though, being a touchscreen

It also has the same 160x160 pixel resolution 2-bit grayscale display capable of showing

four shades of gray, with adjustable contrast using a tiny knob under the left side edge.

And of course, being from the late 90s it’s a resistive touchscreen, so pressure needs

to be applied using a fingernail or using the included stylus

No smart input features here, just a passive plastic pen for tapping and dragging items

In addition to the LCD touchscreen, this pale green rectangle below is also touch-sensitive.

Providing four shortcuts for searching files and text, opening the calculator app, accessing

drop-down menus, and displaying installed Palm OS 3 applications.

There’s also a center rectangle for inputting text, with letters entered on the left-hand

which was Palm’s single-stroke handwriting recognition system.

And yeah, it’s one of those things where once you get used to it, typing in text can

It’s all done using predefined gestures and shapes, so the learning period varies

Personally I find Graffiti 2 a tad more intuitive, but yeah.

This first generation works well enough, I just have to refer to the cheat sheet on the

Besides, if it gets annoying there’s always the option of bringing up a virtual keyboard

by tapping the bottom left and right corners.

Or you know, just plug in an external keyboard or docking station.

Though at that point you’re forgoing some of the advantages of PDAs outright

Another nice feature of the WorkPad is its electroluminescent backlight, enabled by holding

A pretty desirable feature in low light situations, though lacking the inverted pixel option seen

on later Palm devices, so it’s always black on blue and not the other way ‘round.

Really it’s a tough time finding ideal lighting either way due to the screen’s narrow viewing

angle, with bright indoor lights or sunlight being ideal, but not too much since the plastic

Thankfully, it’s also efficient as nuts, able to last several months in standby mode

Of course, it’s not gonna last nearly that long under constant use, especially if the

But even then the battery life of the WorkPad is stellar, I’ve used it for a good ten

hours on this set of batteries and the power meter hasn’t budged.

Something to keep in mind though is that data integrity is reliant on power.

whatever was running in memory is lost after about a minute.

And after a few months the internal backup battery runs outta juice

and user data is lost, reverting back to factory settings.

On the topic of storage, when IBM says this is a two megabyte WorkPad?

They mean it, the 20x here has no external memory option.

However, looking inside you’ll see a little expansion slot, and that can be upgraded with

Mine only has the factory-installed two megabytes of EDO DRAM.

In addition to those two megs, there’s also another two dedicated to storing the Palm

OS 3 operating system and built-in applications.

And all this is being run by a 16MHz Motorola MC68328, one of their mid-90s DragonBall CPUs

There’s also this teeny little monophonic speaker for playing beeps and bloops, similar

to that of a PC speaker but amusingly even punier.

One big feature 3Com and IBM were super happy to brag about was the integrated infrared

transceiver, letting users transfer files wirelessly using IrDA 1.0.

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IBM WorkPad 20X: The 1998 Palm PDA Experience

perspective

utterly

kinda

straightforward