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Palm-top computers or personal digital assistants">personal digital assistants (PDA) have found their way into innumerable coat pockets across the country, having replaced the revered authority of the paper based agendas and index cards. The Palm Corporation produces a number of personal digital assistants, which run the Palm operating system. Palm pilot was the name given to the first two generations of PDA manufactured by Palm Computing in 1996; which was then a division of US Robotics, then of 3Com and finally a standalone corporation.

Palm Pilot was the brainchild of Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan who were the founders of Palm Computing. The first machines were Palm Pilot 1000 (RAM size 128 K) and Palm Pilot 5000 (RAM size 512 K). Though provided with a serial port, they did not have infrared ports, backlights or flash memory. After the first two attempts, Palm Pilot Personal (RAM size 512 K) and Palm Pilot professional (RAM size 1024 K) were introduced which had a backlight but no infrared ports or flash memory as yet. Meanwhile, Palm Computing, which was a subsidiary of 3Com, became upset on not having enough control over the palm pilot and founded Handspring in June 1998, which due to the efforts of Hawkins became the first Palm OS licensee.

Handspring later produced