About 12 years ago, I met with a man I didn't know, working for a startup I was unfamiliar with to see a product I'd never heard of.

The man was Ed Colligan. The startup was Palm Computing (though it had recently been acquired by modem maker U.S. Robotics). And the product was code-named "Touchdown," later to be branded the "Palm Pilot."

At the time, I was executive editor of a computer magazine, and Palm was just one of a dozen or so companies scheduled that week. Most of those meetings were forgotten minutes after they concluded. But the "Touchdown" meeting was a revelation. Colligan, now president and CEO of Palm, left me a device to test.

At the time, there were dozens of electronic organizers on the market. But the Palm Pilot blew them all away with its radical ease of use and zippy performance.

Since then, I bought seven Palm OS devices: Palm Pilot 1000, Palm III, Palm IIIxe, Palm VII, Palm Vx, Treo 270 and Treo 650. I even published for a couple of years an e-mail newsletter devoted to the platform called, "The Palm Reader."