Long Live The Pilot

In October 1996, I bought a US Robotics Pilot 5000 for £285 on Tottenham Court Road - two weeks after the worldwide launch and before the renaming to PalmPilot. It was like something out of Star Trek - a revolution, in grey plastic - and the pen UI felt more ahead of its own time than any device since.

To celebrate the first decade of popular Personal Digital Assistance, CNET has a retrospective and picture gallery of [Palm]Pilots through the years.

(Though they neglect to mention what a disappointment the colour on the m505 was - ahem, you can guess who ordered one the week they came out - and how Palm quickly released the much brighter m515, which became the standard colour model for years.)