I found an old thread on this site about the Palm Pilot and HandyShopper software, so hopfully someone may be able to offer advice. My Pilot no longer works and I wonder if I can use a smart phone w/o a contract to run HandyShopper or similar software? I do find older phones at estate and yard sales for as little as $5 but can I get the software onto the phone w/o downloading it? Can I use a PC USB to get the software onto certain phones? I’m not familiar with these phones so I need some help here, thanks.
If you get an Android phone you do have to download from the Google Play store, I believe (maybe you can load direct if you root the phone, etc., etc.). But if you get a smart phone with no phone contract, you can do that over WiFi.
HandyShopper appears to be Palm only (maybe Pocket PC too), but there are lots of similar apps available for Android. You would have to do a little googling to find one that suits you.
Similar situation for an iPhone/iPad.
No idea about how you would do this with a phone that runs Windows.
You can get an iPod Touch which is a iPhone without the phone. You use wifi to connect to the Internet, and sometimes iTunes to manage your content. You would have several options for shopping apps.
Apparently this HandyShopper software runs on windows mobile as well as palmos (the changelog seems to say at least version 5 is required). So besides palmos devices, any old smartphone that runs WM5+ should be able to run this software. You should be able to install apps on any such smartphone using wifi or a usb cable connected to a PC.
However as mentioned, there are a ton of other shopping apps for android/ios. So if you wanted a device that could do more than run HandyShopper you might want to consider something more modern.
It does seem to have been quite a hit in its day, however, and there’s even a Yahoo Group that still gets occasional posts. (You might even want to post there for more specific advice.)
Every android phone I have owned will allow you to turn off the cell phone radio and just use wifi. This would allow you access to the google play store to download apps. I can also copy files onto the phone via USB and install apps that way. No need to root the phone this is standard functionality of android phones. But is is almost always easier to use wifi and directly download the apps via wifi.
I’m a long-term HandyShopper user - well, I was, until we got iPod Touches a few years ago. In fact it might have been a thread I posted in that you found.
At that time, the only software that mimicked HS’s “store the same item and its aisle positions in numerous stores” was SplashShopper and it did that well, but was intolerably slow (as in 10 minutes or more to change views). It’s possible that there are others nowadays that mimic this.
On the Android, the only one I’ve found so far is ToMarket - and in fact the developer told me he developed it specifically to mimic some of HS’s functionality :).
As far as getting an Android tablet or used phone, good question. My daughter currently has my old Droid X; we activated it for a month when she was travelling but won’t renew the phone plan. It should work as a PDA even without the phone capability, we’ll just have to connect it to wi-fi. I’ll try that when the paid-for month is up (in a couple of days) and report back. I am assuming it would just behave like one of the Android-based tablets.
The way you’d get the software on it would be to connect via wi-fi and browse the app stores (in addition to Google Play, Amazon has one - including free app of the day which is sometimes fun and/or useful). I also believe you can manually load apps onto the phone by downloading and then copying the file (aws? apk?) via USB but I’ve never tried that. No reason, if you can connect to wi-fi.
The thing you have to keep in mind about the current generation of shopping/list tools, especially those that allow you to sync with a web portal or another phone, is that the information is mined by the app provider. You’re essentially opting in to a detailed and invasive marketing study.
(Go read OutOfMilk’s user agreement. They don’t even use fuzzy language.)
Thanks for all the replies. I kept asking around for a used PDA or Ipod Touch (IT) and someone gave me a Palm Pilot. So one again I can get Smart Shopper working but will keep looking for an IT.
How did it go with the old Droid X with wifi?