The Visor's interface is 100% Palm OS. You use a pen (included) as your pointing device to navigate through a simple system of panes. It is intuitive, easy to use, and straightforward, with things more or less acting as you would expect. There are five mechanical buttons on the lower half of the Visor, for accessing applications directly and turning the unit on and off. The only problem with these buttons is that, if you do not use the included hard cover for the Visor, the buttons are often accidentally pressed in your pocket, turning the unit on and subsequently wasting battery life.

You enter data into the Visor on two small pads at the bottom of its screen. There is an area on the left for letters and one on the right for numbers. Data is entered via a form of hand-writing called "Graffiti." Graffiti is for the most part made of simplified upper case letters drawn in a single stroke.

We expect most people will be able to get by in Graffiti after taking the included simple tutorial once, since the writing is highly intuitive and simple to master. Getting up to full writing speed with Graffiti took us a bit of time, but those we quizzed who regularly use Palm OS hand only complained about having difficulty with punctuation. Having used an Apple Newton, we still think full-on handwriting recognition is more elegant, but even at its best, the Newton never recognized handwriting correctly as consistently as our Visor does. For the times when you have trouble with Graffiti, a simple click will bring up a keyboard with which you can hunt and peck out text.

The Visor's functionality is extendable in two ways: via any Palm compatible software add-ons, and via Springboard hardware upgrades in a special expansion slot.

Palm compatible software can be purchased or downloaded and is installed through a USB cradle that hooks up to your PC or Mac. There is a serial port adapter available for the cradle. The only limit to the type of software the Visor can run is the amount of memory it has left. 8MB may not seem like much, but the Visor Deluxe can hold several applications or up to 12,000 addresses, 10 years of your schedule, and 6000 to-do items. A quick look online shows thousands of shareware, freeware, and commercial applications that work on the Visor Deluxe. You can find everything from games to database applications.

Springboard modules plug into a slot on the top of the Visor, and can take on a variety of forms and functions. For us, the most exciting module is the Visor Phone, a cellular phone that interfaces with the Visor's data. This is an elegant solution for those who currently carry both a cell phone and a PDA. There are also application modules, memory expansion cards, GPS systems, modems, and much more. The Springboard expansion slot is, for us, the most compelling feature of the Visor.