Ten years ago marked the birth of the first commercially successful PDA in the market — the 5.7-ounce Pilot organizer.

I use the term PDA in the strict modern sense of course, because, let’s face it, Casio had a commercially successful Digital Diary series prior to the Pilot. There’s also the Zaurus, but then it wasn’t exactly a commercial success. Ditto with the Apple Newton.

No, it was the Pilot that first made commercial mobile computing history. It was a true handheld computer, capable of running a wide variety of programs. It had a large touch-screen, was capable of recognizing scribbles, and it synchronized its data with your PC.

Ten years ago, I fell madly in love with this device. And when I got my Pilot 5000 at the tail-end of 1996, it was as if a part of myself fell into place. Right there and then, without reading the manual at all, I just knew how to use it. In fact, I practically started writing in Graffiti almost instinctively, and I only had to glance at the cue strip for the more esoteric symbols.

Over the years, I moved up to a Palm III, a Palm 505, and now to my Tungsten T|3, which is still going strong after two years. And I still have all the original data that I had from my old Pilot 5000 of ten years ago!

Today, I’m still dependent on my Palm for my organizing needs. All of my contacts find their way into its ever expanding address book, and I have grown dependent on its calendar for planning out my days (I have a horrible memory, so if it ain’t on my Palm, then it don’t exist). I have lost data only once — and that was when I just arrived from Malaysia; I was running along the airport, and my Palm III popped out of my bag and landed corner-first onto the tile floor. But then the only data that I lost were the notes that I had from my trip.

Other favorite apps: DocsToGo, which allows me to bring along my most important docs and spreadsheets; Salling Clicker, a perfect little app which transforms the T3 into a Bluetooth-connected PowerPoint remote (complete with Lecture Notes and sneak previews of the next slides); and RealOne, which turns the unit into an emergency MP3 player.

Will I move on to a newer Palm unit? For now, no. My well-worn T|3 still does me fine, thank you. The Tungsten T|X was tempting at first, especially because it has Wi-Fi, but then I learned that it didn’t come with a memo recorder. And danged if I would survive without a memo recorder!

Ten years later, Palm is still going strong, perhaps to almost everyone’s surprise. In fact, it’s most recent quarter saw Palm’s revenues climb by a whopping 36 percent, primarily on the strength of its Treo 650 smartphone sales. So we’ll still be seeing quite a lot of Palm (the hardware company, at least) for a very long time.

After almost a decade, I’m still a die-hard Palm user. And I’m looking forward to another decade of Palm use if I can help it!

To all you happy Palm users out there, Keep On Palming!