Saw a bin of dead Palm Pilots at a flea market in Reno last Saturday

There was this guy selling a whole box of old Palm Pilots for $5 each, mostly cracked screens and missing styli, but one had a working Graffiti pad and a full address book from some former owner circa 2003. I stood there for 10 minutes just scrolling through someone's old contacts, felt weirdly personal, like reading a stranger's diary. Made me wonder if anyone actually backs up these things before they die, or if all that data just vanishes with the hardware. Anyone else ever find old personal data on a dead device and not know what to do with it?

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paige_harris9h ago

Nah, I actually think that data vanishing is kind of the point, like a time capsule that only exists if the hardware survives.