The chief executive officer and president of household-appliance maker Electrolux AB muddled through a six-hour crash course, two months of fiddling around, and numerous contretemps -- only to master a rare encrypted alphabet that will allow him to use a pen component to hand-write on the touchscreen of the palmtop he and his closest collaborators acquired in a fit of modernization two months ago.

``Like learning anything, getting to know the language of a palmtop takes time,'' he says with a sigh, adding, ``But it can be fun when it finally works.''

Featuring an electronic calendar, ability to read e-mail, links to PCs and a touchscreen, Treschow's 3COM Palm5 is meant to replace his conventional paper calendar and keep him up to date on the latest developments and messages at the click of a button. And the palmtop allows executivesand their secretaries to share the same electronic calendar and have ready access to each other's schedules when needed. But to get optimum use out of the thing, users must learn palmtop speak. And that hasn't exactly been a cakewalk.

For one thing, Treschow complains that some of the palm-speak symbols he writes on the touch screen aren't close to any existing Latin letters and hence are difficult to remember -- or misspell. The conventional letter K, for example, looks more or less like a Greek alpha on his 3COM, he says, and the conventional T is more like half a T, or like the Russian G, which sort of looks like a reversed lowercase r. Diverting from palm speak causes trouble instantly: Wrongly entered, a palm-speak question mark could be read by the palmtop as the letter T and vice versa; a sloppily scribbled palmtop umlaut could result in the letter W.

``You end up with funny words sometimes,'' Treschow concedes. ``It's far from perfect.''

And yet the studious top executive is pushing throughwith his new gadget and these days, his palmtop harbors anything from freshly updated itineraries to anniversaries and from addresses to spreadsheets. When he turned on the palmtop a few weeks back, it flashed a message reminding him of his younger brother's birthday the next day. ``I was wondering how Michael got the time to enter all this information into the palmtop,'' says Folke Hammarlind, a spokesman for Electrolux who isn't yet part of the company's palmtop loop and thus uses a paper calendar. ``I guess his secretary is typing in data all day,'' he adds.

Like any true believer, Treschow has been spreading the gospel of his palmtop relentlessly. Three weeks ago, he finally persuaded his wife, Charlotte, that she needed one, too. An investor-relations chief at Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB in Sweden, Treschow has a traveling schedule that's just as busy as her husband's, and the couple used to scribble each other's itineraries on pieces of paper or their calendars every Sunday night. Soon, thosedays will be over. ``We'll have a clear overview of our plans,'' says Treschow, who flips through the palmtop's manual during downtime at home or at work. She hopes to master palmtop speak in the course of the summer. ``It will make our lives easier.''

In fact, Treschow's palmtop has already taken some weight off her shoulders: She no longer has to remind him of things like dinner dates. ``I used to be his palmtop,'' she quips, adding, ``I was the one telling him when important dates came up.''

Having mastered palmtop speak and turned into a consistent palmtop user, Treschow is already looking forward to upgrading. ``I heard a new model has come out,'' he says. ``I'm curious what else it has to offer.''