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Handspring's New Palm-OS Entrants: Color and Speed
ResQuad writes: "Handspring realeased a new palm top in their Visor collection, the Prism. It is $450 and have 65k colors, compared to the 3c's 256 colors. It also has an internal Li-Ion battery. Handspring also came out with another new palm, the Platinum. It is still gray-scale, but it is suposed to be 50% faster that the Visor Deluxe. This makes four palms out from Handspring." These are the same models discussed a few weeks ago, but now Handspring claims that they're shipping. Personally, I'm still pretty happy with my Deluxe, but the Platinum one looks very nice.
The Platinum is 5.4 oz (the same as the old Visors) and the Prism is 6.9 oz! That doesn't count the covers.
I read six months ago that Handspring was working on creating a smaller Visor. So, why is the Prism 6.9 oz, which is heavier than the color CLIE, IIIc, and IPAQ?
The biggest selling point seems to be that the screen displays 65.6k colors. Why is that important when the screen only has 25.6k pixels?
Maybe if they had used a 320x320 screen, making the unit this large would be justifiable. But as is, I don't see how Handspring expects to sell many Prisms at $450.
Bring on the color Vx!
RTF Web Page
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But since I'm such a nice guy...
Prism product details
Battery Life: 2 weeks or 6 continuous hours
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Do they need any beta-testers for stuff like this?
Just send it on over, I'd be glad to take a look at it for ya!
Go with an operating system built for this instead - Epoc. True 32-bit multitasking from the ground up.
it's in my head
Have you looked at the inside? It has a couple of small circuit boards, at least one of which appears to be the system memory. I wonder if they'll release a flash upgrade kit? (Like they did 3Com did for the Palm Pilots)
science is a religion
Be careful here. You may be slightly misled by the 'photos' of the Visor.
The Prism looks awesome in the photos, but remember that the resolution is ONLY 160x160 -- the same as the Palm IIIc. For those that have seen the IIIc, you will remember that it has a very grainy resolution.
Although the Prism does have a higher color depth, and uses TFT color, unless the screen has a tighter dpi, you will probably find that it is only marginally better than the IIIc. Also, remember that it is thicker and heavier than a regular Visor.
Be careful buying this blind -- I'm very interested in seeing a real one up close, in both indoor light AND outdoor light. As far as color goes outside, I have only seen 2 color LCDs that really work well outside -- the Sony hybrid LCD on their digital camera, and the Compaq IPAQ. The rest wash out completely.
But it's not virtual. So even if you maxed out the Dragonball VZ's DRAM controller with 64M, you'd still need some way of controlling fragmentation etc, because you don't have a hardware MMU to shuffle pages around.
Why is controlling fragmentation important? Old Amiga hackers remember the pain of programs refusing to load, not because you didn't have enough memory left, but because you didn't have enough contiguous memory left. (If an app is expecting to be able to malloc a meg, the OS can't really reply "would you take two 512k chunks instead?".) That kind of behavior sucked back then, and it would suck even more on a PDA that stays up for weeks at a time.
The most reasonable way to solve fragmentation on a 68000 is to address all memory through handles. Load up a raw 32-bit pointer to the start (or middle) of a chunk of memory, then do all addressing based on offsets from that pointer. Whenever nobody is using a chunk, the OS is allowed to move the data and the pointer---after the move, the data, relative to the pointer, will be in the same place.
This is not a very Unix-y memory model. This is why nobody has ported perl to PalmOS. You'd have to change everything that assumed that a single 32-bit pointer was enough to access memory. Even if you could convince PalmOS to give you, say, a contiguous 2M chunk to use for malloc, and lock that region down forever (don't want pointers in there moving out from under us), you'd be back to the original problem of fragmentation.
A 2M chunk would be unnatural for another reason. Until the 020, 68000 addressing modes can only reach +/-32k from a register. Plop your chunk pointer in the middle of a region and out pops...that 64k limit you're always seeing in PalmOS hacking. If you're willing to take the performance hit, you could *manually* add 32-bit offsets to an address register (and give up the offset addressing mode). But pretty soon this starts looking just like the near/far pointer tar pit from the bad old 8086 days.
The newer versions of PalmOS are also moving closer to processor agnosticism with a HAL, which will sever its dependence on the DragonBall Series (MIPS, anyone? How about an IPaq, then? Mayhaps even Crusoe...).
I still can't figure out what they're going to do to move beyond 160x160 or 160x240 screens. Those hundreds of third-party apps are almost all using absolute pixel positioning for form layout. Wait...I have an idea---what if we redefine old pixel positions as really being dimensioned in "dialog units", and...wait, nobody would actually do that...
Unlike Microsoft, Palm is changing and eliminating its OSes primary weaknesses rather than saddling its developers/users/customers with archaic requirements, just like a company in a competitive market should.
So, what should Linux people be doing? Sitting back and waiting for Palm to be the source of All Good Things?
Take a look at the VTech Helio (http://www.vtechinfo.com). It's about the same size and shape as a Visor, but it has a 75MHz MIPS processor, 8 megs RAM, a good LCD panel, audio hardware (voice memos), and it runs Linux. I got one at the Atlanta Linux Showcase from the Pocket Linux booth. They were selling them cheap to attract developers to their new Linux-based Java handheld platform.
The Helio comes with VTOS, which seems to be a clone of PalmOS. It's actually pretty decent, and I'm using it until the Linux desktop stuff stabilizes. It uses Jot, a pretty good clone of Graffiti (I had no trouble switching over). This particular model retails for $180 or less, considerably cheaper than anything from Palm or Handspring (the Palm III series STILL sells for $250, which is exactly what I paid for mine 2 years ago).
Palm has been selling the same basic palmtop for years. It's not bad at all (I'm a happy owner of a Palm III), but they're going to need to innovate more if they want to stay in the lead. It does its intended job well, but VTOS is just as good and runs on a much more powerful processor. I think Palm is currently riding on its name recognition rather than its features.
-John
One of the features described in Wired's article on this:, 00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,39456
is that there is a (vaporware) attachment to make it capable of attachment to a projector for doing presentations. For me, this is (nearly) a killer app - no more lugging the laptop onto the plane. Right now I can only ditch the laptop if someone else is presenting too and I can email them slides...now if the Ansyr Primer PDF viewer (http://www.ansyr.com/) works on it (in colour) I'm in.
And other than the fact that everyone comes off looking like a charicature of Dr. Evil, the simple truth is that quality does not matter. When people start thinking that this stuff transcends business or even technology then it is doomed to fail. The really remarkable thing is, if the story is accurate, that Apple exists at all today given the acute megalomania of Jobs. The point here is that Palm OS is good, the hardware is solid albeit doesn't 'improve' as fast as some people would want. WinCe or whatever it is called is crap and the hardware is expensive, slow and constantly changing. But it gives the impression of givng the customer what they want. It gives the impression of solid features. Whether it does or not is irrelevant. What WinCe does not do is pretend to be the second coming. I love Palm and have used one or another for many years. It's great for what it does and given what I do with can't think of much they could do to improve it other than incrementally. But I do not accept the premise that it is Brilliant Art that Transcends Technology or Truth.
The simple truth is that Palm &Co. better watch out that they don't become isolated in their own high opinion of themselves while MS and its philosophy of "A C+ was good enough for me at Harvard it's good enough for the shit we make for you.." stumbles across the finish line first.
Most of the new handhelds feature Lithium Ion batteries that don't have the memory features of the older Nickle-Metal-Hydride and Nickle-Cadmium types. In my experience using my HP 545, I get between 8-10 hours of solid use, with a CF storage card. I've gotten more without it. -WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I hate these people. No 1-800 service number....Go to the website and try to leave feedback...on ANY of thier forms. They don't work. I have had 2 Visor Deluxes - the 1st one died after a week rather suddenly... the second one I have NEVER been able to perform a warm reset on. It always gets stuck in a boot loop and I must hard-reset it and lose my data.
So I have owned 2 Handsprings, both of which were defective. Whenever I want to do anything about this fact, I have to pay to call the service line and sit on hold intermiably. Then they ask me questions like "Sir, are there batteries in the unit?" that make me want to hurt them. I will never buy from this company again no matter what they come out with. I'm sick of companies pushing out products before the proper QC is done. dammit. Chris
you can't ack before you balls.. you just
>I still can't figure out what they're going to
>do to move beyond 160x160 or 160x240 screens.
The most sensible solution would be to go to 320x320 screens, and use pixel doubling routines for all apps that weren't marked as "PalmOS 4 compatible" or whatever - so they would look pretty much the same, and newer apps written for "palmOS 4" could take advantage of higer rez.
Regards,
Alex
most of these devices are still vapor. Symbian has had those pretty pictures up on their web site for years. I know because I've kept going back to see if anything changed. I fully agree that architecturally EPOC32 is the king of consumer electronics OSs. It's got practically everything WinCE has (except maybe the multimedia eyecandy) in a fraction of the space and at much higher speed. It's much more modular and expandable. But if they keep dragging their feet, Palm and WinCE will be so entrenched that they simply won't stand a chance. Look at Nokia and Ericsson, they're starting to cut deals with alternate OS suppliers on the side.
First off, Never send a German to do an American's proofreading job.
Secondly, doesn't the IIIc have more than 256 colors? I cite this quote from this AP article from the Business section of the Boston Globe:
First off, 16-bit color means 65,536 colors. Secondly, the Prism will be 16 times more colors than its competitor (the IIIc). This means that the closest competitor outputs 4096 colors, or 12-bit; not 256 colors, or 8-bit. Furthermore, the cover of the IIIc box and demonstrations of the unit indicate a higher-than-256-colors output.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The URL for that article should be "http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/290/business/Ha ndspring_unveils_color_Visor_Prism+.shtm l". NO SPACES IN THE URL!!!! Slashdot's perl script seems to be messing around with that plus sign, so I can't do an A HREF.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
YHBT. HAND.
------
James Hromadka
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Now, I suppose you could make the argument that lack of a user base and support shouldn't really matter. Witness Linux prior to the 2.2 kernel. However, in the case of the iPaq, you're paying more and somehow ending up with less. WinCE was an attempt to scale down windows, not an attempt to make a fast, versitile OS strictly for handheld devices. It's not to say WinCE is w/o it's merits (PocketOffice?), but that in the grander scheme, they're less important.
Aside from forcing a destop/Start menu metaphor into real-estate that doesn't support the idea, WinCE device makers made the error of trying to include the kitchen sink in their devices. It has MP3's (one or two initially, big whoop)! It's color (but the battery life kills you)! It has larger screen real estate (and no longer fits in your front pants pocket)!
Also, where are the sub $170 WinCE devices?
Finally, whether I choose a Palm or Handspring, the sw is compatible (HW compatibility was/is/will be an issue). It can be exchanged easily and with a wide group of people. In this light, is the iPaq really worth spending $50 more?
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
http://www.pencomputing.com/palm/Pen37/visorsprism platinum.html
What you do is implement a new, updated OS on more capable hardware with a bigger screen, and by all means DON'T saddle yourself with backwards compatibility. Then run the old stuff in the extremely good Palm emulation that already exists. The emulator should be able to map the 160x160 dimensions to the new screen without too much difficulty.
I'm hoping for someone to do this with Linux on the IPaq.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Other than color, the prism also offers the same new cpu that the platinum has, a newer version of palmos, and a rechargable battery. It's not just a visor deluxe with color.
What's up with MS's ClearType? I mean, it's just anti-aliasing, right? I don't know a lot about it, so I assumed that's all that it did. They can't bloody well patent that...
-lx
Wrong, there isn't exist fragmentation in pages/paging systems (pages != paging, although both are normally present). When you talk about fragmentation you must clarify if you mean "external fragmentation" (memory chunks that are not assigned to any process) or internal (assigned but unused).
More precisely, the external fragmentation in page systems is _zero_, the internal fragmentation is equal to the n*s*p/2, where n is the number of active process, p is page size and s is the number of segments of every process. For pure paged systems, s=1. Nevertheless, the internal fragmentation is residual.
--ricardo
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
We don't need to be able to write essays and do spreadsheets and listen to mp3s, and we don't need movie players (what are we going to watch, a 5 minute mpeg again and again?) all the while getting only a few hours of battery time. If i wanted to do all that I'll use my laptop instead. It's more comfortable to use(i don't have to type with my two indexes) and i don't have to strain my eyes looking at the damn display. I hate wearing my glasses at the computer.
Palm made it so big because they targeted the aspects where handhelds SHOULD be used, such as schedules, quick email on the fly, etc. Granted, the win CE devices are cool, but in this practical world of ours, they are annoying and useless.
Now I can finally descreetly take my pr0n into the bathroom. No more lugging around that bulky notebook. Fewer odd-looks too from roommates too.
Speak truth to power.
or isn't the Palm platform advancing much anymore? I mean, it's nice that a couple more Handspring colors are available, but come on, the two new offerings are nothing to write home about. For the Platinum they basically jacked up the clock speed a bit and charge you $50 for that. The color, ok it's nice that they didn't have to make it larger than the regular Visor (well, I guess 0.1" thicker), but other than color it offers nothing else--at $450. Let's not loose sight of the fact that we're starting to get less and less for the money here compared to the WinCE platform--and I'm no great proponent of WinCE by far. Palm and their cohorts can talk it up any which way they want--more focused OS, leaner, no fluff, etc--but at the end of the day they charge you the same as WinCE for a fraction of the hardware capabilities.
We keep seeing these new hardware options with color here, wireless there. When will all of the options be brought together? My mouth drools at the thought of a color screen like the Prism, a slim factor like the PalmV, a Wireless conection like the PalmVII, and the expandability of the Handsprings. I guess the cost would be unbelievable, but I get the feeling that we're being fed the low end stuff at $200 so that the "latest model" can be $500. I look at my 3 year old PalmIII and wonder. "What is the big improvement?"
Nate
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
http://www.zdnet.co.jp/macwire/0010/16/r_viprfi.ht ml h tml
http://www.zdnet.co.jp/macwire/0010/16/r_viprfi2.
I love reading about these new handhelds but it seems that they're still a ways off from making the perfect handheld, which for me has:
A color LCD (16bit+, truecolor would be ideal)
Decently fast
Built-in wireless networking
Regular handwriting recognition, kinda like Newton
Decent amount of storage (at least 64M)
Of all those features, the one I want most is wireless networking. I know that there are services like Metricom's Riccochet but most are only available in the largest of metro areas (SFO,NYC,LA,etc).
I'm just looking forward to the day that I can sit down with the above-described handheld, in a cafe, and ssh into my machines.
Chris
After many years of owning a Palm and writing a couple of hello-world-level programs, I finally got a copy of Palm Programming and sat down a bit with it. The more I read, the more limited the Palm platform started to appear. Until your post I didn't realize that the 16-bit signed offset was a Dragonball limitation, I thought that was a Palm thing. I was reading about the 64k segmentation model, and how Code Warrior can handle some of the work for you. As you say, that brought back shades of 80x86 real mode programming.
I don't know, even simple things turned me off: why should there be two calls, LoadLib and FindLib, and why should the programmer be in charge of doing refence counting and unloading of libraries? Why couldn't OpenLib and CloseLib do that behind the scenes, without duplicating all that code for each program that used libraries? It seems that doing it the way they did precludes multitasking at some future point.
Anyway, I'm starting to wonder whether Palm OS is really as great as it's made out to be. It's one thing to encourage programmers to keep the apps small and simple, but it's quite another if you force them to do so through architectural limitations and artificial shortcoming. Forcing small apps just because you yourself as an OS creator can't really see any use for large apps on a handheld smacks of shorsightedness.
Nice unit, but if I'm going to shell out $450, why doesn't it have Flash ROM?!? The website says they chose not to go that route to cut costs, which would be totally understandable for a budget PDA, but $450 doesn't really fit into the "budget" category in my book. Even if a Flash ROM ended up costing me an extra $10, it would make more sense on a high-end unit, as it protects my already significant investment by giving me more expansion and upgrade options. (ucLinux, etc...)
--==--
Fanatic (n): a person who won't change his mind and can't change the subject.
I must admit that this device looks very cool, but I wonder how long it will run, compared to other Palm devices: both speed and colors are known to drain batteries.
If this were right, how did PalmOS and EPOC get so popular in the first place?
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Anyone know a place? Ideally retail, with the iPaq in stock, within an easy drive of Palo Alto/Mountain View. Alternatively, somewhere in the UK. E-mail me direct - I'll go and buy one and then come back here and post it. That way, I get one before the store gets /.ed :-)
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
"And, with normal use, the battery lasts nearly two weeks on a single charge." What exactly is normal use? (# hrs/day) And so how many hours does this actually stay on?
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"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
-Me
What extortionate price will they charge for it in UK, I wonder?
See Symbian's website for more info, or just browse around on Ericsson's for some pictures of the R380 smartphone running Epoc ... or look at the devices Motorola, Sanyo, Psion etc will release.
The future looks bright indeed!
it's in my head
I completely agree.
I have a Jornada 680 because I need something that is smaller than a laptop, but has a keyboard so I don't sit there slowly scribing stuff onto the screen. Best thing about it is its highly mobile (even if its larger than a Palm or an ipaq), and powerful enough to take my work on the road, not *just* for appointments and contact info. I store everything on my CF, and have everything I need while I'm away from my computer. I also carry my 7110, for a complete office on the road.
I lost me sig.
In light of hardware like this, with its memory architecture and other limitations, PalmOS is beginning to look like DOS. The iPaq looks like a better deal to me.
After that I have looked at the new Visors. I started wondering if we that owns a old visor could get an upgrade of the OS to PalmOS 3.5.2H instead of the old one. That is a thing I would like.
We don't need to be able to write essays and do spreadsheets and listen to mp3s, and we don't need movie players (what are we going to watch, a 5 minute mpeg again and again?) all the while getting only a few hours of battery time.
I'm no Microsoft shrill, but I've got a Casio E115 PocketPC, and that has exactly the same battery life as that color visor.
Palm made it so big because they targeted the aspects where handhelds SHOULD be used, such as schedules, quick email on the fly, etc. Granted, the win CE devices are cool, but in this practical world of ours, they are annoying and useless.
Granted things like the movie player are not incredibly useful, but the primary use for my PDA are schedules, contacts, and quick email on the fly, and does it beautifully. I used to have an EPOC device (Psion 5), and I much prefer what I have now.
I have no love for Microsoft, but the OS on my PDA seems great and right for the job, and there's a whole load of useless eye candy too if I want it. If I don't, it's not like I'm forced to use it.
Saying 'Windows CD failed' [sic] is a bit premature!
thenerd.
The camels are coming. I'm in love.
Windows CE is trying to cram everything it can and is creating bloatware on handhelds. Bloatware on handhelds....that is a REAL bad thing.
:-)
Actually, I was thinking just the opposite
Redmond-based bloatware is what has made the handhelds so ludicrously powerful (a 200Mhz StrongArm in an iPaq), just to overcome the inherent bloatedness of the OS. Why is this good? Well, would we seriously be considering running Linux, X11, emacs, whatever on a handheld with maybe 8Mb of ram? No. 32Mb of ram, maybe. Without WinCE, this wouldn't have happened (ok, maybe there would have been something else which could have had the same effect, but there's nothing else doing that atm).
I am glad that WinCE is so bloaty and sucks (I have used it quite a bit, and I have to say that I don't like it. Give me a minimal window manager and I'll configure it how I like, thanks), as it means that my next palmtop/PDA can be running Linux+X11. Or microwindows, or Nano-X, or whatever.
Just keep those WinCE "ROM"s in flash and I'll be a happy puppy.
</rant>
I'd love a CE device to play MP3s or to develop more Windows-like apps but most of the time all that extra power (consumption) is a waste. My little Palm Pilot is a great organizer and that's all I bought it for. Personally, I think for more powerful handhelds, EPOC is better choice than Windows CE anyway.
This will please people who play Quake on the Palm. For everybody else, I think the relevent response is, "So what?"
__________
Is it me or is this link sending back a connection refused for Netscape and Mozilla on Linux?
You don't get to replace the batteries in a lot of the devices that have built in rechargables. Handspring is currently /.'ed so I can't check. However the palm V and Vx for example don't let you change the batt. The custom rechargables are also pretty expensave (I assume because the market is small and there arn't many comperiters). For example a new battery for the Canon PowerShot 100 is about $60, while four AA rechargables are about $3. The four AAA's in my Visor were also about $3 (plus $30 for the charger).
So it is really more like "buy AAA's every month or a new Palm in two years". Of corse in two years you will probbably want a new Palm, but it would be nice if the old one had some resale value!
Given a choice I would like NiMH AAA that recharge when the unit is in the cradle. That would be more convenient then using NiMHs in the current Visor/Palm, and would be a lot cheaper in the long run then custin batts. I don't know why it isn't done, the legal issue can't be too bad because Semmins does that on the GigaSet phones (well NiCADs, but still if you put Alkalines in it they will explode or leak...)
Yes, the Pocket PC devices are very fast, very effective, and *actually* have a file management system, unlike Palm OS. I have a 64MB storage card in mine, with a card reader in my home and work machines. I just put all of my stuff directly onto the CF card, then I have it anywhere I go. It is really useful for having high levels of mobility. Only the Compaq runs Linux, but WinCE 3.0 is so unlike Windows that it's acceptable. Just my 2 bits. -WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
well.. i'm still within my 30 money back garranty for my visor deluxe.. so i called last nite and said i would pay the difference for the platinum... they said it was on the way... mwahahahhahahahhahahahhahahahha
ERROR: Keyboard not attached. Press F-1 to continue.
Who in their right mind would get one of these Prism Handsprings if they could get an iPaq for $50 more. The iPaq has more memory, is quicker, is easier on the eyes (higher res and cleartype). You can play MP3s on the iPaq without an addon, and you can put Linux on it if you want. Now only if Compaq can get more iPaqs out. If they can the Prism is one dead duck.
You mean Handspring swore up and down. =) I would guess that Handspring was forced to do a color version simply to peer exactly with Palm on their products. From a marketing standpoint, they appeared to be behind technically. I think the true thrust of the company is to focus on the higher end products like the Platinum and to move forward with their voice products.
Handspring isn't targeting the high-end user...yet. They were on the low-end trying to build up market share, those people don't need to upgrade the OS. Hopefully, they are able to put in a flashable ROM soon to make us developers and demanding users happy, instead of crashing our Visors all the time.
Lastly, Palm products are in odd Roman numerals. =)
Jayson
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
I have a Visor Deluxe which has the 8MB ram chip problem. The hotfix is fine, but my battery usage went way way up, so I decided to see if Handspring would send a new one..and they did, as noted, by FedEx.
However, the replacement sent could not Hotsync...so I requested a second replacement.
The second replacement could hotsync...but would crash a lot and require soft and hard resets all the damn time.
The third replacement came with a little quality control sheet indicating to me that it passed all the tests except the "memory" test. Sure enough...it has the 8MB ram chip problem which I called about in the first place.
Nope, I don't work for vtech.
Perhaps they are riding on the name of 'Linux'. Who cares? If it means that Linux ends up on my palmtop, I'm a happy geek.
-John
The reason I purchased a visor deluxe is because I wanted the great module support. However, I keep hearing "next month" or "next quarter", etc.
What does it take to get companies to produce more modules?
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Sig Return: 204 No Content
bucephalus!
Oh. Well in that case, I want it. I think.
-lx
I agree on the handheld movie front, but handhelds and mp3 are (nearly) a good fit. I would like to reduce the amount of electronics I carry - to *one* power supply, *one* screen, *one* set of rolodex/calendar apps, *one* set of earphones/mic. Unless the mp3 player fits in there somewhere I'll be mighty disappointed. (I carry a Palm Vx and Nokia 7110 everywhere, I'm loath to carry any more)
The mp3 player (IMHO) fits in as part of the headset, not the handset. All the handset should need to do is sequence and stream stuff, eg over bluetooth, and leave mp3 decoding to a dedicated codec. NB that mp3 over bluetooth is not a bad fit as you need to compress the sound for transmission over a limited bandwidth network anyway - so why should the handheld decode anything? In this scenario the handheld mainly acts as a memory device.
WinCE comes nowhere near this ideal (nothing does, yet) and I agree with your main point that handhelds should stick to the KISS principle - mostly. However, handheld (computers) should be expected to supercede other devices which are successful _as_handhelds_ (phones, media players, radio recievers).
Of course, I still want a wearable with an optical display :-)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In Linux, each application still has its own heap and that can still be fragmented. Virtual memory can not make up for that fact. There are ways of limiting fragmentation. The first is memory pools, which was introduced in AmigaOS 2.0. A memory pool is one or more large arrays from which you can allocate many fixed-size objects. Most heap allocators for Unix-like systems such as malloc() and "operator new" in the GNU libraries use memory pools implicitly for objects smaller than a page. Another method is to use a "buddy system" algorithm, where you only allocate blocks of 2^integer number of bytes, and only on addresses which are evenly divisable by that amount. Buddy systems are often used internally by operating system kernels, such as Linux.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Handsprings are still way ahead of the Palm platform.
You're overlooking a serious feature in the Visors: Springboard expansion.
The basic system doesn't really need much more evolution - the color Visor is really about all you need in a platform, since Springboard gives you so many options.
Right now, you could turn your Visor into a cell phone, a GPS receiver, an MP3 player, a MIDI instrument, an Oscilloscope, a Data capture device (16 analog inputs), etc. All with Springboard modules.
Try to do *all* of that (not just some) with a Palm. Forget it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
... or is the stated, relative speed increase of the Visor Platinum wrong? On the site, they say "50% faster than the Visor Deluxe", but with a new speed of 33MHz, and an old speed of 16MHz, doesn't that make it 206% faster? I read that and immediately thought "So what?" (I'll typically wait for cpu speeds to more than double before I upgrade)... but if what they're trying to say is "The Visor Deluxe is half the speed of the Platinum", then there's a little (not much) more cause for a double-take.
;)
Please correct me here... I'm certainly no mathmetician.
] D
One place to go is sites that use the slashcode.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
Remember that the Visor runs a CISC processor (Dragonball EZ, basically a 680x0 based microcontroller), which is very efficient in code size. Also, Palm apps are well known for being efficient in use of data space.
I have at least 30 third party apps, including a web browser with 1 MB cache, in a 4MB Palm IIIx. I've just upgraded to a Visor with 8MB, but that's largely for web browsing and to read books on the thing. If you just want to use it as an organiser, even 2MB is overkill.
Having said that, the iPaq is tempting because it can run Linux - although there are probably few useful apps for Linux at present, the stability is attractive (my Palm III just had to be hard-reset, losing all data - first time in months, but still...)
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