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Palm In Trouble?
spblat writes "News.com reports that Palm, Inc. is in a bit of a spot. A hardware glut, a portal that's losing money, an OS licensing model that doesn't generate enough revenue, oh my! Could this be the beginning of the end for Palm?" Apparently people aren't buying as many Palms now that the economy has slowed down. To say nothing of the fact that many Wince devices are better. Still waiting to see the latest Sony Clie to see if PalmOS can catch up.
Palm Deserves to die.
Their fundamental hardware or software hasn't changed in the past 5 years. What were they doing? Cheesy incremental improvements? They are using the same processor as the amiga, but the amiga is like 9 years old and even it had better graphics support (custom graphics chips, etc). So what's Handspring up too? Let's compete against a dying market of outdated technology. If handspring was smart, they'd swap processors and switch to a linux based system. Add a PalmOS comptability layer if they want too. Their programmers must suck balls, because I know one guy who could single handidly do all the software aspect of it himself.
Windows CE is a great platform. Its written from the ground up without any backwards compatibility to worry about. The OS has plenty of room for improvement. And the apps are stellar.
I think the death of Palm started when the good people left to form Handspring. Every since then its just been "palm 3 knockoff of the week" and they still have yet to make a color Palm V. My biggest issue is how fragile all of their products are, and other than the Palm V, most of them are quite bulky. They finally have color but lower resolution than the PocketPC devices. Not to mention their lame model numbering...they should not have named the wireless one VII...you see now they've abandonded the whole scheme anyway going with m series...I guess that is an admission that they are a bunch of idiots. Oh, they never reply to their email either.
Let's see.. the Palm OS accounts for 89% of the retail market.. And, that's a problem?
Alex Bischoff
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Thank you, Zico -- don't forget to ask for a raise in Microsoft PR department.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Except that it doesn't "open" MS Office files. No handheld ever was capable of using Office files, unless you count Libretto. Conduits translate files when transferring them to/from handhelds, using simplified format on the handheld. That can be (and was) easily done with any platform, but Microsoft used its trademarks to make it appear as if real Office runs on the devices. People think so -- until they buy the devices and see that they do much less than the demos implied, and that there is no clean round trip when files were edited on the handheld.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Note how I'm not really contradicting you here...
It _also_ had a very annoying interface for entering notes and things, text handling and flow that was horrible, and though it runs on watch batteries it manages to drain them in a couple weeks with the PIM _off_- and since the batteries are not rechargeable... oh, and did I mention it is just slightly too big to fit comfortably in even a pants pocket?
After the stupid thing ran out of batteries _again_, I left it alone. And if I _ever_ get another PIM, it's gonna be a simple B/W screen Palm, period. Something where the interface hassles are at least vaguely justified, something that'll fit nicely in a pocket, something where the batteries don't run out like that! To hell with backlighting and the whole 'play like it's a tiny laptop' scene.
What I'd really like to see is Palm figuring this out and coming up with some sort of minimal Palm Pilot that's extra tiny and extra long battery life- really pushing the limits of that, with the smallest amount of RAM people have found practicable in Palms (256, 512K? a meg?), perhaps with a underclocked CPU, say 8Mhz. Let's see something that'll go for _years_ on a battery, and fit in the change pocket of your wallet...
Most games SUCK when played on WinCE pdas. They're slow and rather laggy usually. Most of the good, playable games for WinCE have equally good counterparts on Palm, aside from the color. But now that we have color Palm and Handspring pdas, even that isn't an issue.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The 9x or NT/2K kernels will not boot on a MIPS or SH3 processor
I call bullshit. NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0 were ALL ported to the MIPS architecture. In fact, unless you weren't around for NT's early days (or just purged those times from your memory), one of NT's selling points was supposed to be its portability - it was supposedly written on MIPS initially, and then ported over to x86. (It was also ported to the AXP and PowerPC architectures.)
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Just FYI: The Palm V/Vx uses a Li-Ion rechargable cell, not a NiMH.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
> open office files
Here is the real clincher. It's probably far less likely that people want to have a multimedia monster with poor sound output and a puny screen.
OTOH, "we do DOS better" has always been Microsoft's best way to expand into new areas.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just why should an emulator of 10 or 20 year old arcade game hardware require anything more than 8M? All of the tasks you've mentioned (except RDBMS) were infact quite commonplace on computers before DRAM became cheap enough that it was common for people to have more than 8M of it.
Doom needs 64M, eh?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, they are not selling them for $100. You have to sign up for a 12 month service agreement at $25 a month to get a "rebate", that brings the cost down to $100 up front.
It'll actually cost you ~$400 after all is said and done.
Generally, I would say that the smaller form factor is the only reason I would go with the m505 over the EM500. Personally, since I wouldn't carry either around in my pocket all day, the large size isn't a big issue.
When I hear words like "I don't carry my PDA in my pocket" I begin to wonder if the person actually *uses* their PDA or if it just sits on their shelf gathering dust. How do you carry it around with you if you don't put it in your pocket? (I carry my Handspring in my pocket nearly everywhere I go)
..but from looking at them in stores, it doesn't look like that an IPAQ would fit in my pocket.As that's how I carry my Handspring around, the IPAQ is simply impractical for me. Sure, it is more powerful than a Visor. But a laptop is more powerful yet, and if I had to lug around something in a carrying case, I'd choose a laptop.
Well, for me it gives me something to do on the subway to work -- I can read a book, play a game, look at my calendar and read the New York Times all on a device that I can put easily in my pocket (which is important to me because I rarely have a bag or briefcase with me). I don't think Internet capability is all that important because there are good off-line Web browsers -- I, for example, download the New York Times in html format using my PC, transfer it to my Handspring and can read it on the way to work. Much easier than having to deal with a physical newspaper on the subway.
But, sadly, may be an indication that PalmOS can't take advantage of the higher-powered hardware?
and then one horrible day I lost my DAYPLANNER. I missed meeting and calls for 3 weeks. Thats when I got my PALM Vx and the ability to sync :) Now the goldmine of info is safe in 3 places, the palm, my work PC, and my home machine :)
I could function, but much LESS efficiently without my electronic conscience
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I have to agree, the IPAQ hardware rocks, and has potential to become even better. It has to be to hold and support the bloated diseased cow of an OS called WinCE. My nomad juke box does MP3's better than any pda and has more room. Text paging is really the only wireless application I use, email is fairly lame as has been pointed out previously. It is ok to read email but try and make any serious response. I still have and USE my palm Vx all the time.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Its petty Palm is in trouble but at least some good is emerging from the MS antitrust case. If it hadn't been for that MS would be able to buy Palm for $3B+- and get rid of this nasty competitor. IBM is selling a fair amount of Palm under their own brand name, maybe they would be interested in aquiring Palm?
Help fight continental drift.
I'm not familiar with the Philip Velos, but my experience with WinCE (Now PocketPC) has been positive. My Casio E125 has not crashed, locked up, or misbehaved in any way since I bought it back in Febuary. In the meantime, my coworker's Visor (Palm OS with color) has required hard resets at least twice.
One time, I used my Casio to dial into the Internet and retrieve the support number for the modem manufacturer she was using cause she couldn't (It had just crashed on her).
Chris
The power use issue isn't as bad as some would make it out to be. Since I didn't know how long it would go between recharges, I decided to not recharge my Casio E-125 until it started to use the backup battery (something the Compaq doesn't have, btw). With the screen on near max brightness, I got a full workweek out of it. For those who think a week isn't enough, the charger can be removed from the cradle for on the road charging and you can get spare batteries. Since it has a backup battery, you can swap main batteries without data loss. Not as good as a Palm, but good enough for me.
I couldn't use it for a week with the modem, but it hasn't been an issue for me...yet.
Chris
> Now, admittedly, prolly most WinCE machines have better *hardware* than most PalmOS systems.
I wonder if this is the reason for most of WinCE device sales:
1) J. Random Nerd buys WinCE machine.
2) Nerd then purges existing OS, installs Linux.
3) Nerd shows off accomplishment to friends, thus earning geek points.
4) WinCE manufacturer reports sale to Microsoft, who thinks they are on the right track, & look for another VP to wage unwinnable PR war on the GPL.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
> and that's new purchases, not just the installed base, which is even more favorable to Palm
Your information is not correct. The balance of NEW sales shifted drastically in favour of WinCE (due to iPAQ)
alexc
Join Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine
Its just that the hardware speed and ability catches up with their software faster than they can screw it up.
That I definitely agree upon. When Windows 98 first came out in May 1998, ATX-form factor machines using Slot 1 CPU's that ran Windows 98 decently fast were still expensive and relatively rare. But when hardware price dropped rapidly since then, today you can build from scratch a very nice machine that can run even Windows 2000 Professional decently fast for under US$500.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I think at the rate things are going, we might just see this happen: Sony will buy out both Palm and Handspring, merge Palm and Handspring, and the new entity becomes a Sony subsidiary. Future PDA's will say Palm by Sony marked on the case.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Ah, but the perhaps WinCE devices are better because their more potent hardware is more amenable to running Linux :-)
How the same group of geeks who gush at every totally impractical wiz-bang device that comes out, consistantly dismisses WinCE devices as a whole because of their BATTERY LIFE
Battery life is very important, as you'll soon find out, neophyte. You'll be pining for a Palm when you realize what we in the know have already figured out: we didn't use the mp3 player or the internet browser, or the 32 megs, or the MAME, or the Nintendo Emulator. We didn't even take real advantage of the 320x240 screen.
When you get to the level, where you leave the Wince POS in the desk because that's a more practical use for it than carrying it around, then you will understand that battery life is THE killer app, and Palm will be waiting for your $200 with open arms.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Lets see, they're using the Palm trademark. They are selling PDA's (Personal Drinking Assistant) so based on recent litigations i'd say Palm does have grounds for a civil suit.
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Insert Witty Sig Here
Palm versus CE is a pointless flamewar.
Palm guy: I can look at my calendar and store phone numbers
CE guy: I can play emulated Donkey Kong and watch porno MPEGs while I'm waiting in line at the DMV. Oh, and look at my calendar and store phone numbers.
Handheld Linux guy: I can bring up an XTerm to my handheld. Hello? Anyone listening?
It's kinda like the old UNIX versus DOS flamewars back in the day. Comparing two vastly different products that so happen to have some superficial simularties.
Of course, the history of the personal computers and moore's law tells us that a "modern" OS like CE will eventually rule handheld space. But that's not to say that DOS wasn't a damn useful platform.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
How much exactly? Prove it.
I'm a Palm fan, but I've used/tried the smaller RIM pager, and I _love_ the keyboard and the wireless email. If I could get the PalmOS interface with a thumb keyboard and wireless email as good as RIM with a decent/battery friendly, that'd be truely awesome. [Color screens and such might be nice, but from a usage POV it would have little effect on me.] The only real barrier that I see is the form factor and battery. Part of RIM's strength is its heft and shape, but I don't see how you would squeeze a 160x160+ screen on a RIM without making it huge....also the battery issue is significant. RIM is a ALOT more battery intensive.
That said, I can actually type 30+ words a minute on my Palm via the fitaly (keyboard) stamp, it's just a little more ackward than a RIM keyboard.
Yeah, I figured as much.
A Slashdot editor admitting MS makes a superior product?
Let's look at what Rob said.
Wince devices are better.
The devices are better. Not the OS. Last time I checked MS didn't make the devices. Companies like HP, Casio, and Compaq make the devices. The fact that they run an MS OS is secondary.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The company I work for does a lot of data collection for medical surveys. It's a lot less load on busy doctors to tick the answers into a palm pilot and upload the data to their desktop rather than tick all the boxes on paper forms (most of the questions are tickbox or small selection of posibilites).
Just because you only play games on your PDA (hey, that's all I do at the moment, until I find time to dig into the programming side of things rather than just sysadmin) doesn't mean that's all they can be used for.
And sure enough, they'll capture and sterilize yet another market ...sigh...
Yeah, it's a crying shame that Microsoft sterilized the market by bringing out PDAs that blow Palms away in terms of audio, video, voice recording, expandibility and just plain computing power (MAME-CE anyone?). Woe is us that we can't go back to the good old days and have a market full of monochrome, soundless, glorified calculators. Those bastards.
Cheers,
Why are 32, 64, even 128 meg RAM WinCE devices popping up?
Ummm, because you can do a lot more with them. If Palms had the same capabilities, you'd want more memory for it. As is, I don't need any storage space to store MP3s, video, or Flash files because Palm can't do anything with them. I don't need storage space for DoomCE, Mame-CE, NES or Gameboy emulators, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Windows Media Player, etc., because a Palm couldn't handle such apps.
Cheers,
This was listed as from the invent-a-market-and-lose-to-a-monoploy dept. What's a monoploy?
A misspelling of "a superior product," I suppose. See: Netscape, Lotus 1-2-3.
Cheers,
You're kidding, right? MameCE.exe and DoomCE.exe themselves are only 2MB and 500KB, respectively. Most MAME users, though, actually prefer to have some games to play on it. Most Doom users likewise prefer to have a WAD file or two (you know, the things which actually carry the information about the levels?) to go along with the game. See, you can't play either without them. Now consider that the basic platform-independent doom1.wad file that came with the original shareware Doom release is almost 4MB. Those arcade games you're talking didn't keep multiple games in storage. If I want to to stick 20 or so games on the PDA, there's another meg of storage needed. MP3 files, video files, audible.com files. I'll let you guess at how many of those you can store in 8MB. See, the space taken up by the apps is negligible, it's the data stored to actually make the apps useful which take up space. Nice strawman with that "64M for Doom?" crack, though.
Cheers,
Well, here's the part that got me about your original post. The whole "what the Hell are you doing that stuff on a PDA?" and "If you want to do those things, buy a laptop" thing. It's like, my PDA works great for those things, so who is this guy telling me what equipment I should and shouldn't be owning? See what I'm saying? Now, I don't know if you're like this or not, but the whole attitude reminded me of the people who have this irrational anger at people who use cell phones or SUVs. Anyway...
The thing is, it's precisely about simplicity. I don't need to carry around both a walkman/mp3 player and a PDA. I can't say the same thing about a Gameboy, because I wouldn't get one otherwise, but it's great being able to blow off a couple of hours stuck in an airport playing some great games on the PDA. While some guy on the plane is sticking his ass in everyone's face trying to get his laptop unpacked from his bag in the overhead compartment, I'm just reaching into my pocket to pull out the PDA and get going. And when the drinks are served, watch all the difficulties that laptop guy has because he can't put his beer down on his laptop-covered tray. Walking through the airport metal detector, ever been subjected to one of the random spot checks where five guards make you take your laptop out and gather around your laptop to pore over it? Pray it never happens when you're running late. With a PDA, just turn it on for 'em, and you're off to your flight. Simplicity. I'm just hoping that Microsoft gets off their collective arses and gets some of their Stinger phones on the market so I can get rid of one more extra thing that I have to lug around.
Oh, and one of the big selling points for businesses is the fact that it comes with Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Cheers,
The glut of inventory means that prices will probably be driven lower still soon.
How does this help Palm survive? When you lower prices to clear out inventory, people buy the cheap older models and sales of your new models (i.e., the ones you actually depend on to remain a healthy business) are screwed.
Cheers,
Sorry, but your view is too limited. The device is, by definition and name, a "Pocket PC." If I wanted only something to manage my personal information, I'd buy a $25 PIM, and well, Palm's priced itself out of that market. Why lug around a laptop when I don't need to in order to be able to do all the things a PocketPC can? I see all these poor chaps fumbling with theirs in airports and on planes, while I'm getting everything done that I want to with something that fits in the pocket of my shorts. If you want things to be difficult, go run your own life, okay? Some of us are having fun and getting things done, and you sound like someone with sour grapes who just can't stand to see it.
Cheers,
The more I used the iPaq, the more I realized I love the Palm and wanted it back. I worked out a deal with someone at work that was drooling over the iPaq and traded the iPaq with the toys for a Palm m505 plus a few bucks. I think I made out MUCH better on this deal. Not only is the PalmOS better, PalmOS 4 kicks butt.
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The unsig!
Not really. Microsoft does not get it right on the first try, or the second, or the third. Its just that the hardware speed and ability catches up with their software faster than they can screw it up. For instance Win98 runs significantly slower than win95 which did likewise compared to win3.1. Why is it that win9x is not being criticized for being bloated and ugly? Because the hardware is good enough now that the relative level of bloat has dropped. The system can handle the crappy code better thanks to more memory, etc. So we criticise it for being unstable instead...
So its not that WinCE finally got it right, its that palm OS minimalist approach hasn't kept up with the technology where WinCE was too demanding to start with and the tech has grown into it.
One useless man is called a disgrace; two are called a law firm; and three or more become a Congress. -John Adams, 1776
I travel a lot and find it handy to have the Palm because I can load video games and electronic texts on it. Easiest way to carry a few books worth of short stories to read on the plane, without taking up any space or weight...
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
1. Hire consultants!
2. Fire the CEO!
3. Hire consultants to hire a new CEO! (preferably someone dynamic who's not afraid to axe all of our good employees!)
4. Hire a new PR firm to issue a zillion press releases about our new CEO and our new direction
5. Change everything just in time for the market to change again.
(rinse, repeat)
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
That really makes me suspect that it IS true too. I love my palm pilot and wasn't even looking at WinCE devices, but now I wonder if I should have been. Thanks Slashdot for inspiring me to think about giving money to Bill when I get sick of this model.
I bought my Palm VIIx for nearly $400 this year. Comp USA is selling them for $100 now. I'm not bummed about missing out; I'm excited that friends of mine can now have wireless web access too.
The reason the Wince devices are finally catching up is that handheld technology has reached a point where Palm's philosophy of (relatively) cheap and simple is no longer necessary. Handhelds can have large storage, hi-res color graphics, accessory ports and the like and still have good battery life and be (again, relatively) cheap and useful.
Many people have often pointed out that MS rarely gets anything right on the first try. But by the 3rd iteration or so, the competetion is in trouble. Look at Office, DirectX, and Windows itself. The Wince devices are entering their 3rd generation but Palm's are just now getting past their early limitations (storage space, expandability, and screen resolution being the major sticking points).
Like 'Taco said, the next Clie and similar Palm devices are Palm's 'last, best hope' for keeping their dominant market position.
(Working harder on cooperating with Handspring probably wouldn't hurt....)
Depends on what you want I suppose. My complaints against WinCE is that it basically requires a very fast processor and a lot of memory for a handheld because the environment is pretty fat, unlike a Palm. It also basically demands a color display because the user interface kinda stinks in monochrome, unlike a Palm. Those two things mean that WinCE devices tend to cost several times what a Palm of similar capabilities can, and also they have a lot shorter battery life, which is a pain in the butt. Most of the more powerful WinCE devices are also bigger and heavier than Palms are. And in my opinion, the Palm user interface is still better designed for a handheld than WinCE, probably because it really was designed from scratch for that sort of device and not carrying a lot of baggage from a desktop ancestor/sibling. There may be certain high end applications for which a WinCE device can do more than a Palm, but once you start getting into that area, you have to start looking at the smaller x86 notebooks instead of a WinCE device...
:-)
So for my money, PalmOS is my choice over WinCE. Maybe a Linux based handheld in the future though, just because it would be cooler than hell and be more like my desktop...
This c|net article states that Palm's market share slipped from 65% to 60.5% and Handspring's from 27% to 26%. It also says that the iPaq's market share has incredibly doubled... from 2% to 4%. This is hardly equivalent to iPaq cannibalizing Palm sales, and the numbers are exactly in line with my previous post.
Kevin Fox
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Kevin Fox
I don't think you can justify saying that Palm's losing money because of the superiority of WinCE devices when Palm-based PDAs still have a 85% market share of the PDA market, and that's new purchases, not just the installed base, which is even more favorable to Palm.
No, if I had to guess I'd say the reason for the slowdown is because most people already have the palm that suits them, be it V/Vx, IIIx, m100, or VII, and the new models aren't enough to convince them to spend $300 for an incremental upgrade.
Hardware expansion has always underdelivered on all the PDAs, so springboard, MMC, and MemoryStick slots don't carry enough incentive to upgrade.
I love my palm, as does everyone I know who owns one. The problem is that we love the palms that we have, so we're not spending money to buy new ones.
Kevin Fox
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Kevin Fox
You know, there is something *seriously* wrong when the market leader is in a "bit of a spot."
What is this? What is going on? How on Earth can a company that has sold hundreds of thousands of units and made untold millions of dollars *ever* be in a "bit of a spot?"
Are companies really run so poorly and so inefficiently that the slightest downturn in sales puts them on the verge of Chapter 11?
This is absolutely ridiculous.
I don't need any storage space to store MP3s, video, or Flash files because Palm can't do anything with them
Wrong, on most counts. There are several MP3 players for the Palm OS, and video is possible.
I don't need storage space for DoomCE, Mame-CE, NES or Gameboy emulators, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, SQL Server, Windows Media Player, etc., because a Palm couldn't handle such apps.
Let me ask you a better question: what the hell are you doing running Doom, MAME, NES Emulators, SQL servers, and Media Player on a device that is, by definition, a Personal Information Manager? If you want to do these things, buy a laptop. The purpose of the handheld PC is NOT multimedia.
Cheers,
levine
True, the devices themselves on which the WinCE platform runs are better, but that's because the WinCE platform demands all of that power! Why are 32, 64, even 128 meg RAM WinCE devices popping up, while the Palm lineup's biggest ones are 8 or 16 at the most? Because the applications on WinCE devices - the poorly designed, terrible-interface applications - suck up that much more RAM! My Visor Regular with 2 megs of RAM holds several day's worth of news from Wired and Suck.com, all the PIM and calendar programs I need to keep my day in line, all of the email in my inbox, several games, AND all of the software I need to get online, browse the web, telnet to my box at home, get email, and drive my keyboard. In 2 megs of RAM! And I still have perhaps 500K free at any time. All of this runs perfectly fast, by the way.
Why, then, does the staff at Slashdot seem content to berate Palm's OS while recommending WinCE - even Linux based handheld computers, where the command line is standard! It doesn't make a bit of sense. If I have to wait even half a second for my handheld to "boot up", it's not doing it's job.
Cheers,
levine
Business users demand simplicity, productivity, and reliability.
Hence the ubiquity of MS Windows & Office in the business sector...
I don't even really like the rolling stones, but just as soon as I read your comment this came to mind:
"You can't always get what you want - but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You know what would be a killer Palm model? Something with the form factor of a V, along with the ability to plug in and play (even via adaptor) GBA games.
It seems like it would be a smart move for Palm and Nintendo to work together on something like this.
I only mention this because the only thing I've really thought of buying other than my Palm V has been a GBA, and it might be nice if they were combined. Then again, I don't often need a GBA but I always need my Palm V with me (carried about in the nigh-invulnerable hard case so I can keep it in my pocket with my keys).
As for an MP3 player, if I want to play MP3's I'll just use my watch. What are you people thinking wanting MP3 players in a PDA? Baffling.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I personally would like to see PDA's head in the direction of acting as a glarified "controller/interface" of electronic devices I place about my person - in that role, I see Palm as being a lot better suited than other PDA platforms.
Palms are simple, have a great form factor with a minimal (but not too minimal) screen, and good connectivity options (with an IR, seral, and direct expansion ports). They would make the ideal small interface to manage just about any other small device I have on my person - they could manage images in a digital camera. They could manage images stored in a portable digital camera storage device (which I would love for someone to build, hello stupid companies!)
Such a thing could show me details of how my engine was running that day. It could act as a master controller for my house. It could tell my cell phone to dial a particular number. It could present a larger interface for my thumbnail sized 400mb MP3 player so I can adjust my playlist on the fly and see what sond is currently playing.
In short, I want my PDA to do almost nothing except provide a lightweight decently sized interface to all the other devices around me that have been miniturized beyond the point where they can present a usable interface. The PDA is something small enough that I always have with me (and perhaps never need to charge), even as all the other devices I carry around with me at different times change in features offered.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Psions.
Last time I heard, true multitasking. My original 5 has 8 MB, the MX has 16 and an S7 32. All have larger screens. All have slower processors, too, though you wouldn't know most of the time.
All have excellent battery life.
Please remember, MS don't make the things! They might have come up with specs and the OS but not the hardware.
I'm still baffled why anyone buys those CE things. An iPaq, which seems to be getting all the attention, is pretty much the same size as a Psion 5 for goodness' sakes!
Microsoft and their partners might have some odd ideas about these things - but that doesn't mean that they've got everything wrong or that the PalmOS' level of simplicity is necessarily right, just that WinCE and its hardware isn't a particularly good idea in some ways.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
The new iPaq has a battery that lasts much longer but...
They took out the damned backup battery!
Customers we have using iPaqs regularly call because they used the device on Friday, didn't return the device to the charging cradle until Monday, by which it has reverted to factory settings.
The iPaq was SOOO close.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The HandEra 330 has a 240x320 display, including a soft Graffiti area. It runs Palm OS 3.5.2, heavily modified to support a higher-resolution screen, as well as the two built-in expansion slots (SD/MMC and CompactFlash). Sounds what you're looking for.
For more information, click here.
Consider this: some of the color Palm-OS units claim to support 16-bit color depth -- 65,535 colors. But a 160x160 display only has 25,600 pixels -- barely enough to display one third of these colors at any one time!
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this argument is flawed. Here's why.
Consider this: some of the current video cards on the market claim to support 24-bit color depth -- 16,777,216 colors. But even a 1600x1200 display only has 1,920,000 pixels, barely enough to display one tenth of these colors!
Just because you can't see all of the colors on the screen at once doesn't mean that they're not helpful.
For more information, click here.
Only the high-end models bear those ungodly prices. In response to competition, Palm has low-end models as well. Is US $129 too much for you?
By contrast, I have yet to see a sub-$200 WinCE PDA that's worth owning. Palm can corner the low-end market like teen-agers and college students with such low-priced models. The glut of inventory means that prices will probably be driven lower still soon.
For more information, click here.
One thing to remember is that 3COM can probably bail it out. Either buying it back, or giving it some heavy investment. It's not over yet...
Now, if you're looking for the 64MB iPaq, yes, that is in very short supply.
As to whether it's worth it, if you want a color screen and MP3 capability, and are willing to overlook some of the QA issues (slightly higher defect rate), it's a superb unit. If you really are only going to use it as an organizer it's probably overkill. I paired mine with a Microdrive and use it for MP3's all the time.
--bdj
--bdj
One of the problems is people still have working Palm Pilots they upgraded years back. For many people the original Palms work great. It shows a lot of good design and forethought on Palm's part... but also that they haven't come up with new ideas that people must have.
Brian Macy
150 MHz MIPS processor, instead of 33 MHz
How is this a feature? I could really care less how fast my PDA is, as long as it does it's job as a PDA. I've got a laptop for playing quake on, I don't need it on my PDA.
More functionality out-of-the-box (spreadsheet, ect.) saving memory for many people
Maybe you meant money there? I would tend to think that editing documents on a PDA would be a pain, you'd best just carry that laptop again. The only thing I (and seemingly many others) want a PDA for is a glorified notepad, period.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
And god knows he needs more money fromt he likes of us.
War is necrophilia.
Fine. But what do you carry your laptop in? Some of us prefer to travel light, and for us, the tradeoff between mass vs. power is a handheld. My dad, who isn't real technical, but travels a lot, comments that a palmtop travels better than a laptop, if you don't need to bang a Word document out.
For me, when I want a real computer, I want a monster N-Ghz desktop machine with lotsa cooling fans on it. Otherwise, when I'm traveling, I want just enough computing power to get me by until I can get to another monster desktop.
And even the cheapest palmtops can hold stacks and stack of notebooks in their memory banks.
Everybody's different. You know that there are cat people and dog people? Makes you wonder sometimes...
It's called the "Apple Newton". Hope this helps!
Slashdot editors have previously said nice things about MS products, but only their hardware to the best of my knowledge.
;)
_ __
Who doesn't think that the MS intellimouse rocks? Granted it's usually overpriced, but they generally make decent hardware. (Comment subject to change upon release of the x-box
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- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
Many people see a palm and think "ooh, computer that fits in your hand, how useless" ... some people can't shake the thought that it ought to do the same things that an ordinary computer ought to do.
It's not meant for that. Something that size is exceptional for keeping bits of information that would otherwise be floating in a backpack.
It's awesome for keeping track of phone numbers, appointments, notes, frequently accessed information (ex: SCR #'s that you use a lot) keeping a triplog for your car, a financial organizer, storing a grocery list (there is some totally awesome software for this that really makes comparison shopping easy and it can organize items by what row they're in, saving mucho time in the grocery store), or storing a map of an area you are traveling to.
The ability to play a bit of minesweeper or solitare while waiting for something is an additional plus.
You don't use these things at a table where you've got time on your handl; you open it, hit the power buttom, jot something down/look something up and put it back in your pocket within 10 seconds.
It's a very sophisticated organizer, not a computer. Why anyone would want their organizer to play music or watch movies is beyond me.
DOS based, plenty of FREE software, enough processing power to type text and do serial communication, perfectly usable keyboard, PCMCIA slot, exceptional battery life.
It is the most practical PDA that I have ever owned.
I pity the fool who uses a stylus.
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control.
These people cleary have no idea how to report on business. How can you say "Palm, a company that launched a very successful initial public offering just 14 months ago." with one breathe, then say "generating $1 billion a year in sales and was still enjoying 100 percent year-over-year growth.
" in the next?
But let's focus on the company itself. Why they are in trouble, and what can bo done to fix it.
Palm, Inc has had some focus problems since USR (and later, 3com) bought them out. The initial device had great ideas, but they've only incrementally improved them since then. Bluetooth to control other devices (such as Cell, which cry out for a proper Palm interface), internal NiMH rechargeables (Palm V has this -- they all should), and a better software bundle (including a learning IrRemote) would add much to the value of the device.
The new models won't sell. There are no new features which require upgrades. Even my Palm IIIe (limited to 2mb ram) is enough. The new m100 series are ugly, expensive, and don't offer an advantage to Palm II and Palm V users. Since the software is good, and the current harhdware is perfect, they need to add new features (again, cell phone control, tv/vcr/dvd control, etc, would be great). You may not pay 500$ for a toy organizer, but you'd pay for it if you could control your entertoinment centre, X.10 devices, cell phone, and more from one device which also happened to be a great organizer.
Like 3Dfx, they want to do it all -- make the OS, maxe the device, provide CDPD access for Palm VII users, etc. And like 3Dfx, they are finding that their competitors (who can focus on the device, or the OS, etc) are eating their lunch. If they spun off the portal, ISP, and device making, they could become the MS of handhelds (but it's probably too late for that). If they focus on what they are good at (good software which should have little development costs, good hardware which can be mass produced), they will become profitable!
They are too greedy. 500$ USD for what, exactly? An electronic organizer? The Palm IIIe sells for ~200$ Cdn. At that price, practically everyone can afford one (like VCRs or TVs). If Palm could lower prices and raise awareness, they could bring a lot more customers into the fold. And they could also add features to the higher ond models which some customers would love!
Palm computing has all the right stuff for success. It's still fairly young for a business on its own (and everynew business is guaranteed 5 years of hardship when they start, before the kinks are worked out). If they focus on their target consumers (think executives and college students), then add features that power users and professionals want (on the higher end), they can have a comprehensive product line. And if they ditch the overhead of the rest of their company (portals, ISP service), they can make a killing.
A renamed Palm III in an uglier case with changeable faceplates is not a reason to spend a few hundred $$s.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Have a standard serial port config. That way each and every addon device could be transfered to your new palm when you buy it.
Concentrate on partnerships with 3rd party software vendors to develop extension apps
Release information about hardware interface to 3rd part companies for the development of extensions. (my Go keyboard is a great example of what can be done.)
Listen to their users.
In other words do what the competition has done, ie Handsprings.
The last thing they could have done? Not spun off from 3com.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
WinCE may not be a direct port of NT, but it's pretty damn close and certainly was not designed from the ground up for portable devices. WinCE uses a subset of the Windows APIs, uses a registry, uses shared DLLs, and uses the same basic file structure as the desktop OSs. And, of course, the GUI was orignally from the desktop (and still is on the clamshell units).
The Palm does word processing, spreadsheets, relational databases, and does have true web browsing (not just web clipping). If you need higher resolution, Handera's new unit has 240x320 and Sony's new unit has 320x320. If you need MP3 playback, Sony's can do it.
In general, Palms are smaller and lighter. Many CE devices are better for FPU intensive apps and multimedia. In the end both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses. Get the best tool for your needs and stop this silly WinCE vs. Palm holy war.
One thing palm has constantly done wrong is they squandering most of the opportunities for advancing the Palm user experience on stupid things that make the market droids and geeks google eyed. The biggest issue here is handwriting recognition. Palm could have put their efforts and faster chips into improving handwriting recognition. I'm not necessarily talking about getting rid of Grafitti (since that would require a *really* fast chip) but rather use the increased processor speed to implement better HWR algorithms so that the palm doesn't miss every fourth or fifth letter you write. Perhaps giving the user the ability to train grafitti (like with speech recognition). But what does palm do instead? They come out with color screens. It's that "ooh ahh" technology which is appealing to geeks (and market droids)just because they like technology but which doesn't really improve the total user experience. Another way they really blew it is with the Palm V. In that case, they used advancement in handheld technology to make a smaller, slimmer device that was meant to free the user from the worry of carrying around a big, thick PDA. But as any Palm V owner will tell you, they designed it in such a way that the buttons which turn the damn thing on are easy to hit. While the user is liberated from the worry of a thick device, they are now burdened with worrying about whether their palm will accidently turn on at the slightest bump. I think, or at least I would like to think, that some of Palm's troubles are due to their belief that "sexy technology" is more important than the user experience.
Personally I'm pissed off with Palm for charging me $20 for an OS upgrade that was necessary for the proper functioning of my Palm V. Before I installed it, alarms weren't working at all and it was losing two or three days worth of time every couple of weeks. Other palm users told me they'd had similar problems with their Palm V's and the OS upgrade fixed them. So I shelled out for the OS upgrade and found someone with a Windows box that I could install it from and decided that that was the last $20 I was ever going to give Palm.
Next time I'll buy a Visor or one of the Linux based palmtop computers.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The 9x or NT/2K kernels will not boot on a MIPS or SH3 processor.
Well, NT ran on MIPS for a while (along with PowerPC and Alpha). I actually have an NT4 CD, bootable on x86, Alpha, PowerPC, and MIPS. It's from back in the early days (it's SP1 IIRC), before NT dropped PowerPC and MIPS (and Alpha, for the most part).
and I've yet to see a Palm that can:
Play MP3's
Play MPEG movies
open office files
display REAL web pages, and not some clipped text-only crap
OK, I'll admit that I don't own a handheld of any sort. But if I did, I would not buy it for any of the reasons you mention. Why?
I don't use Office.
MPEG - Can any handheld hold an episode or three of DivX encoded anime, and play it back with full framerates? That I would consider useful, but I doubt any handheld has that kind of power (or memory) yet. Otherwise, that ability is basically in the "Look at what my handheld can do that you're can't" category.
MP3s - I'd get a RIO, or just use my portable CD player, possibly with CD-R mixes of my favorite songs.
Viewing webpages is only useful if I get wireless access, which, considering how rarely I would use it, is not worth the cost of the hardware and access.
My point is that you may well see these as things that a handheld device should be able to do, but my useage of a handheld would probably be limited to what Palm seems best suited for - notes, lists, addressbooks, etc.
Of course, I won't be either until I see the prices drop more. I really don't want much from a PDA, but I want it to be cheap and small. That's about it.
The iPAQ can handle full speed video. So far, it doesn't support DivX AVI files, but you can play MPEG-1 or WMV files. And it can hold a full downscaled DVD using a expansion sleeve with CF or a MicroDrive (1 GB) or a 2 GB PCMCIA HardDrive.
:)
Well, I have to admit that this sounds intriguing.
And if/when there is short range BlueTooth communication, it'd be a lot easier to have HTML device interfaces that your PDA can handle (and not clipping).
True, but the cynic in my says that that if/when will be quite a while from now, if ever (too bad too, I really think BlueTooth is a great idea).
It isn't for everybody, but it is a solution for some of us...
Hey, never said it wasn't...
It recognizes my handwritting (when the Newton
couldn't get a single letter right),
Newton OS 1.X or 2.X?
2.0 worked, the others didn't.
As Palm uses the ARMed Dragonball, and is able to better leverage the Apple Newton engineers who work for the firm, you might get a reason to upgrade.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I tried someone else's unit that had a wireless modem. It didn't work indoors. What's the point of something that can't hook up to the Internet?
I prefer to carry around my laptop, which has 2GB of e-mail from the past seven years. And I carry around a spiral notebook and pen, because I find it to be the best way to record ideas and notes.
I suppose a palmtop could be useful for those who would otherwise need a day-timer -- those with complex calendars and extensive phone directories. For me, I just don't get it -- at least not until it can hook up to the Internet and has high enough resolution to read PDF files.
Maybe someone can tell me what I'm missing.
I have a Palm III from about 2 years ago. Here's why I'm still using it:
1. It still does everything I need it to
2. I'm not going to spend $500 for a color version, or on any handheld short of one with a small PC's power. At $500 I could almost buy an iMac or a cheap PC; a handheld with 8mb RAM/storage isn't enough of an incentive.
I'm relieved that the "planned obsolescence" thing didn't happen with the Palm I still use. I'm tired of upgrading hardware every 18 months. I don't need to play Quake on my handheld.
I'm sorry Palm is having trouble, because their product is good, but if they were counting on me to pitch my III for a V or a VII when the III still worked fine, then their business model had a fatal flaw, and one that this crisis they're facing will surely correct, one way or the other.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Editing documents/spreadsheets on a PDA is really fairly easy--I'd never write a 10 page report on one, but for proofreading/editing pre-existing documents it's great. I've also used it for some quick spreadsheet calculations in about 5 minutes that my graphing calculator would take a good 15-20 minutes to program. These were generally done at times where I wouldn't be hauling around a laptop.
About the "saving memory" part: since the PocketPC OS has software such as a word processor/spreadsheet built into the ROM, it takes up no additional storage space. The money aspect was another issue for me, though. By the time I had bought the software to get a lower priced Palm up to the level I wanted, I would have paid just as much as I did for my Cassiopeia.
Finally, for the faster processor, it helps:
For people that actually want the power of a real PC without carrying around a laptop, Pocket PCs are great. For people that just want a PDA at a more reasonable price, Palm is the way to go.
~=Keelor
m505 vs. EM500
Both:
m505 advantages:
EM500 advantages:
As far as battery life goes, I've never had the battery run out on me during a day of heavy use (such as an 8 hour car trip). So it's hardly a problem for me. Then again, I don't listen to MP3s and read a book at the same time, which would decrease the life.
Generally, I would say that the smaller form factor is the only reason I would go with the m505 over the EM500. Personally, since I wouldn't carry either around in my pocket all day, the large size isn't a big issue.
As has been commented on, Palm should be making a killing on Microsoft by offering stuff like the m505 at a much lower price. When I can get a processor that's 5 times as fast, with twice the memory at the same price (even better for me, since I got a EM500 with a 28 MB memory card for $300), I don't see a good reason to go with an m505.
Of course, places like Brighthand show why Palm could continue to proceed--much of the market and resellers are effectively ignoring the PocketPC, and so many reviews of the m505 have only focused on how much better they are than previous Palms--not the fact that they've now managed to catch up with Pocket PCs released a half year ago (in my opinion).
~=Keelor
PalmOS is very "unixy" in its philosophy, it aims to be a great handheld computer operating system, and assumes its role since the beginning, never trying to be too pretentious. It's perfectly suited for the handheld paradigm, trying to be a personal digital assistant, just that, not a reduced PC. That's what WinCE tries (and fails) to do.
Now, admittedly, prolly most WinCE machines have better *hardware* than most PalmOS systems. I'm still impressed over Compaq's iPAQ which can run Linux and has 64 MB RAM. Notice, however, that this is *NOT* a microsoft product. They just provide the (Crappy) operating system. Still, I've yet to see any *ANY* handheld running WinCE that's as small and light as my Palm V. That counts for me, because i'm really lazy and there's a limit to how big and heavy a device I'll carry. Heck, if I want a PC, I'll take my Portege 3010 which is the size of a standard paper notebook. That's not too big. But I am *that* lazy :)
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-- SIGFPE
I think you hit the nail on the head here ... they've come out with lots of new models -- but none of them *DO ANYTHING NEW*. I've owned 3 pdas in my life, a US Robotics Pilot 1000, a visor deluxe, and a Palm Vx ... and I gotta tell ya the palm VX is *perfect*. Its light, its .4 inches thick -- I've got a wallet case for it thats no bigger then a regular wallet -- and it stays charged for weeks at a time! The only difference between my Vx and my pilot 1000's (made in 1996) is how much ram they have and their shape ... talk about progress
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
They have the same problem that Volswagon did - their product works extremely well for a long time and nobody feels the need to "upgrade".
My Palm(Pilot) with USRobotics emblazened upon it was one of two that my business partner and I bought for $400 each "back in the day"... they still work and we still use them to this day.
1. Batteries: In our corporate testing not only did the iPaq batteries die relatively quickly, but when they did the device lost all data. Restoration was somewhat painful. Users who do well with iPaq's seem to work at a desk and recharge very frequently. I expect Microsoft/Compaq will eventually fix this.
2. The main impact on battery drainage appears to be the display, not the CPU or OS. (The Palm OS, however, is very good at saving power and managing low power states).
3. The Palm conduits and sync mechanisms are robust. My experiences with iPaq syncing have been mixed. HUGE EXCEPTION: Outlook's data model is SO complex and powerful I've a long history of frustrating Palm syncs with Outlook. I assume the iPaq HAS to be better. If you want to look for why Palm is in trouble, the dominance of Outlook/Exchange in the corporate setting and the difficulty of syncing with Outlook/Exchange may be issue #1.
4. I am having more software and hardware reliability issues over time. The most reliable devices I had was a Palm III with OS 2.x. As the OS gets more complex (communications layers) and as price pressure grows reliability is being sacrificed. This is HUGE problem #2. My wife made a very strong effort to switch from a Franklin Planner to a Palm IIIx; until it started crashing with total data loss (hardware problem). She now uses the replacement IIIx for games and phone numbers. Declining reliability is the kiss of death for the original purpose of the Palm (calendaring, PIM).
5. The Palm OS is said to handle network traffic poorly. If true this is another major limitation, though in practice I have found little value and much cost to the current wireless web.
6. Security is very weak on the Palm, I think the iPaq does better. This is a very big issue for me, but not for most users. (I have had major usability and reliability issues with both TealLock and OnlyMe.
CONCLUSION: Things do not look great for any product in the marketplace. The future was brighter about 3 years ago, but fundamentally I don't think there's a big enough user base for a truly reliable product of the nature of the original Palm III. I think we'll see a profusion of devices with multimedia functionality, lower prices, more features, and less reliability and shorter battery life. We made it further down the road this time than we did with the Newton, but we may have to wait for the third wave.
PS. Yes, I do wish the Psion had done better. Unfortunately I am addicted to the size and weight of the Vx.
--
John Faughnan
John Faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
For somone owning a thin and light laptop I find the Palm essentially useless, except for reading Avantgo news in the darkness of your one's bedroom without bothering one's spouse.
The interesting thing is that I used to own a Palm IIIc, then "upgraded" to a Compaq iPAQ. I've switched back to Palm now, for the following reasons:
Palm's battery life is *much* better.
WinCE/PocketPC still has some usability issues as far as interface design is concerned.
Far too much "demoware" and "shareware" software in the WinCE world.
I *don't* want to deal with a "file explorer" on my PDA when trying to launch a program.
WinCE/PocketPC doesn't play nice with non-Microsoft OSes
PocketPCs are just that: an attempt to squeeze a relatively full-featured computer into a pocket form factor. Only I don't want to mess with registry entries, file explorers, and the like while using a PDA. Given their relatively high-powered CPUs and capabilities, they *suck* power like nobody's business. I was used to charging my Palm IIIc once every month or so. I left my iPAQ off for about a week (went on vacation), and when I returned, the battery was dead and all my contacts, notes, and software was gone (my own fault... but still, 6 days, starting with a full charge, and the unit turned *off*?!)
I've switched to a predominantly Linux environment at home, and the PocketPC, while supporting TCP/IP, doesn't sync with anything except Microsoft's Windows-based ActiveSync tools. On the other hand, there is support for the Palm on most major computing platforms, including MacOS and Linux.
For those that want an all-in-one MP3 player, contact list, organizer, and don't mind being trapped in Windows, then the PocketPC might be for you... Personally though, I'd rather have a Palm for a PDA, and save the MP3/multimedia functions for a dedicated MP3 player. I personally own and love the Iomega HipZip MP3 player - it's USB based, and works wonderfully under Windows, MacOS 9, Mac OS X and Linux (in OS X and Linux, it appears as a simple SCSI drive).
Does anyone here want to buy a iPAQ 3650 w/USB cradle, CF sleeve, serial adapter, manuals, disks, etc? In great condition... ;)
No, he's right. Palmtop computers are unnecessary. However, the Palm is NOT a palmtop computer. It's expressly designed not to BE a palmtop computer. It's designed to be a mobile extention of your desktop. Data retrieval and access, not data entry. And as to all the posts saying that the Wince devices can do all and sundry, well, I prefer the UNIX way; several small bits, each doing one thing, and doing it well. I want to listen to MP3s, I have an MP3 player. Want to watch DVDs, I have a portable DVD player. Want to call somebody, I have a cell phone. Guess what; if one breaks, the others all still work. Useful, that.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
In my mind, at least, the real problem is that they really aren't that useful. I have recently acquired a Palm V at no cost to me (no I didn't steal it), and while it is funny as hell to play with, any and all actually useful functions it has are much better done with pen(cil) and paper. Honestly. And all the "syncrhonizing with the desktop" crap means that you either have to use the Palm desktop to keep your schedule, or be using Outlook, both of which I'd rather not do. In fact, the only real use I've found for it is reading free books, as essentially every single book that is old enough to not be copyrighted can be gotten for free in a format for palm (or converted from txt ala Gutenberg), and it is actually not that bad reading off of a palm (much better then slowly scrolling down a txt on the computer). But essentially, the palm is an expensive gameboy for adults.
In my mind, the thing that will make any handheld device actually worth it is as follows:
1. A *lot* more memory (whatever happened to those 300mb drives the size of credit cards that IBM was doing?)
2. Voice recognition (Graffiti is okay, but the palm needs something akin to dictation for input to be truly useful)
3. Some level of AI (this is sort of attached to the voice recognition part, but essentially I want to be able to say "take me to such-and-such a program" and it takes me there).
Notice how "color" and "net-access" aren't on that list. Well net access has some usability, but the fact that people are obsessed with color kind of irritates me. Oh well, I'll save that for another rant....
Do you even have a clue what you are talking about? The 16-bit isn't a rating of how many differnt colors it can display at the same time. It's rating of how many colors it is capable of displaying.
Accoring to your theory. No 1024x769 screen, or even a 1600x1200 can display 24 or 32 bit color.
One would have though that someone would have uncovered this scam by now!
I have a Palm V but I really like to have a fancy PDA with color screen and MP3. I am waiting for the new Compaq IPaq to come out. Any idea how much is the new IPaq and does it worth the buck ?
-- Terrence Ma
that Palm is in trouble. They didn't change the product for what...5-6 years? The only cool thing that they've added (until the M50x series)was the wireless line. Other than that, they've added some really "hip" colors and maybe a few worthless apps. In the meantime, the evil empire launches WindowsCE devices, handspring clones the palm and sells them cheaper and Sony starts with the Clie'. In response to all of this, Palm dicks around for 2-3 years and finally launches a product that presents the same level of features as the competition.......
People that buy Palms are buying them for all the flashy features... People that buy Windows CE devices fit in the same catagory, only the CE has even flashier features.
The Psion makes a fully featured handheld system (just about the size of an iPaq) with a full featured word processor, spread sheet, Agenda, Contacts, Calculator, Database, and more built in. While a full desktop system gives you more flexability, most people buy a desktop for just these apps (it does come with full web browser and email). Before you reply to this, find someone with a Psion and try it out first. I'm sure your response will change.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As far as them disappearing, with partners like Ericson, Panasoic, and more, I can't see them dying. This is not to mention that they are great sellers in the UK and will have a market there no matter what happens in the US. They don't need to advertise as word of mouth is much better, and they don't work on glitz, but rather cater to pros that need a real pc in their hands.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The truth is you will find many happy Psion owners, and just because they don't have a large presence in the US doesn't mean failure. In fact, they have pretty much taken over England, and with that much market, they will be around a long time, no matter where you are located.
Besides that point, since there are maybe 5 diehard Newton fans out there, I'm quite sure the first AC and the replying AC are one-in-the-same. That's to mention nothing of their identical styles of speech, punctuation, and vocabulary.
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Palms are just toys, Windows CE devices are just toys, and Windows CE makes a better toy.
Now how is Palm superior again?
I also admit that Windows CE is unstable and slow, but so is windows, and people just accept that instead of using something else. So, if you want a toy, get Windows CE instead of Palm... For those of you that want a fully featured computer designed for professionals, that will also fit in your pocket, check out Psion. (www.psionusa.com)
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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The biggest problem I have with most handhelds is the UI. My handwriting has been unfavorably compared to Sanskrit,(why do you think I got into computers in the first place?) and Graffiti is even worse (I tried.) I have a RIM Blackberry 957, and I can touchtype (with my thumbs, would you believe) around 20-30 wpm. Plus it syncs with my email, calendar, etc... and it's got an always-on, wireless modem, and rechargable batteries (that's the big one. Little one runs off of AA's.) I've never run the battery down yet (and I've gone a couple weeks between recharges at times). And you can write your own Java programs for them, or download from Tucows or Handango. Downers: They're expensive. Figger around $500 US for the unit (I think the smaller, pager-sized ones are about 20% less expensive), and then there's the monthly wireless service costs, which tend to vary with the ISP. Oh, yeah- get the Internet Edition. Enterprise edition is for corporate emails; and is way beyond what's needed for home use. Wireless service area is currently US/Canada only (and if you can't use a cellphone where you're at, you probably won't get reception on this, either.) Also, the screen's black-and-white only, and it's not touch-sensitive (since you have the keyboard.) And I can't telnet with it (yet), daggone it. But I can netsurf, get email, send email, and check my contacts/notes/tasks, generally faster than people can look it up in Daytimers or PC's. And no, I'm not a RIM employee. :)
If you want a fully featured computer, you simply go to your local discount store, buy the hardware you need and spend an afternoon building a decent machine.
If a fully featured toy is what you want, you buy such a great thing with which you can play 3 MP3 songs. I'd rather buy myself a Rio then, but ok, if that's what you want. Maybe a laptop would be a nice solution for you, ever thought of that?
If, however, you want a decent piece of hardware on which you can keep things like an agenda, a spreadsheet, a simple database and other stuff you need dozens of times a day, go for a Palm (or any efficient handheld for that matter). No, you don't get those nifty things like video, audio and other stuff, but hey, who needs it in a handheld? Some months ago there was a discussion here on /. about speech-recognition on a handheld. Same goes for that: who needs it on a handheld? If you want those things, get a laptop. The keyboard, mouse and screen are much better on a laptop than on whatever handheld.
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
You'd think that after a while, the bulk of consumers that wanted these things would already have them. Take me for example: I bought a Palm IIIx about a year ago and I have no reason to upgrade.
So computer sales are down. The the internet is going under. The sky is falling. What else is new? Geesh...
Horribly disfiguring problem discovered...find out tonight at 11!
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Companies like this need to keep hanging on, because when the economy does pick up again, people will be re-hired, and demand for these devices will go up. The big question now is as to when the market goes back up...
-Aaron
dinosaur? got one! it's called a peecee and it runs something called windows...
I remeber my old boss got a Palm IIIc for free, she was very exited and asked me how she can load up a excel list of IP address on to it. I told here she needed to buy extra software. She was very dissaponted with it.
I also bought a Palm IIIe, not for the organizer but as a toy. After playing with it for about 2 month, loading all the shareware and silly apps, I got board of it and gave it to my brother, who is also getting board or it.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
The war for the mainstream market is over, and Palm has won. They hit the right philosophy early on (small, stable, useful, cheap, long battery life), targeted the right initial niche, gained their foothold in the mainstream market, then delivered these devices as fast as they could make them.
When it was clear Palm was taking the lead, the secondary market -- software, hardware, books, accessories -- grew up around them. Buying a Palm now means you are buying into this massive community of ancilary products and support. This is a much stronger sales position than Microsoft can offer, and one that is remarkably difficult to unseat. (See Apple vs. WinTel for a reference point)
Microsoft is relegated to lapping up the scraps of the unserved niches on the outskirts of the mainstream. This includes people who want MP3's to drain their battery in 6 hours. And people who want the fastest processor with the highest screen resolution so they can run arcade emulators that drain their batteries in 3 hours. And people who just feel comfortable with the name Microsoft.
Meanwhile, managers who are assigned the task of outfitting the corporate sales force with contact management devices will choose Palm, because it's the least risky, best-supported choice to make. Or individuals who want to take their first timid steps into buying a PDA to help manage their busy lives will ask their friend who already owns one for a recommendation -- and 90% of those friends will say "Palm", because that's what they bought, and it's been great.
This is how a market leader stays a market leader. Palm chooses not to compete on the basis of feature set because they simply don't need to. They have all the third party support. They get free marketing every day from their legions of loyal and satisfied followers. They are competitively priced. In short, they have surprisingly little to fear from the usually daunting competitive force of Microsoft.
Their present financial woes may be the result of a great many things, but the least of them is the erosion of market share from WinCE devices. They may actually be suffering more at the hands of Handspring, whose success has greatly outpaced Palm's expectations (I guess they're wishing they charged Handspring more for the OS).
Handheld computers are great for keeping notes
and other information together in one place.
I keep book and movie lists and so in in my Palm VX. (In addition to phone numbers, appointments, and other information)
I kept losing those little pieces of paper!
Besides, being able to search through everything is invaluable.
-Kevin
As far as Palm vs WinCE goes, I'll take the PalmOS any day....
I'd buy some palm stock as soon as it dropped to the floor because of this news :).
.. and they wonder why no one is buying them. The last time I was at stables they wanted well over $500 for a top of the line Palm. Thats crazy, of course I am not gonna buy it. Since everyone and his mother already has one, theres no reason to upgrade. I'll stick with my Palm III, thanks.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Part of the the problem is the same one that has been the plague of the next market. Some of it simply running out of cash for silly business plans, but some of it is irrational pessimism, in large part due to the FUD from politicians. These folks certainly deserve a portion of the blame for the business climate.
It has gone so far that you have stories like this one that I first spotted at the Register, commonly titled "Death of the Web Inevitable". This is shear bullocks, as the real story is the possible look of the WWW, version 2.0, named in the story as the "X Internet" - but the FUD Masters got to put their spin on it.
The market has evaporated because there are not so many people out there looking for the best toys to get the job done, when the problem was not so much the toys, but getting the job done.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
When I scribbled down a note, I knew I would have to re-enter it into my Mac (yes, Mac) later on. Otherwise, if I ever lost it, I'd have no backup.
Now I have a Palm V. I have a backup of all my contacts. I only have to enter a weekly event once.
When I'm stuck with nothing to do, I have half a dozen books loaded up. When I have too much to do, I've got reference guides for Perl, HTML, Unix, and Windows. I've got a database of 50 of my favorite restaraunts, and directions how to get there.
Many of these are the same tasks my DayRunner did before. Palm just does them much better. And I have Tetris.
The Palm Pilot is a tool. If all you want is a tip calculator, it's the coolest $400 tip calculator there is. If, however, you want the mythical "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", it's here.
Palm is simply having the same problems as every high-tech company: the economy's in the dumper. Give it a year.
...Only Windows OSs and Apps can link to it. When Billy "shared Source" Gates opens up the soruce for even the conduits, maybe I'll be able to link Mac OSX to it and might buy one. 'Til then, "all your PDA belong to us--NOT!"
Got it.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
If you give a PPC a chance, you might want to try Transcriber. I've always read good things about it, and recently gave it a chance. It works pretty good, you can write anywhere on the screen, and It recognizes my handwritting (when the Newton couldn't get a single letter right), and works ok. I don't think I'll be using it as my primary input method (a bit slow to recognize sometimes, and it could get in the way if you don't type text frequently), but it is a nice option to have (and I'd use it more if I had to write a lot of text)...
I've been trying to get used to Fitaly as an input method, but I keep going back to the built-in character recognizer and the keyboard. I guess I'll keep training with Fitaly, to see if I get over the transition phase....
There's been a lot of discussion on the Mac Web (it's entirely separate from the regular web of course) about Apple buying Palm as they tried to do earlier. What do you guys think about?
Arthropoid, the Right Clam for the Job
I like Palm - the liquid, personally. Don't sue them please ;)
...a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore ~H2G2
But they make some dumb business decisions. Their handheld with integrated wireless is now just $199! Great deal! I'm all over that.
Bad news is the service is like $45 a month! And it's not even real TCP/IP. No wonder they are in trouble. If it was $10 a month they would have millions of accounts. Yet another vendor completely pricing themselves out of the market.
why don't you have one or want one?
for me a Palm is not so useful, I'd prefer a laptop, it's bigger to carry around, but I can have everything I want.
I've seen a lot of posts where Palm users don't feel the need to upgrade, but I'm curious as to the reasons other people don't want Palms.
Microsoft making better products than Palm is fine by me. But think about it : why is Microsoft better than Palm ? because they have enormous amounts of cash to fund devices such as the PocketPC with WinCE. So yes, Microsoft is better than Palm, just because Palm can't fork off that kind of money to do just as good.
My point is, Microsoft is so entrenched in the industry, and so aggressive, that they squelch competitors, whether it's by buying them or outspending them. End result : Microsoft becomes a monopoly on a new market once more and makes products that might be good but certainly aren't fantastic. That's what monopolies do.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And sure enough, they'll capture and sterilize yet another market ...sigh...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I had a friend who bought two Philips Velos. Nifty little box for its day. You're absolutely correct. The older versions of WinCE were horrible. Go check out an ipaq or jornada at a store sometime, and then say that you'd legitimately trade it for a palm device.
I owned a Pilot Professional. Then I bought a Philips Nino when they came out. It was such slow, unusable crap that I traded it for a Palm III. That broke, so I bought an Ipaq and fell in love.
Anyway, you can't make arguements from both sides about battery life.
Either its an MP3 playing, MAME emulating monster, and it only lasts 6 hours of continuous use before needing a recharge, or you use it in the same way you use a palm pilot, and it lasts significantly longer.
If you're only using it for my contacts, phone list, etc, thats great, except someone might be willing to spend another $50 on the slim chance that you might one day want to use some of those other features.
(this is comparing the high end palms to the IPAQ, in the 200-250 range, Palms stand alone)
I bought an IPAQ 3650 yesterday for $50, yes FIFTY dollars more than Handspring is selling their color palm device for.
In return, I get a 320x240 screen instead of a 160x160, it can play MP3s. It can run MAME and Nintendo emulators. It can record my voice at a touch of a button. I can actually read books off of it without getting eye sore. It has 32 megs of memory as opposed to 8, (and yes, while WinCE programs are larger, that still means I have significantly more space to store data on).
It even comes with QStart, which gives a palm-like user interface, if you're really THAT terrified of using a menu system on a handheld.
Its not surprising to me at all that Palm is in trouble. No matter how you feel about Microsoft and WinCE devices; where the hell is all that money going? If I can spend $500 and get the amazing hardware i'm holding in my hand, I will never, ever spend $450 for the handware I get with a color palm device.
I think the single biggest problem for the Palm devices is that their display resolution is horrible right now. 160x160 just doesn't cut it anymore -- it's too big a sacrifice when people are wanting mobile Web browsing, mobile multimedia...
Consider this: some of the color Palm-OS units claim to support 16-bit color depth -- 65,535 colors. But a 160x160 display only has 25,600 pixels -- barely enough to display one third of these colors at any one time!
There's not enough room on a 160x160 display to be able to -- show recognizable photos, run a mini-spreadsheet, read a book with AA or "cleartype" text, watch multimedia clips, browse the Web, see an entire day's schedule at once, and so on and so forth -- with any real degree of sincerity. The 320x240 displays of the PocketPC devices still aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but at 76,800 pixels, they have more than 300% of the screen area that Palm devices do! With the right scaling software, PocketPC devices can even browse most Web sites fairly well.
For me at least, this is the single largest reason for Palm loosing market share to the new PocketPC devices -- the PocketPC devices are now so much more functional than Palm for most tasks that any size benefits or battery benefits are completely outweighed.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Sure, I wish I could have gotten an 8mb unit (m105), but mine has over 1500 addresses, the entire New Testament, hundreds of ToDos, more than 40 lists, two chess games, a kickin' calculator and the Formula 1 schedule/track layouts and STILL has 688K free. What in the world do you people put on your PDA's (beyond entertainment) that actually require more memory/resolution/processor/color than something from the Palm line?
Everything I've read says PalmOS still owns (excuse me, 0wnz/ru1z) the market and I think it will be quite a distant day before I find a better value with ANY device that uses Windows. I've never been in a store trying one of these devices when it didn't crash. My Palm never has.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
That's amusing... WinCE makes you Wince... oh you /. guys...
--
--hongpong.com
There was an announcement 6 months ago that Palm was looking to exit the hardware business. It they had acted to make it a reality, and handles teir OS licensing better, they'd be fine now.
Microsoft, as I recall took $5 for each copy of MS-DOS sold, back in the old days They took a flat rate. Much better than taking a percentage, especially in light of the much lower pricepoint of handheld devices.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Kyocera Smartphone
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
I own two Win CE devices (both HPs) and one Palm Pilot.
Even though I have more fun 'n' games stuff for the Win CE boxes and they have color, sound and more processing power, over time I have used them so infrequently that their batteries have been allowed to nearly die.
Bottom line: although the Win CE's look more fun, the old monochrome Palm Pilot Professional just does the job better. The Palm is the one that rides in my pocket. Not anywhere as snazzy, but it's just a lot more solid.
I can't agree with CmdrTaco on this one at all. And I feel kind of foolish having to say that, because I've spent a lot more money on the HPs than on the Palm. I guess not only magpies are attracted to the shiny and new.
I suppose I should have been a bit clearer about what I meant. Those of us without PDAs don't realise what we're missing out on. I for one get by just fine with my PPA (pen and paper assistant). So in "difficult times" we're not going to start splashing out a few hundred dollars on a new class of device.
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Palm has always been the leader of the field because its engineers have the best understanding of ergonomics. They still do. After all, what most people want is a device so slim they don't even know they're carrying it, and a device so easy to use that they don't have to read the manual.
Give it another year, and when the talk of recession is over, Palm will be loving it again.
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stop using my palm on a regular basis.
Oh, wait. You're talking about pdas. Nevermind. My mistake.
If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
...I want to buy a new Palm. My old PalmPilot "Pro" model, from back before they numbered the things, is a little outdated. But I have a dilemma. The handwriting recognition, which has had 4 or 5 YEARS to improve since I bought my model, still requires me to use the "graffiti" system, and still has a box dedicated to text entry. What a misuse of space! I should be able to write anywhere on screen, and the area with the pre-drawn text entry box should be nothing but pixels, so that anything can be displayed there.
These issues -- the screen space and the handwriting recognition -- wouldn't be hurting Palm if it weren't for the fact that other companies have now licensed Apple's Newton technology, and their handwriting recognition is really, really good in comparison. And other handhelds cram many more pixels onto their screen space, resulting in sharper images.
In short, the Palm may be tricked out in wild, new ways like media cards and wireless technology, but it is far from competitive in the basics.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I have now owned both WinCE (Casio) and Palm PDAs.
I have to attest to the fact that I was much more impressed with the WinCE device to begin with.
As many have pointed out, it just seems to have so many more features!
It's rather telling, however, that I have now ditched the CE device because I found the thing to be completely impractical for what it was designed for. I use the Palm almost exclusively, although it is rather old and doesn't have the features of the CE device, simply because it's easier to use. I now realize all those extra features of the CE weren't doing anything but getting in the way. The interface was more clutsy, and the apps on the CE were just bizarre attempts to cram a desktop onto a smaller device.
PDAs aren't desktops; I don't want them to function that way. That's what laptops and subnotebooks are for.
Perhaps Palm the company is having problems. Is Palm the OS, though? If it is, that's too bad.
It seems to me all they need to do is bring the hardware in line with the great software they have.
One thing I've noticed in the posts is that no one seems to be claiming WinCE is a better OS; they're all gloating over the hardware. It would be a real shame if MS gained ascendance in the PDA field because of hardware its OS has nothing to do with. It'd be just one more way it's used its monopoly to push an inferior product. Bundle a crappy OS with decent hardware, push out the competition, and control standards. Great.
I think feel an urge to buy Sony right about now.
If you want to do anything other than view calendars that were downloaded from Outlook, you need a keyboard.
Palm devices suck because of the lack of an integrated keyboard. Sure you can add one, but it's clumsy as hell. Wince sucks because M$ has long since lost the ability to deal with limited-resource environments.
I think the most reasonable future for handhelds is to use Linux as a replacement for Wince. Keep the keyboard, delete M$.
When it comes down to it this is a non-story. What probably happened is a reporter lost some money on his PALM investments and thought he saw a story. But when you look at PALM it is not in serious trouble and it is certainly not TDFX; palm still has a 0 debt to equity ratio unlike tdfx which had huge debt when it finally died. Also some people have said that this is all due to the competition of handspring. Another misunderstanding of the situation. If you look at this graph you can see that palm and hand have shared interests not competing interests. What this has everything to do with is palm share prices are intimitly related to the strength of the retail economy. Why is palm more affected than other retail companies like RSH? Because palm is one of the closest watched stocks for tech stock analysts: cnnfn reports 21 analysts reporting on PALM - the same number that reports for MSFT. Maybe because they own palms and it is at mind. But more likely because it had a highly publicized ipo. So when the retail economy reports rough waters analysts will downgrade PALM... but most analysts are still reporting PALM as a buy (like CIBC) or neutral. Only a few analysts a suggesting that investors reduce. This does not sound like a company in serious trouble.
PDABuzz has a story/discussion on this, as well as links to Palm's announcement and a story about Steve Jobs' attempt to purchase Palm.
"I am a man, and men are
animals who tell stories."
"The meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us shall go to the stars." Isaac Asimov
Enter Yrs. Truly. I can't get one working at all. Critical files are missing from the flash; they are not present on the CD, not available on the Web, and in general there seems to be no way to recover them. I carefully reconstitute the second unit, get it set up again to access his internet account, etc. It sits up for a week while I wait for him to come get it, during which time the primary battery dies. When I power it up, it crashes, and (get this) when I go to set up the internet account again, the user interfaces are different and no longer conform to the instructions I got from the Web for setting it up. I have yet to figure that one out.
In short, WinCE manages to bring to the palm everything we've come to love in Windows desktop apps: their bloat, their instability, and their occasional need for a fresh reinstall from scratch. Except that, unlike the desktop, you don't have a standard way of doing the reinstall.
Meanwhile, the fridge, stove, and toaster never crash on me...
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Also, the power use issues on them won't go away. They have true multitasking, lots of memory and fast processors. While I'd normally say this is good, it is such a drain on batteries that they just can't hold up to Palm devices. They need big expensive batteries just to get acceptable lifespan, whereas Palms can last much longer on a single charge.
Making lightweight devices just isn't Micro$oft's strong point. The only way that Palm can lose is by making their new devices so expensive that they look like Wince competitors. Oh wait, they are doing that. Oh well, I can't help it if they hang themselves when they have the better product.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
1) you have an UID of 400,000+
Uhm, SO WHAT! Just because he has another account OR doesnt have an account here because he READS and NOT POSTS, YOU have no right to comment on his commenting.
BTW- I dont hide behind "Anonymous Coward", I dont care what others think of me.
Sig? Hah, I don't need no stinking sig!
All the people I know using WinCE Penpads use it as an extra expensive 'mine is bigger' toy. All Palm people I know are actually using theirs for usefull stuff. And for good too. And have ditched their FiloFaxes.
/.???
Honestly, I can hardly believe it.
Don't mistake the Hardware for Software that consumes it.
Are you actually one of the guys who does
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I just don't understand what the holly war is all about, for me each device solves different needs.
A Palm based device is used to organize information quickly and eficently. Web pages, MP3 files or recorded voice are cumbersome to manage (otherwise we would not have things like the programs that do so), also Web browsing, MP3 playing and voice recording are very taxing activities for the battery. THen a device that needs to handle bunches of information (appointments, phone numbers, small notes) does not need to be bloathed for these tasks.
Yes, the battery. I can go for a month to the middle of the Namib dessert with two pairs of AAA batteris and will have no problems. You are more independent. With a WinCE (or whatever they are called today) I am virtualy glued to a power outlet.
The Windows based devices are aiming to do all what a normal Laptop computer can do, and since they are not that smaller than some Sony Laptops or even old Toshiba librettos, why should somebody buy a toy if one can have the real thing? They are trapped in a limbo between Laptops and Palms, and the force of gravity of both should reap this idea appart. I even have an Acer Laptop that is just sligthly bigger and bulkier than a A4 notebook. It plays MP3, can browse the Web and I can choose my Word processor and Spreadsheet (Lotus SmartSuite97, came free in a magazine's cover CD), my browser (Mozilla) and all this for lest than double the price of the Windows toys. All comfortably sitting in my Lap while riding the train. A coupke of Sony's laptops are even smaller.
The market share of Palm devices explains it all. They found a niche and are filling it nicely, MS panicked, convinced {forced?) some companies to support its efforts and got it wrong.The economic problems have hit everybody in the IT industry, including MS and ilustreous companies like CISCO, Oracle and many others. Why Palm should be immune to this?
What speaks is market share, people voting with their hard earned money. Palm is far from over, once the economic slowdown is over I'll upgrade my Palm III to something else (it is too scrached after 3 years of heavy use) as I am sure plenty of people will do as well. 3 years hardware upgrade cycle. That sounds about right to me.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
WinCE-based PDAs are catching-up because, generally, the complexity of the programs availible for WinCE is more complex that those availible for PalmOS. This translates into better games. Have you seen Doom on a WinCE based PDA? Have you seen it on a Palm?
But boy if you want Games, I suggest you buy a Gameboy.
Both PalmOS and WinCE have fully capable basic PDA features, and PalmOS systems can be so cheap that one might be able to buy one of those and a Gameboy and still pay less than one would pay for a WinCE system..
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
This a a pretty cool little program for storing, beaming, or emailing free-form hand-written documents.
There still seems to be more buzz about Palm than WinCE. And the next generation of the OS is due out soon.
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www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
The Palm is a better PDA. WinCE units are, I hate to admit it, better pocket computers. So the question is, what do you want? A personal organizer, for keeping track of stuff, taking notes, etc. Or a portable MP3 playing, Internet Exploiter running computer that fits (barely) in a pocket? I myself use a Sharp SE-500 that I bought from E-bay for 30 bucks. It's a Palm-sized touchscreen organizer, with a built in modem for e-mail. The OS is easy to deal with; if admittedly very closed and limited. If I had to upgrade, I'd go Palm, because to me a PDA is an organizer. I have a laptop when I need a carryable computer. - Turq.
- Turq - "That's TRON, he fights for the users."
The devices are better. Not the OS. Last time I checked MS didn't make the devices. Companies like HP, Casio, and Compaq make the devices. The fact that they run an MS OS is secondary.
That reasoning contradicts the Slashdot mentality that if it runs Linux, then its automatically good and very newsworthy. But now when an editor gives obvious praise to a Microsoft product, he really was just talking about the hardware. This reasoning reeks of determinism, telling people that they couldn't possibly like a MS product because Microsoft products are inherently inferior, which isnt true in the first place.
Until Palm comes out with new models that have compelling additional features over their current models, they will continue to have financial problems. What would be compelling?
In fact, I think their release of the M50x series and PalmOS 4 was a big mistake: it cost them lots of development time, they are in competition with the VisorEdge, and they are not compelling upgrades. They should have skipped that and instead pushed ahead forcefully on their new ARM platform and 32bit OS.
The competition is in trouble by the 3rd iteration not because Microsoft gets it right, but because Microsoft has manipulated the market so that there isn't any other realistic commercial choice anymore. Office, DirectX, and Windows may look pretty good to you now because there is simply little or no commercial competition anymore.
As for WinCE, maybe people will be swayed by the powerful and nifty hardware that Microsoft specified. The OS itself and its UI are still lousy. Given how bulky and heavy the WinCE machines are still, I still don't see them succeeding.
The Palm platform has lots of shortcomings and limitations: poor resolution, slow processor, limited OS. But it still does the basics better than the commercial alternatives. Palm can still catch up. Judging by their track record, Microsoft will never figure it out; if they win this market, it will only be because all the competitors with better products self-destruct.
One thing that was brought up by the article but conveniently ignored by /.ters is this juicy tidbit: maybe Palm's going down because they licensed their OS.
Yep, Palm licensees are eating into its market share. Yep, they're leeching off the hard work done by Palm, Inc. Yep, they're causing the destruction of the mothership, and Palm won't be able to survive on OS licenses alone.
Gee, the article even mentioned that Apple had that problem a while back.
Maybe licensing your stuff isn't such a good model after all?
One of the things that people "conveniently" forget about the early days of PC's and clones is this: nobody licensed anything from anyone, except Microsoft. The clone market emerged because of a mistake, not because of a concious decision; more precicely, the mistake was the result of lots of design decisions, but the non-proprietary nature of the original PC was a time-to-market and supplier/logistical issue, not a strategic decision.
Indeed, everyone these days thinks that clones are great, that they drive down prices, that they are good for the consumer. That may be so, but they're terrible for producers. There are ways to make money in a commodity business, but it doesn't leave a lot of money for R&D. When your margins go south, you're left with, well, sweatshops and assembly lines.
Why beat the dead horse? Because dumb geek myths like this one propagate out to the real world, and destroy real companies like palm. Maybe this'll teach everyone not to spread the "proprietary is bad" meme, because while it may not be demonstratably wrong, it's not demonstratably right either.
news is slow these days and the uninformed media just needs some story to push and palm is the straight a child that just their first b. look at the product - it rocks. look at the management - could be better but there are MUCH worse. look at the business model - pretty solid they might need to change the licensing terms a little. my prediciton is in 365 days the same media outlets will be singing palms praises.
Anyone catch CMDRTACO mispelling? Doesn't Linux have any spell-checkers? Just kidding, but I thought with such a high profile website, that I read regularly, that he would at least spellcheck his posts, but then again if *I* was in his position, with such a website, Id keep to the true and blue of "Hey, we tell it like it is, and since this is such late breaking news, the brain didn't communicate to the fingers fast enough." Now about the PALM issue: Personally, since I don't have any real use in the real world for such a product, it seems that all handhelds don't rate as well as a home based system, Yes, granted, I can see my e-mail, but take a half an hour to reply to it using those little keys? No. And *IF* I actually did reply to it? what would it say? Well lets take a look: "E-mail from someone@somewhere.com, Hey how are you doing.. (blah blah blah) Get back to me!" - Reply: "HI, im using my Palm right now, Ill get back to you later, in a meeting, or at the bar drinking right now, and I can't spell right.." SO hence, for ALOT of real world applications, handhelds don't hold water to the tried and true. Discuss...
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If I wanted a personal organiser, I'd get a crappy £25 piece pocket diary thing. If all you wanna do is store appointements, contacts and notes, even a Palm is overkill. There are plenty of cheaper devices that do that job just fine. However, if you want a pocket book reader, MP3 player, gameboy (via emu), web, email, news, irc, ssh, good screen, video, lots of storage space etc, you buy an iPAQ. The PocketPC OS isn't that bad. If you think so, I don't think you've used it. If you have and you still think so, go back to your Palm. But you'll be in the minority. You don't like Microsoft? Buy an iPAQ and put PocketLinux on it. The device itself is worth the money, just for the screen. The Palm screen is poor compared to it. They really need to pull the devices out of the stone age.
- 'sup, G?