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Handspring Releases New Visors

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the and-it-fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand dept.

ByteHog writes: "Handspring now has 2 more Visors for us to play with. The Visor Neo, which comes in 3 different colors and the Visor Pro" The battery thing especially is a big deal.

2 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Pocket Word Stink by sacherjj · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hmm.. Useless notes program, or pocket word?

    Hmm.. Useless Pocket Word or Wordsmith for the Palm? I've used Pocket Word. It stunk. You have a great PDA for word processing, just pick up Wordsmith and a folding keyboard.

    I don't see any palm devices playing mpeg video any time soon

    You need this why?

  2. Where's the innovation? by Chairboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    When Handspring Visors first entered the marked, they came with innovations like USB and more built in memory. Heck, even the Springboard module is interesting.

    For the last year, their efforts seem to be awfully stagnant. I have a Visor Prism which is neat, but every visor to come out since then has been mainly cosmetic. These two new ones use the old greyscale screen and appear to be Visor Platinum variants.

    Taking a product like the Platinum and just offering it in new colored cases is not innovation, it's marketing. Even the Pro (with 16 megs) appears to merely be a Platinum with an incremental improvement, but it is priced awfully high for the difference between the two products.

    An innovation path they should be investigating is:

    1. Standardize on color for all new Visors. Event he passive color of the Sony Clie (or Gameboy advance, for that matter) is better then the pure greyscale. It is difficult to rationalize STILL having B&W after these years. Color DOES have a purpose beyond multimedia, so "B&W is fine for Visors" doesn't fly, especially in light of how nice it looks on the Prism and Sony Clie.

    2. Add onboard wireless networking of some sort. Either bluetooth or 802.11 should be in the hardware (or at least almost ready for prime time).

    3. GPS on a chip. There are now GPS circuits available on single IC chips and the cost of this component is dropping rapidly. If Handspring wants to stay relevant, they should figure out a way to fit this into the product line of the future.

    With the three above features, the Handspring Visor can move forward and take back (or pre-emptively prevent) market dominance from the prettier (but less efficient) Ipaq's of the world. The CE manufacturers will be doing this, so complacency at this juncture is ill advised.