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Handspring Delays Treo, Plans To Drop Organizer Line
backlonthethird writes: "http://www.palminfocenter.com has the scoop on Handspring's triple announcements yesterday. CEO Donna Dubinsky says they're dropping "Organizers," (i.e. visors?), and most of their new Treos are going to Europe because of a parts shortage. At least their losses this past quarter aren't as bad as people were expecting--they claim profitability by this Summer. What the heck is going on over there?"
The market for PDAs in the states is collapsing, and Handspring's wireless devices are depending on a functioning GSM network, which is still semi-mythical in the states.
All I know is that if they don't offer a trade-in program for my VisorPhone, someone's gonna get hurt.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
PocketPC is eating their lunch.
Microsoft has got its Marketing feelers into every nook and cranny they can see.
Ever seen those Dockers commercials? iPaq in the pocket.
PocketPC vs Palm on buses and airport terminals...
PocketPCs on primetime television.
Palm and PalmOS suppliers are hurting. Microsoft is killing them. And the funny thing is that they are being killed by a better product. None of that "unfair bundling" crap to complain about.
I drop my organizer all the time, and I don't have to fold up a company to pay for the replacement...
Tatsujin
The reason Handspring/Palm are having so much trouble is, in fact, the PocketPC. Now, you can pooh-pooh them all you want, say WinCE is bloated, the machines are overpowered, they chew through battery like nobody's business, whatever. The FACT is, when you sit down a person in front of a machine running PalmOS and a machine running WinCE, the WinCE machine is IMMEDIATELY more impressive. People see PocketWord and PocketExcel. Don't dismiss the value of name brand recognition. Even the fact that the machines run Windows make them less intimidating to people. If you grab a hold of a WinCE machine, immediately you are right at home with a Start button, etc. On PalmOS, you have to familiarize yourself with the device, strange interface, Graffiti. I'm not saying PalmOS doesn't have its spot, I'm just saying a niche won't support enough users for a company to stay afloat. A long used comparision is Windows : Linux :: WinCE : PalmOS. Sure, anyone that REALLY knows what they're doing will have a Palm, but that ratio must be like 1/100, which is NOT enough to keep a whole company alive. Unless Palm/Handspring pack more features into their offerings, they are going to go under, and in a big way. Never underestimate the value of shiny things.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Yeah, they'll stop making Visors one day... color me stunned. Sony stopped making 10" B&W TV sets at some point too...
The Treo is a nifty little device which is an evolution of the Visor. Integrating a phone makes sense, integrating wireless makes sense. If Handspring decides not to make a device that *only* does PDA type functionality, that's probably a good business decision. Sure they're still be a market for a limited device like that, it just won't be Handspring making it. But as the technology changes, and component prices come down, it'll be generally expected that a device have more and more features. Handspring is just acknowledging that fact.
No man is an island, but Gary is a city in Indiana.
Donna has referred to organizers as a "dead end" several times before now. I can't blame her, since she's right. With the hardware getting better and better all the time, and Microsoft's PocketPC basically owning the high-end of the market, she can see where the road will lead. When the hardware finally does catch up and the price falls, no one will pay $100 for a Palm when they can get a PocketPC for the same price that runs their cozy Windows OS and does almost as much as their laptop.
:)
So what does Handspring do? They go sideways. Start merging their devices into cell phones and other WiFi solutions, and hopefully expand the market in a way Microsoft's lumbering embrace-and-extend strategy won't be able to engulf for another year or two, buying them some more time to figure out where to go next.
In a bizarre way it reminds me of The Nothing relentlessly following Atreyu across the countryside in The Never-Ending Story.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Until PDAs really get more main stream in large corporate world accounts they won't be successful. I call on fortune 500 companys and state government accounts. The only people that have Palm or WinCE devices are other Techs that are 'evaluating' one, or other sales types that sell them. Other than that, I never have anyone I can beam my business card too and I continue to have to use paper ones.
They need to get a product on there that is invaluable, or can help replace the much more expensive laptop. Until then, they're going to be an expensive calandar whos nearest competitor is the Franklin Planner, or the DayTimer.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I was at Comdex this year where the Treo was unveiled. It is boxy and not very comfortable to use. The idea is a good one, but it looked like an American car from the 70s next to a sleek Toyota of today.
;-)
Europe is a great market to move this to as folks appreciate the gadgets more than Americans do. Then again, maybe they like the design.
I looked at the Treo device and thought really cool.
But some poster mentioned that the PDA market is collapsing, or the PocketPC is eating everyone's lunch.
Well I do not know. Here is what I do know. Companies are not allowing things like Blackberries anymore (PDA inclusive). I have owned about 5 PDA's in different form factors and the result is that I use none of them.
So I kept thinking why this is the case? The answer is that I have several notebooks and I find the problem with PDA's is that there is simply not enough space. I get quite a bit of email and documents. A PDA just sucks. However, notebooks have become small, work everywhere, etc, etc.
So I think the black knight is the notebook market.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Now if they'd just work on getting the transporter functional, phaser operational, and making one-piece miniskirt outfits come back in style, I can start living the life of Kirk.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Sure, it's a gamble for Handspring, but it might just pay off. I've used both PocketPC and Palm OS devices extensively and found that if you want a lightweight, mini-pc, the PocketPC is far better suited to this. However, if you want something really lightweight (as in both form and function), the Palm OS is a nice addition to any phone.
In fact, I've got a Samsung Palm OS phone right now and it's a truly wonderful hybrid device - perfect for my needs. I can't wait to see what these new Treo phones bring to the table, especially the color model (should Handspring hang around long enough to deliver it).
DigiSquid Design.
Handspring CEO Donna Dubinsky said "We are a company that is transitioning out of the organizer business and into the communicator business. At some point we will have transitioned out of the organizer business."
Please don't do that to the English language, Ms. Dubinsky. It has suffered enough.
http://biz.yahoo.com/cc/5/12625.html
Alot of this is spin, but investors can be a nasty crowd.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In order to create a successful wireless platform you're going to need good hardware.
Handspring doesn't have it. They've got a 33Mhz 16-bit Motorola Dragonball processor. It can (slowly) serve the most basic mobile data needs (email, instant messaging), play a couple of neat little games, and be a pretty effective organizer, but that's about it.
Palm OS devices are stuck at 8 or 16MB's of total capacity, which sure as hell means you won't be storing any large files (movies, MP3s, etc) on it.
They need modern hardware, like an ARM-derived platform, to overcome these inherent limitations. (I know, Palm says it's working on it, but that was supposed to materialize how long ago now??)
Also, another hardware problem is the resolution... the Prism looks awesome in the photos, but remember that the resolution is ONLY 160x160 -- the same as the Palm IIIc. For those that have seen the IIIc, you will remember that it has a very grainy resolution.
Although the Prism does have a higher color depth, and uses TFT color, unless the screen has a tighter dpi, you will probably find that it is only marginally better than the IIIc. Also, remember that it is thicker and heavier than a regular Visor.
I'm very interested in seeing a real one up close, in both indoor light AND outdoor light. As far as color goes outside, I have only seen 2 color LCDs that really work well outside -- the Sony hybrid LCD on their digital camera, and the Compaq IPAQ. The rest wash out completely.
WinCE devices are much better for 'geeks' then palms. large, color screens, lots of expandablity, not to mention a powerfull multithreaded OS to play with and a nice (now free) Dev kit.
The palm may be 'simple and elegant' but I don't want simple and elegant, I want a real computer. with all the features and functionality of a deskop. And I can get that with WinCE.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...is the only reason I'm a Handspring user. The backup module kicks ass, and with my extra on-call pay this week, I'm seriously considering the OmniRemote module. The VisorPhone looks cool too, but GSM capabilities in the U.S. are virtually non-existant and I'm not impressed by VoiceStream. That slot is what sold me over. I'd have a Palm V otherwise.
:) Granted, they look pretty...but under a very heavy use load, I get a couple weeks out of my Visor Neo's batteries.
Last I knew, WinCE devices don't have that kind of expandability...unless someone is planning to make PCMCIA versions of all those cool devices.
There's something about it being "non-Microsoft" that I enjoy...something that I don't feel particularly tied to...free.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
The springboard was a marvelous idea. The biggest selling point in my book being plug-and-play that actually worked. All software is on the card, and the Visor recognizes it instantly. Witness the Sony Clie's memory-stick camera. Note on their web site says that it only works after loading the software on seperately. That's a shame, because with the Springboard, it's 100% automatic. In the end, I think most people were like me and thought they were cool but couldn't fork over the money.
Handspring has just destroyed the Springboard and Visor markets with these statements. I am lead programmer for Shine Micro Shine Micro, maker of the SM2496 DSP module for the Visor, and we have been working hard to bring our product to market. Currently it is in Beta testing, but it now appears that we are going to have to redesign for a different platform, or dump the project entierly.
The quote was that the will be exiting the PDA market "but not today". That doesn't provide any kind of reassurance to any of the Springboard deleopers who have invested a great amount of time and effort into what is now a dead product line.
Yes, all product lines are finite. But you usually don't have the manufacturer announcing this fact prematurely. I don't see any reason for someone to buy a Visor or a Springboard module now that they know that the support will not be there sometime in the near future.
It sounds like Handspring is turning into a fancy cellphone company. I don't think that they will survive this move. The Visor and Springboard are a good product and would have carried them far into the future (just look at Palm).
Brian Lane
Lead Programmer
Shine Micro
Maker of the SM2496 DSP module
Remember Lexington Green!
nobody's upgrading? My old Palm still works fine.
sulli
RTFJ.
USA GSM is Simi-Mythical, as in: Strategically planned by an infinite number of monkeys.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
PDAs are way cheap now. People should, and do, buy their own.
sulli
RTFJ.
You could add phone and wireless capabilities to a Visor through the expansion slot in the back. Also, you have an mp3 player, digital camera, and a whole mess of other stuff. Palm is the one that is just a PDA.
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
I love the expandibility of a visor, but when I was looking a while ago to get a newer Palm I decided on a Palm V over a Visor - I knew from previous experience that I wouldn't actually use anything I couldn't keep in the pocket of a pair of jeans.
A Palm V with hard case is about the same size as a Visor or Palm III, and fits in the same pocket as a set of keys. I'm waiting for a PDA with the same size and battery life, that I can get a hard case for.
.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can't figure out why handspring would announce this. They have, in the eyes of consumers, obsoleted their entire inventory. What are they going to do with their warehouses full of neos, prisms, and pros? I go to fry's and there are still deluxes piled up everywhere. They're not going anywhere after this. Why not announce a price cut, clear the inventory and THEN announce a product's obsolence. This current strategy places them atop piles of unsellable inventory... not to mention the fact that it kills their revenue stream for the immediate future.
No, over here we prefer to verb our nouns. "Conjugation" is something prisoners do when their wives visit.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
My favorite part of this is that Handspring is announcing that it will kill the Visor is favor of a product that it can't keep up the supply on. Reminds me of the early days of Handspring where they had problems meeting demand on the orginal Visors.
Sean.OutaHere()
So much of these threads are just plain dumb. You people are just talking about hardware and the OS and nothing about what the device is used for.
The PalmOS based devices are great PDAs and get you your data faster, easier, and in general, cheaper. Do I care if my PDA has 4,8, or 32 MB of RAM when I can put 10's of thousands of addresses and appointments in 2-4MBs? There are tons of other apps that help me keep my data/life organized too and they are cheap or free.
There's a place for full featured pocketable PC's but they currently don't do too well at playing music(batt life rots), there's alot of WOW factor with the movie playing and picture viewing but is that what the majority of the market for handheld computers needs? It's getting close to the time that an MP3 player is builtin( w/CF slot ) and soon simple wireless ( ala bluetooth ) but video and wordprocessors? Who would be dumb enough to write THAT much on a handheld? Get the text in there and let the desktop pretty it up.
This is another classic marketing story that unless Palm and it's partners get off the ass, they're going to get blown away by MS and the public is going to think they need to spend twice as much as they NEED to. Once again Microsoft gets richer at the expense of usability and the public pays for it. They are great at marketing and that means getting people to THINK they need their products.
I'd love to see someone here talk about what people DO with all these different devices instead of just talking about features.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I liked the idea of the handspring modules...But they have never really taken off, and are hard to find in the stores. (and really expensive) -- I long for the day I could just simply take the PCMCIA modem or NIC card out of my laptop and use it with my "state of the art circa 1996" HP 200LX .. And in 2002 I am spending $100+ for a 33.6K springboard modem for my Handspring (granted you can find them in the stores -- hint, you may have some luck on the closeout table right next to the returned items that have been marked down .5%)
The palms are even worse -- I dont think the external devices have been compatible with the next gen models since day 1. (I.E. my palm V modem will not work with my palm m505 -- etc.)
If ever I have seen a market that was begging for a little standardization -- the PDA market is it.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Anyone who has spent some time with a Palm V/M50x can tell you this. Those PocetPC things are big bloated irritating lumps in your pocket. Big screens look flashy and are great for showing off a game, or editing a spreadsheet (though when you get to SS editing, it is time to get a laptop), or something, but a PDA spends a lot of its life in a pocket. I had a Cassiopea, and ditched it quite soon after getting it due to horrid size. No PPC is is small enough. The M505 could even use a little shrinking still. PocketPC devices are not addressing shrinking form factor, but rather are adding bloatware bells and whistles. I would not even consider looking at one if I couldn't leave it in my shirt pocket comfortably.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
A large bank. I was talking about large airplane manufacturing companies, large investment companies, state agencies, web server farm companies, Small and Medium Businesses, etc. So a lot of people with admins have a PDA the admin is responsible for....Do they use them? Do the Admin's keep em synched? Or is it desk art?
Just like computers were before the advent of Windows 3.x. I'm talking large scale acceptance too, like 70% to 80% of the population of a given country (business wise, not consumer wise) Consumer market really didn't take off until the advent of even Windows 95.
Don't get me wrong, I've so far purchased 5 PDAs since they came out and I can't live without mine. Then again, I'm a geek and I work in the tech industry.
Realisticly, until they get some main stream applications on either platform, Palm or PocketPC they are going to be a geek type toy more than a real world app. Pocket Word and Pocket Excel aren't exactly the best tools on the iPaq with a stylus and no real keyboard....
There is a bit of bias on my part for Pocket PC so take the last statement with a grain of salt please. I happen to like the Palm OS and Graffiti. I'm really looking forward to the Treo to combine my Sprint PCS phone and the IBM Workpad c505 (Aka Palm c505) into one piece.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Palm is being killed by a different, better product.
Why is it better for a handheld to weigh more, be larger, have a shorter battery life, and cost more? No wonder you post crap like that as Anonymous Coward.
It is better for all the people who decided to buy a PocketPC than a Palm, apparently.
[sarcasm]
It's nice to know that consumers never make the wrong choice. I'm glad that none of them are ever disappointed by the battery life, weight, reliability, usability, etc. I'm happy that people who received PocketPCs as Christmas presents were universally happy with them.
[/sarcasm]
I guess, by your logic, AOL is the Best ISP In The World because they have the most customers.
It is better because it does more and does it faster than Palm can.
My desktop computer can do more and do it faster than a PocketPC. Does that make it "better" than a PocketPC?
If the Palm does everything that I need it to, why would I care that a PocketPC can do stuff I don't need (like play MP3s and jerky, low-res videos)?
It may not be better for you, but it is better for all the people who helped put PocketPC sales above PalmOS sales last year.
Again, you seem to have the mistaken notion that consumers always make the best choice. Remember, consumers bought thousands and thousands of Pet Rocks, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Beanie Babies.
So, when are you going to sign up for AOL?
One reason is because the Palm software does an excellent job of syncing with the MSOutlook Calendar, and if you or your organization uses Outlook as your calendar tool, you get the convenience of a pocketsized calendar while still syncing up with the scheduling requests you get by email. Without good sync software, it would probably not have caught on as fast.
And the software on PalmOS, while limited in functionality, programmer-hostile, and oriented towards a small lamer screen (unlike the Psion I used before my Palm), is designed to be extremely friendly for many common tasks. The most annoying limit is document size - early limited-memory hardware meant they designed lots of applications to limit themselves to 4KB notes, which is even more annoying than the 32KB-64KB that most small-model Intel programs used to have.
My wife uses a small palmtop made of dead trees, which has a palm-style cover and pen-holder....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes. For those people who don't know anything about computers and just want to get on the internet-thing, AOL is the best ISP in the world.
Are you serious? People who don't know anything about computers and the Internet are best served by a bunch of banner ads and a mish-mash of Internet-standard and AOL-proprietary interfaces? Most people buy AOL because they have a herd mentality. It's not easier to use than a normal ISP. It's not a cleaner interface. It's not faster. They just buy it because the ads told them to.
No, if you want a small PC-like device that fits in your pants pocket.
Maybe you wear those MC Hammer pants, but I don't have room for something that's bigger than a Palm handheld in my pockets. And I want one that fits in my shirt pocket, which most PocketPCs do not.
I signed up as a GSM phone customer with Omnipoint three years ago this week. They were since acquired by Voicestream.
Other than some minor problems with customer service, which were no worse or better than the problems my friends have had with Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T, (and were much less severe than my friends have had with Cingular), I've been extremely happy. In three years I have never had a problem getting a circuit, and having tried phones from all the competing carriers I believe that GSM offers generally superior voice quality. (In theory, Sprint's system can offer superior voice quality, but in practice I don't feel it does.)
Sprint has had some really cool phones over the last few years, and since I like to replace my phone with a hot new model phone regularly (hey, some people have vanity laptops, I have vanity phones) they've had the opportunity to lure me away at any time... but I have yet to see a phone good enough to lure me away from the GSM system.
Oh, and I guess I don't travel much into very rural areas any more, but I hardly ever fail to get GSM service anywhere I go any more, including my father's house in rural Georgia or my middle-of-nowhere hometown in northern New Jersey. GSM penetration has gotten pretty good and it's quite possible it may be just great for your needs.
I'm very interested in the new Handspring phones and will take a close look at them when they get to the US market.
Yeah, and my Newton still blows away all the PDAs on the current market, IMHO.
MODEL T.
.02
PDA's are fantastically useful to me. I don't know how I would get to anything on time without the cling-ting-ting of my Visor Deluxe. However I think chasing the high end (Platinum)is a bad move as well as moving laterally (Treo) if the consumer gets another 500.00 gadget. Ford made millions not by making the coolest car, but by making millions of a good-enough car everyone could afford. People in electronics land forget sometimes the Walmart/Target population. Instead of building a few nifty high margin palm compatible gadgets I think Handspring has the opportunity to redesign for efficiency and then mass produce affordable, practical handhelds in huge numbers. Steve Jobs is addicted to high margins: look at the market penetration of Apple.
Current prices for a Visor Deluxe on ebay are around 70.00. I think 49.99 would just about do it for a target price. This would allow the penetration that would truly launch Springboard as development platform. High margins can be made on nifty modules (GPS, phone, graphing calc. etc) later, after every kid, father and mother has one.
My
-ghostis
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
I do understand that but didn't think people in this forum are just as dumb. Bragging about what a device CAN do and what it DOES FOR YOU are two different things. I don't think it's a good idea accepting this and joining in.
To your response I say that Palm and it's partners need to get purchasers to realize what THEIR PDAs can and will do for the consumer instead of following Microsofts way of selling features that aren't worth anything but WOW factor.
IMHO
Still surprised this forum isn't talking more about use....
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
good job. we have ONE.....is it possible there's TWO in all these comments?
Thanks and glad to hear someone here is not falling for the "my toy is bigger than your toy" game.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I think there may be something to this.
Look at the various new Palm compatibles (Palmables?) that are coming out from various companies. They mostly aren't just faster, or even faster and slimmer. Or even with color. They all have gimmicks now. Like the HandEra330, which has a voice recorder and slots for two different kinds of memory expansions, or the Sony CLIEs with the high-res screens and hyped-up IR port which will also serve as universal remote controls.
The Visor Deluxe that I bought back when it was $250 is still adequate for me--or would be if the screen hadn't developed a slight short in it. There's nothing that I want to do with it that I can't already--except maybe wireless, but that's not yet mature enough to warrant consideration. As it is, now that CLIE is looking mighty good...but after I buy that, I don't think I'll need another PalmOS device for a good long while.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
...and enter a market that's already saturated and run by Nokia, Ericson, and Motorola. I think Qualcomm tried something similar, they should've stuck to making Eudora ;)
Hey, take that back! I love my pdqSmartBrick
the no
You realize you're just jumping excitedly into the stereotypical Slashdot user mold, right?
"Well, gee, there must be some reason I'm not scoring with all the chicks the way the heroes of my favorite science fiction TV shows do. I know, I just need more technological gadgets!"
I think the reason why you may never see the Treo in the US market in its current form is the fact that the most common digital cellphone systems here in the USA do NOT use the GSM system (which the Treo requires)--they're mostly using the Qualcomm CDMA standard. Since Europe and Japan uses GSM, that's where most of the market for the Treo cellphone will be, alas.
I expect Handspring instead to develop something akin to the Treo but it will support the CDMA and the upcoming CDMA2000 standard that American cellullar providers use--we may not see it until the fall of 2002. My guess is that Handspring may co-market the device in conjunction with Sprint PCS, Verizon and Cingular Wireless, the largest cellular providers in the USA.
Dude, you can run a web server on anything. It's just about one of the simplest things to implement. The ability to run one on a PDA is not something you should really italicize unless you want to look like a dumbass. People have put web servers on Apple IIs.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There is no point. that's what makes it geeky!
:). Very smooth. It also only lasts two hours on battery and while its a lot smaller then most laptops its still pretty unwieldy.
I mean, yeh if you just want to have a day planner get a palm pilot. If you want to have a fully loaded modern computer in your pocket, get a WinCE device. I mean, I don't need to be able to emulate a Nintendo or play MPEG video on my PDA but I can. And that's the whole point of being a geek. Doing things with computers because you can not because it's useful.
Oh, also I just got a slim line Sony notebook SR33k (yay for student loans
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
They have killed off the only real market they had and due to lack of parts they won't be able to penetrate the market they want. Retail channels will no longer order Visors and cannot order Treos. Customers who bought Visors (like me) will remember this when they finally knock on our doors to sell Treos.
Anyone who buys a Visor now is crazy if he/she thinks that Handspring will still be around for support.
There must be great rejoicing in Redmond today.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
But if the Springboard is a failure, why should we expect the Treo to do any better? The Visor might have been more successful if it hadn't been impeded by Handspring's inept manufacturing and distribution operations.
You mention Sony's older TV models. Sure, they stopped making them, but not before selling a lot of them -- and establishing Sony as a major player in consumer electronics. Actually, those early Sony TVs and radios were more than just gadgets. They were proof that solid-state was the best way to do mass-produced electronics. Nowadays that seems obvious. But 50 years ago when Sony decided to make transitor-based products, it was anything but.
So that cute little TV was more than a product. It was a proof-of-concept with far-reaching consequences. Silly to compare that with anything Handspring has done.
Heck, the Mac SE came out in 1987 with an 8MHz 68000 (the Dragonball's model) and 2MB of RAM. It cost almost $3K and sure didn't run for months on two AAA batteries. After I upgraded it to 4MB, I did development on that puppy. (Okay, it had a whopping 40MB hard drive, fine.)
I admit that a high-res screen would be nice. The problem is that small, flat, high-res screens are expensive, and eat power, and probably will stay that way for a while. The ARM processor doesn't eat as much power as others, but 206MHz doesn't come free. I can get 20 hours of continuous operation on my Palm IIIxe; from what I've heard, 4 hours is great for a WinCE device.
Maybe you just need to wait a couple more generations. The first Palms came out in, what, 1997 or so, and were about equivalent to a mid-to-late-80's PC. The WinCE devices of 2001 are about equivalent to an early-to-mid-90's PC. At that rate by 2005 or so you should be able to hold in your hand something roughly equivalent to an average PC of today.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Oh Ok, how about I make it easy and just ask for the Apache port? That will never happen either because: [sniped random idiocy]
you mean like this?
It took me a whole 2 seconds of searching on google to find that. If you knew anything about computers you would know the following:
1) WinCE is as much a 'real' OS as Linux and Windows (premtive multithreading, protected memory, sockets, etc)
2) You don't need a 'real OS' to run a webserver and you never did. You can run a web server on an Atari 800.
3) The quality of the OS has nothing to do with the quality of the Excel port.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.