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Palm Releases New Wireless Handheld
Hadlock writes: "Well, palm has finally released their second-generation wireless Palm product. You can check out all of Palm's info at their 701i page, located right here. The Palm comes in a white color, using standard m100/505 design cues, the only real innovation here being the dual-color LED that signals either a wireless signal, or 'You've got mail,' as there are some AOL tie-ins, Instant Messenger being preloaded on the 701i. Palm also releases their mini qwerty keyboard, retailing at $60 USD." AOL isn't the only tie-in: the release here also touts the ability to "create, edit or view" various Microsoft-format documents.
That's not all. This is an always-on wireless device. You don't have to pull it out and click a bunch of things just to check your mail, it alerts you automatically when it comes. I'm no Palm fan (I own a PocketPC myself) but the fact is it's NOT just a fancy looking VII.
The wireless PDA thing has been around for a while in various forms. So where are the applications that are going to make it an imperative for some market segment to invest in the things? Maybe I'm not paying attention, but I can't even think of any *attempts* at killer apps. I mean, AOL IM? I'm going to carry around one of these things so people can message me? I've got a pager and a cell phone that most people find workable.
Where are the apps that wiggle in to some part of everybody's daily life and change it forever? To me, anything that requires me to behave much differently than I do now is probably doomed, as only gadget-heads will play. But something that made sense to soccer moms, and something that they could grow to find indispensible, that'd be the key for this to take off. And that'd be wonderful for the gadget heads, because ubiquity would make a lot more applications viable.
It's a sad state of affairs when the most desirable Palm platform handhelds are made by Sony and Handspring. This latest Palm doesn't do much for me. I don't want to subscribe to some overpriced service to get connectivity. The display is still the same resolution (160x160) that it was years ago while the Sony Clies have four times as many pixels (320x320). This device offers no more memory than my $150 Palm M105 and only half of what modern Handspring Visors have. It's not the sleek, ultra-thin design that Sony has for their Clie line.
As much as I like Palm handhelds, I really think that the end is near for them. Their products are no longer innovative, market leaders. Instead, they just rerelease the same features in new cases.
Shame, really: that's another independent manufacturer down the drain...
Dirk
That's a bit disappointing. Handspring's Visor Pro has 16MB. It kinda bumped up the standard (at least in my mind). I'm surprised Palm didn't spring for the extra 8. The thing's already $449, you'd think that they wouldn't mind kicking the price up a bit more for such an important feature.
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"how can the same street intersect with itself? i must be at the nexus of the universe!" - cosmo kramer
Clie PEG-S320 ($199)
+ Nokia 3360 ($free-$200 depending on if you sign a contract)
+ $20/month dial-up
< $449 + $50/month mobitex network
Plus, with my setup, I get a real TCP/IP connection which allows me to use interactive applications like telnet, AIM, etc...
I'm glad I got tired of waiting for this back in November. Sony is so far ahead of Palm with hardware, it's quite laughable what Palm is coming out with now.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
And you get to use it for a few hours when the Palm can run for days. Hmmmmmmmmm.......... :)
To little, to late, and TO EXPENSIVE!
I owned a Palm VII. Found the wireless service horribly slow, pricey (yet another indication that measured use only discourages people from becoming loyal customers) and useful really only for email (the little web-like applications were terribly limited). The Palm ended up being used 99% of the time as my calendar.
I bought a Compaq Ipaq with 802.11b card and back for the Ipaq this fall. I use it nonstop, love the real browser, the speed and openness of the connection (I can run it at home, work, coffee shop, etc.), and absolutely love the price! (Now, if it could only run Netstumbler...
So, unless it completely falls apart, I'd suggest Palm might become a nice acquisition for AOL/TW. Use that Netscape browser for a change and put out wireless browsers with AOL email. Yea, it'd be gross and for the masses, but perhaps AOL/TW would understand the scale necessary to push this product and get it everywhere for $99. Otherwise, Palm's proved once again that the Apple route is the best way to guarantee failure.
*scoove*
My experience is that I can store *many* more programs on my Palm than I could on my iPaq. It's not just that Palm can get by with what it's got, but that WinCE needs to add about 128 megs before it can touch what the Palm can handle.
But I'm not sure that's really a problem. Has *anyone* found 32 megs worth of applications they actually want for WinCE?
I have a Palm V.
Yes, only 2Mb of memory. I wish it had more. However, the thing I *love* about it is it's size. It really is *very* small. I think the only smaller comparable PDA you can get is one of the Sony palmOS-based jobs.
Although I think it would be neat to upgrade to a device with a better screen, memory and processing power, all the PocketPC models seem rather bulky compared to my old Palm V. And I'm not prepared to go backwards on the size department. It needs to fit comfortably in my back pocket, and that means < 1cm thick.
PocketPC is too much. If I'd wanted a notebook computer, I'd get one.
Palm is stagnating. Even in their own "keep it simple" philosophy, they are not meeting their own standards.
Apple has become a very solutions-centric prodcut developer in the last 2 years and THAT is what it takes to make an excellent PDA!
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
I would buy this if:
1. It was around $350.00
2. Had color
3. 16 MB RAM
4. Scraped the 9.99 wireless setup fee. What the heck, lets charge them an extra 10 bucks on top of the 449.00! What is up with that.
5. Unlimited service for 20 / month. First six months is inlcuded in the 350.00
Play DVD's? WTF? I use my Palm to store appointments,notes,etc., and run a lisp program once in a while... why the hell do I need a DVD player in my pocket? PalmOS tries to be a clean environment for an organizer, it's simple and nicely laid out. Windows/PPC or whatever it is tries to win you over with pretty colors and crappy handwriting recognition. It's trying to be a desktop computer with 64M of ram and a 2" screen. I'll take my TiBook, thanks :)
My other car is first.
On the Palm vs. MS issue: My understanding is that these really are two different devices. Not that they aren't trying to attract the same customer base, but Palm is trying to be a true PDA (emphasis on "assistant") whereas MS is creating a small PC with all the bells and whistles (bloat, anyone?). For my money, I'll take the Palm approach.
While I'm a bit disappointed myself at the new release's lack of major innovation (I was really hoping for a built-in cell phone), Palm is moving forward while MS isn't. Palm OS is evolving toward information appliances: targeted devices whose UI reflects a context-appropriate set of tasks. This helps overcome one of the problems with monolithic PCs of any size: The overhead required to _start_ doing what you want to do. Most of the tools we interact with don't have this problem.
Build too many bells and whistles into a handheld device and it's just a laptop with limited screen space. Handhelds' interfaces need to reflect the fact that they get used on the go. What I've seen and heard of the MS devices (which is admittedly a fairly small sample size) suggests that they're not pursuing that goal the same way Palm is. And many of what I hear touted as MS-only features are available in some Palm OS configuration anyway.
The hope for Palm to survive as a viable platform seems to diminish day by day. There is no evidence of ongoing innovation from this company. What did they DO all this time? Who killed their R&D department? On what did they squander their once-decisive market lead? Did it take that much engineering effort to release the lifestyle celebrity branded palms, the slightly differently colored cases and the dinky proprietary memory cards?
I am on my 3rd Palm now - a worn and dented IIIc, and it looks like it will be the last. I just don't think I'll see any viable upgrade path from this corporation. Will I have to make the switch to the evil Empire's devices? Those Ipaq's sure look a lot more like what the futurists would have me believe I should be expecting from handheld devices. I mean, slick and silver, color, high resolution, audio and video enabled. Palm's devices still look like mid 1990s tech, complete with chunky lo-fi 160x160 pixel displays which are FINE for embedded use in cellphones and what have you, but please PLEASE I want some contemporary technology!
Palm keeps disappointing. Not a sliver of innovation is evident in this device. It would have been of modest interest if it had come out some three years ago. The service price structure seems completely out of whack with reality. I receive 100 k worth of spam email HEADERS alone in a few days. And why doesn't it have 802.11b instead anyway? That's all the wireless connectivity I need and want. And a higher resolution screen? 240x320 or even just 240x240x15bit is fine(So I can make some slightly more serious GPS field mapping apps that don't look like Vic 20 games), 16 megs default memory, and a flash card reader for mp3s, and a stereo sound system and a headphone jack? Gimme all that and call it PalmX and I'd put in five hunnert bucks easy.
Clie PEG-S320 ($199 )
+ Nokia 3360 ($200)
+ $20/month ISP
+ ~$35/month Cellphone contract
+ ~$0.35/min data call fee(voicestream & cingular)
+ Cost of having to make extra calls to check for email becasue of no notification.
+ Cost of having to download full web pages since colutions like Blazer don't use a proxy to reduce data size the way that web clipping does.
+ Cost of having to wait 45 seconds (the avg time for PPP negotation over a GSM link) every time you want to do data
+ Cost of looking stupid trying to hold the IR port of your phone in line with the IR port of your PDA.
Total cost? Who knows. But I know that I don't usually use telnet on my pda, and most pda users dont even know what telnet is. Most people want good email access, and the ability to check a few key websites (remeber that the top 10 websites now account for something like 80% of peoples online time). The i705 gives me both thoose things in a single easy package.