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Palm OS 5.0 Preview

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the future-of-little dept.

Propane sent in an excerpt from Palm's Palm OS 5.0 Preview "Palm OS 5, the latest version of the world's leading mobile platform, redefines market expectations and creates new opportunities for licensees, for developers, and for end users. In addition to supporting ARM®-compliant processors from industry leaders Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments, Palm OS 5 also enhances multimedia capabilities, incorporates a suite of robust security options, and expands support for wireless connections. In providing these new capabilities, Palm OS 5 builds a foundation for the future of mobile computing while also maintaining compatibility with existing software. "

8 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Perhaps too little too late? by dsandler · · Score: 1, Informative

    Perhaps you're referring to the i705, which uses Secure Digital cards (as have all other expandable Palms since the V). It's the SONY Clié that uses Memory Sticks.

  2. Re:OS 5.0 by atdt · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yeah, you think so? Check out this link: Palm vs. PPC

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  3. Incorrect by Zico · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm sorry, but your post just isn't right. You can see NPD Techworld's numbers here (news.com.com/2100-1040-827272.html), which show that U.S. handheld sales reached 4.9 million units in 2001, which amounts to a growth of 36% over the previous year. That kind of growth isn't indicative of the market having been oversaturated.

  4. Precisely by wiredog · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm still using a Palm II, or Personal, or whatever they called it. I think it's still running OS 1. It's Good Enough, so why upgrade?

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  5. Re:Great OS, but Palm's platforms are lagging... by EisPick · · Score: 5, Informative

    The OS is flashable, so I expect I'll upgrade to 5.0 when the time comes

    OS 5.x will only run on ARM processors. The Dragonball handhelds will be stuck at OS 4.x forever.

  6. so you want a Handera 330 then by chaoticapathy · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.handera.com/products/330feat.asp

    not as thin as a Visor Edge but it has both Compact Flash and SD, takes 4AAA or a single Li-Ion rechargable battery pack.

    Go forth and purchase

    NB: not an employee, just a TRGPro owner who can't afford to upgrade

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  7. Re:Great OS, but Palm's platforms are lagging... by the_gadfly · · Score: 2, Informative

    I read from my Visor and like it OK, but it is hard on the eyes. A PDA seems like a natural for anybody looking for an ebook reader, just because you get all the PDA functionality in addition. Maybe PDAs are more adapatable to new/emerging file formats, too?

  8. Re:Great OS, but Palm's platforms are lagging... by Mechanik · · Score: 2, Informative

    Licensees can choose from a full range of processors - From the Palm Press Release.

    This, among other things on those pages, mean OS 5 will also work on the 68000(Dragonball) processors as well.

    No, this means that you have many choices of ARM processor. You could for example, pick an OMAP chip from Texas Instruments (e.g. ARM7 + C55x DSP), or you could pick some StrongARM based chip from Intel, or whatever. So long as it's ARM, it's fine.

    The press release says it pretty plainly:

    Licensees can choose from a full range of processors, starting with the ARM 7 CPU and scaling to the highest-performance ARM chips from Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments.

    Nothing is magically going to make that OS, which is written in/compiled to the ARM instruction set, run on a 68k, unless you're planning on writing an ARM emulator for the 68k. This would of course be rather dumb, as it would be so sloooooooooow that you would lose any benefit of moving to the ARM architecture.

    Mechanik