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Palm Offers Refund to m130 Owners
EyesWideOpen writes "On Wednesday Palm began notifying registered m130 owners "that they were entitled to a full refund, including taxes paid on the PDA" for misleading them about the actual number of colors the product supports. The m130 was originally advertised as supporting 65,536 colors when in actuality it can only display 58,621. Owners who choose to forfeit the refund and keep the PDA could instead download a free version of the video game SimCity." Looks like a great deal for those who don't care about the bit depth of their PDA, and a way out for those who do.
I would be shocked too if I would find out that I can't display all 65536 colours on a screen with 25600 pixels!
bash$
Why cant i find cool old games like this for my palm? Can anybody direct me to a site that offers cool games for palms pilots (preferably classic games, like that flash version of pitfall somebody posted the other day)?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"We lied to you, so here is a refund... oh, you like the product anyways? Well is is a crappy game for free. Oh, you already subscribe to alt.warez? Well... here... um. *click*"
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
For the lazy, the comparison between the Prism (real 16-bit) and m130 can be found here.
However, by inspecting this picture, i think that Palm may actually be trying to cover up the fact that there are only 58000-some colors using the dithering technique and that in real life there are actually only 4096 colors.
Its not even 58k colours for real. That's simluated from the hardware limited 12-bit (4k) colour depth. (Or at least that's what TechTV sez).
Palm users were really ripped off, IMHO.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Would you return your Pentium because it does almost all divisions correctly?
Like the Pentium bug this isn't a cases of whether users will notice a difference. It's about a company owning up to its mistakes.
It doesn't even display the 50,000 color number the claim.. it is 12 bit color.
They claim that by 'color mixing' you can get more colors..
The problem is not that it can display only "58000" colors, but that it can really only display 4000 colors. That 58,000 number is arrived at by "using a variety of techniques--including turning pixels on and off and combining nearby pixels." (News.com article) So yeah, if Palm advertised that the m130 could display 65536 (16bpp) and it can only do 4096 (12bpp), then I would be complaining. HP had the same problem with earlier Jornadas they released, because they advertised 16bpp and only supported 12bpp (the crazy thing here is that they call the problem a "glitch", when it's a simple fact that the screens they used only supported 12bpp -- sounds like a glitch in the manufacturing process by choosing to use a cheaper screen). Compaq didn't have this problem, because they always advertised at 12bpp, not 16bpp.
In other words, the issue here isn't that the PDA can only do 12bpp, but that Palm advertised it at 16bpp and was caught out in their lie.
I'll just wait for them to send me the extra 6,915 colors in the mail.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Actually, yes. Paml M130's generate 58,000 colors through some sort of dithering or pixel strobing technique. The display can only generate 4096 actuall colors. The problem is that this makes for really crappy images and, more to the point, is a flat-out lie.
The REAL point of contention is not the number of colors, but the fact that Palm Inc. lied to its customers.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I can only relate to this vicariously through you. Hell, you think Twister is tough for you! "What do you mean left foot red?
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
That link doesn't work, so try this
I didn't know what dithering was before I looked at the picture but this is what I gather from it. If you have a 1 bit display (just black and white), if you make every other pixel black, and every other pixel white, it will give the appearance of being gray (especially at higher resolutions). That is what dithering is. This is opposed to showing a pixel that is actually gray (half black half white, that is, each sub pixel [red, blue, green] on equal intensity, at half intensity). So the difference between 12 bit dithering, as the m130 does, and true 58,000 colors is considerable. The fact that Palm's spin on it is that it shows 58,000 colors instead of 64,000 leads me to believe that they knew all along about the limitations in the device.
Even if you can get 12-bit (dithered) color to look almost as good as non-dithered 16 bit color (which you can't, but lets just assume), it's still fraud. 16 bit color can be made to look even better if it is dithered. The only way they could've avoided fraud (and even then it would've been sketchy) is if they said "16-bit quality color" or "as good as 16-bit color"
And whoever thinks that the difference between 12 bit color and 16 bit color is just for bragging rights, I suggest they play video games. Even with 32 bit color, if alpha is using some of those bits, you will *still* see color banding, especially in motion. The next generation of videocards is working on 64-bit color (although, they're not actually displaying at 64 bits, just 64 bits are used for calculations, to minimize cumulative color distortion through multiple passes).
Unless you live in Greece... ;-)
- Advertise that your product offers much more than it really does.
- If anyone complains about your false advertising (which is against the law), wait until after the product has secured its place in the market (and in people's homes/offices) before admitting anything.
- Offer a full refund for the 12 people who would actually rather have their money back than live with their underperforming machines. Placate the rest with a downloadable version of a software product that's over a decade old (after all, the company's only cost-per-download is for the used bandwidth... it's not like they're giving away physical items)
- Result:
- the 12 people who knew they were ripped off shut up because get their money back
- the FTC will never get involved over false advertising charges
- the company still sells (number of units that would have been sold if its claims had been true - 12) units
- the vast majority of consumers think they got something for nothing (software) and laud the company
- Repeat with next product release.
Looks like a great deal for those who don't care about the bit depth of their PDA, and a way out for those who do my a$$... looks like a great marketing/disinformation strategy for Palm.And no, this is not "the way business is done," this is "false advertising." Unfortunately, false advertising is only against the law if people complain.
Even though the Palm can only display 4096 colors without resorting to ugly hacks (like pixel flickering), I don't see what the big deal is.
Ok, they lied in their marketing, that's bad. But they seem to be trying to do the honorable thing here. If the color depth is that important do you just get the refund and buy yourself a Handspring.
But lets work the numbers here: A 160x160 pixel screen has 25600 pixels total. The 12 bits per pixel can only display 4096 unique colors. This means that in the worst case scenario, every color will have to be spread across 6.25 pixels. This doesn't seem all that bad to me. In fact it sounds like just the sort of design tradeoff I might have made. Going all the way up to 65536 unique colors is kind of a waste since you'll never be able to get all of those on the screen at once.
Of course Palm should have advertised it as a 12bit screen right from the start, but I'm not ready to hang them out to dry for this. On the contrary, offering Sim City (which is still a fine game, despite what the vitriol filled posts on here might say) seems like a nice gesture to me. Palm certainly could have done worse.
Does anybody remember IOmega and the Click of Death? Years in lawsuits that just make the scum sucking lawyers richer and richer and what do we get? A coupon from IOmega for some paltry sum off of our next purchase of an IOmega product, long after most of us had swarn off IOmega forever. Would you guys have preferred that?
I read the internet for the articles.
If they want to say it has 58,621 colors then they have to say the screen isn't 160x160 anymore, it's 80x160 or 80x80. The only way to get the 58,621 colors is by DITHERING which kills your resolution.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So far so good. But suppose you generate TWO complementary frames of dithered 50% grey. In one frame the first pixel is white, in the other it is black. If "O" is white and "X" is black your two frames look like this:
FRAME #1:
OXOX
XOXO
OXOX
FRAME #2:
XOXO
OXOX
XOXO
Now, alternate displaying frames #1 and #2 in rapid succession on an LCD display with a slow decay rate. The resulting image looks like this:
COMBINED FRAME:
****
****
****
Where "*" looks like a pixel that is 50% grey. Not dithered grey, real grey.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Lets be accurate here. It can only display 4096 colors. It's a 12 bit color display, not 16. However Palm marketing wants to twist things, it does not serve the user to repeat marketing hype. They sold this thing as a 16 bit display and it was a 12 bit display. Matters a lot if you want to view photos or color images, and that's the reason many paid for a color toy. The problem is more serious than the "only 58,621 colors as contrasted to 64k" marketing hype.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I can respect a company that can admit it screwed up.
This is going to cost them tons of money, but unlike the actions other companies, Palm may have just earned my trust.