Garmin Palm Device With GPS
Moritz writes "Garmin is introducing a PalmOS5 handheld with GPS, MP3 and 32MB of memory. That's very nice, but why is there no bluetooth? Why can't somebody just get the spec right? Other than that this seems to be a nice addition to the PalmOS lineup."
Its a common thing with the slashdot crowd, something comes along with GPS and they moan about bluetooth (there could be issues with the GPS getting interference from bluetooth). If it had bluetooth it would be 802.11b, if it had that it would be the screen size, if it had that it would be too big.
HEY FOLKS A QUICK REALITY CHECK.
Having EVERYTHING costs money, these devices are aimed at sectors that want "just enough" at a reasonable price rather than "every damn thing under the sun" just so you can impress your mates.
If it had everything and was $1000 you'd bitch about the price.
In summary: The Slashdot crowd wants
A Tablet PC with a flexible paper thin screen that can be folded from the size of a credit card to A0, which has GPS, Bluetooth, Firewire 400 & 800, USB 1 and 2, every wireless connection method under the Sun, IRDA, Biometric authentication, works via a keyboard or a "keyboard glove", has a 15Ghz Transmeta processor, 1TB of RAM, 1PB of Storage, runs off a single AA battery for 3 year, runs Linux and responds to scribbles or the spoken word.
And costs under $100. Only then will people on Slashdot not moan about the features... except to complain how X they bought a year ago is now out of date and uncool.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
HDDs are prone to failure, ideally a PDA would outlast any piece of hardware. I don't think I'd put too much trust in a PDA that wasn't completely solid state.
That's why you only want the calendar/contacts type of tasks on it. GPS sounds like a more logical inclusion than MP3, frankly. Unless it could record MP3 (ie; take 'memo to selfs' on the go)
Do you want to lose your list of business contacts and scheduled appointments because the HDD full of 20 giggzorz of Britney Spears tunes crashed?
When devices start being designed to do 'everything', I find they do nothing well. You're probably better off to keep the iPod for it's task and the PDA for another.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!