New Palms: Zire 71 and Tungsten C

securitas writes "Today Palm released their latest in the PDA arms race: the Zire 71 and the Tungsten C. The Zire gets a color screen, digital camera and multimedia capabilities such as MP3 playback and 640x480 VGA video playback -- interesting since the screen is 320x320. The Tungsten C gets 802.11b (WiFi) connectivity and a VPN client to protect your data while in transit. More at InternetNews, PC World and Business Week/CNet."

Comments

NO Bluetooth

[makapuf]

It's a shame such a prodoct doesn't have bluetooth : I think It would have been much cheaper and battery saving than to use WiFi ?
Any Ideas why it hasn't been included ?
Besides, it's important noting those PDA have an integrated keyboard.

Re:NO Bluetooth

[tyen]

Any Ideas why it hasn't been included ?

IMHO, it is because Bluetooth recognition/adoption by both manufacturers and users has been slower than WiFi. Also, the implementations of Bluetooth have been pretty uninspiring. I can create a Bluetooth net with a Tungsten, headset and SonyEricsson, and with the phone in my briefcase place a call using the Tungsten. Neat. When a call comes in however, the Caller ID information is not passed back to the Tungsten through the Bluetooth net so I can see on the Tungsten who is calling (the Mac OS X Address Book supports this). Almost a textbook illustration of flashy demo technology that is impractical in daily use.

Palm's choice of data architecture unfortunately makes it difficult to take advantage of these technologies that bring a Unix-like philosophy to devices (make 'em small and usable in different contexts, allow users to combine and recombine, sometimes in ways the original designers never thought of). These types of devices really come into their own when they can fluidly share data between themselves; their utility grows far beyond the hardware's core benefit, and is only limited by the software. The Apple Newton's Lisp'ish soups data architecture held a lot of promise, and worked really well when vendors took advantage of it.

Manufacturers also share some responsibility however for lacking some marketing foresight. Not being able to reprogram the Bluetooth support in their devices limits their future utility. It also places a cap on possible revenue streams for software upgrades, implementing features for increased and diverse uses, often driven by businesses, that the market finds. These uses sometimes fall outside of the original vision of the device, and add revenue streams from unexpected places. And That's A Good Thing (tm). A lot of people who hear about Bluetooth, and it seems these people might include the device manufacturers, do not understand that simply implementing the Bluetooth transport doesn't make magic happen. Just as simply expressing your invoices into XML doesn't replace your EDI system overnight. The magic happens because a protocol is exploited by both sides of a transaction. Locking up your protocol support implementation into non-replaceable firmware means you just locked yourself out of exploiting different uses of your hardware that become apparent later on. This drives up the useful lifecycle of your product line's core implementation, drives down R&D costs, and drives up the number of revenue sources to tap into.

These are a very rich vein of sales and marketing possibilities that Palm and manufacturers spending R&D money on Bluetooth support for their product lines have failed to grasp. They implemented Bluetooth without grasping these possibilities and taking action upon them, then stood aside expecting the world to beat a path to their door. When that didn't happen, they charged off to chase the next chimera of profitability, which you see today.

Making the connection

[Mattygfunk1]

Yet more mobile devices that provide the hardware but can't see the posibilities of software features. Almost every current model mobile phone and gradually more PDAs are getting the combination of a camera and wireless / infrared connectivity. Why not spend a little extra time programming and create a webcam feature?

No extra hardware increases the value to the user without the cost of production. What's the hold up?

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Data ROMs?

[astroview]

Most people I know that have PDAs download dictionaries, thesauri, maps into their RAM. Would it be possible and realistic for manufacturers to sell PDAs with ROMs that have data like the aforementioned dictionaries, thesauri, & maps? Perhaps this static memory would include music files, and books from Project Gutenberg that are in the public domain.

I guess this would make the PDAs akin to the Hitchikers Guide to the Universe.

Does anyone know if this is feasible?

Re:And why would I upgrade?

[RevAaron]

Believe it or not, different people have different needs/wants.

For me, a Palm m100 is mostly worthless. For that matter, any current Palm OS model is. I use my PDAs like a 'real computer,' it is just as useful (or perhaps even more so) than a cheap laptop.

But then again, as you say, until Palm makes a PDA that replaces a cheap laptop, you'd have no reason to upgrade. And I would have no reason to buy a Palm OS device. Perhaps by Palm OS 6, the POS will both be good enough for me and compelling enough for you. For someone who uses a PDA as an overpriced organizer and gimpy gamestation, darn near any model of POS device works great. My girlfriend has a very old Palm Pro, and besides the hardware sucking, I does pretty much everything the vast majority of what POS users do with their Palms. No wifi, no color, but eh. POS is POS, how useful is that stuff without a real OS backing it?

The main PDAs I've used were a Newton MP2100, a Jornada 720, and a Zaurus. The first two managed to be great for both using as a computer as well as a PDA- the Newton was 100% perfect for notetaking. The Jornada wasn't perfect, but it was pretty damn good. (No reflective screen, so I had to say bye-bye)

The Zaurus is another story alltogether- it kind of sucks as both a small 'real' computer as well as a PDA. No decent notetaking app exists for it and the software can often be slow, memory-hoggish, and flakey. Oddly enough, I honestly think that there has been more Unix software ported and adapted to WinCE (which I used on my Jornada 720) than for the Zaurus. Take for instance LaTeX- I could certainly cross-compile the full distro. I could even show that I'm super l33t and run LyX under X11... But why the hell would I want to waste my time doing that? With WinCE and PocketPC, there were a couple nice packages that gave you an integrated LaTeX front-end. Tap on a button and it would compile the TeX and display it in a port of WinDVI. Not so for the Zaurus... it seems people are too busy cheerleading that no one has time for any software development.

And yes, I'm taking matters into my own hands and working on Dynapad, a PDA OE/OS which manages to already pack more functionality is a number of ways than the Zaurus does- 1 developer (me) vs all of them. Heh.