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

[rosbif]

Because Bluetooth is for connecting peripherals together, 802.11 is for providing TCP/IP-style networking. I could see Bluetooth for connecting your wireless headset (maybe), however you can get Bluetooth cards for this.

Re:NO Bluetooth

[DrXym]

Well the Palm Tungsten A has bluetooth so take your pick. No doubt Palm will be selling expansions that provide the missing functionality if you absolutely have to have both.

Of the two I would guess that 802.11b is much more useful for places like restaurants / shops etc. that might use wireless for stock control or whatever. Bluetooth is neat but how many people have other devices to sync up with? Personally I'd just prefer 802.11b.

Re:NO Bluetooth

[Stalus]

The short answer, because it's easier to add Bluetooth. I currently own a Tungsten T, which is the first Palm I've actually loved, but it has two main flaws from my view and both of these are fixed in the Tunsten C.

1) T comes with Bluetooth built in, but I can buy a Bluetooth card from Palm. I can't seem to find an 802.11b card for the life of me. Though different companies claim to have card designs that they've sold to other people, nothing has made it to market yet that I'm aware of.

I could be up and running with 802.11b, but since I have Sprint, and Sprint hasn't come out with a bluetooth phone yet (Though SonyEriccson is rumored to have the T608 coming out this quarter), I have no internet connectivity with my Palm.

2) I used to own a Treo 300, which had a keyboard and I must say it's a heck of a lot faster to type on that mini-keyboard once you get used to it than to write grafitti. I'm kind of neutral, but somewhat leaning toward keyboard designs - especially now that the OS supports some keyboard navigation.

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.

With this new hardware...

[levik]

... you can finally do what people probably wanted to for a long time - keep track of your appointments in glorious 320x320 full screen anti-aliased 12 bit color 3D!

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:Palm screens too small...

[tuffy]

I'm saying that Palm needs to look back at what jumpstarted the industry

Before Palm, where wasn't much of a PDA industry. The Newton was a great piece of hardware, but Apple didn't stop production because they were selling too many of them.

(Sorry about the blank post, had a bit of a mouse slip-up)

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.

Re:processors...

[jht]

Well, hopefully they stick to three for a while ;-)

Seriously, it's a Good Thing that PalmOS has become as portable as it now is - different processors are best suited for different applications, and if you run on a particular platform, then there's a possibility that your OS gets selected for that use.

Dragonball, OMAP, and XScale aren't bad for starters. Though OMAP and XScale are members of the ARM family, and the software is probably pretty much compatible.

Internetnews review

[Jacco de Leeuw]

We've also worked hard to extend the battery life to give you a full 8-hour day of work on one 1500-amp charge."

1500 Amp? Yikes! :-)

Extra features not a bad thing

[amnesty]

You know, I've agreed with your sentiment for a long time. But recently I bought a Sony Clie SJ33 as a birthday gift for probably the most amazing, beautiful girl in the world, and after seeing her daily use with it, I've changed my mind on this.

I started with Palms ever since I got a Palm 1000. You know, that boxy dark-grey thing that had 128kb of memory long before Palm realized that independent developers would write thousands upon thousands of applications for the platform. Back then, they did one thing and one thing well--organize. Finally, there was some device I could hold in my hand that could actually improve my day-to-day life. Something that wasn't merely a toy but a real, useful tool.

I eventually moved up to a Palm Vx for the 8mb RAM, LiIon battery and small form-factor. To me those were great features that complemented the key point of it all--to organize. I loved my Palm Vx and shook my head with disgust as the Palms that came after disappointed me. The next Palms traded battery life for fancy colour screens and suddenly you were paying extra for features that didn't matter.

Well, this Clie SJ33 has changed my mind. Now they are actually coming out non-organizer features that are actually useful. The MP3 playback integrated with the Palm alone makes this handheld amazing. Sure, you can carry around your Palm, music playing device and cellphone. I've done that before, but I always had heavy, bulging and uncomfortable pockets as a result. The best solution I've seen is more than three years old, and it's the eholster which tucks your miniature high-tech devices under your arms. Unfortunately they aren't actually usable because they actually look like real gun-holsters and pulling out a PDA has made a few people around me jump as it looked like I was drawing a gun. Practical, but doesn't work too well in this post 9-11 society. This girl that I speak of prefers wearing pocketless skirts over bulding pants, so integrating the music player with a small form-factored Palm works perfectly for her.

Digital cameras on a Palm also work very well, found on the Zire 71 mentioned in this Slashdot article and also the memory stick cameras, not to mention the built in one on the Sony CLIE PEGNX70V or PEGNZ90. Sure, they are barely 1 megapixel, but they are a lot of fun. Basically if you're like me, you're going to have your Palm on you at all times. But I only think to bring my camera to social events. So now you have the ability to capture anything, anytime as you go through life. See a funny subway ad that you want to show your girlfriend? See Natalie Portman walking down the street and want to take a picture with her? End up spontaneously at a party and want to take some pictures? Sure the quality won't be up there, but you can still capture some memories at unexpected moments.

I could go on with the many more features available, but my point being that mere organizing changed my life, but now they are adding features that can also improve my day-to-day life, and everyday these features dive cheaper and cheaper.