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Palm to Buy Handspring
liam193 writes "CBS MarketWatch is reporting that Palm has agreed to buy Handspring for $169M. If you were purchasing a PDA right now, would you choose Palm, Handspring, or avoid them entirely? I guess one of my concerns is that Handspring has some really cool features that Palm may want to keep. Any merger spells elimination of product lines. So what gets dropped? Palm which has probably a nicer "case" style or Handspring with its less desirable case but some features you don't find on Palms."
I use my PDA mainly as an e-book reader. Unlike Palm, Clie has this cool scrolling wheel, which makes all the difference for me. A perfect example of a small innovation that can (and should) mean big bucks for the company.
what would you rather have, a crappy PalmOS machine, or an iPaq that can run WinCE/Linux? some PPC machines can be had pretty cheaply, like $100 over the cost of a Palm. Palm is going to tank pretty soon unless they put some real hardware in their machines.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
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Doesn't anyone remember that Handspring was a Palm spin-off? Was this all just a bunch of chess moves? Did Handspring ever intend to become a viable player, and if so, why give up now?
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
No, it wasn't a Palm spin-off. It was two of the founders of Palm, who got shuffled out after Palm was bought by 3Com, starting their own company.
I'm going to miss Handspring - I still have and use my Visor Deluxe daily, although the screen's starting to go and it'll have to be replaced soon. I refuse, however, to give in to farting around with those damn thumboards on the Treos. Looks like it may be a Sony for me, or just go PocketPC.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
If I remember correctly the female CEO of handspring was one of key developers of the Palm OS. She left to start handspring who became the first licensees of the Palm OS.
So I guess the people involved in Handspring from Palm go back to their old jobs.
Palm and Handspring both win, unfortunatly we are the only possible (l)users. Handspring pushed palm and now they are gone Palm is alone in this segment of the market.
Stuff below Palm and Handspring machines (in terms of cost) are toys, the stuff above them are too expensive. As the better machines get cheaper do palm try to keep the middle ground or do they becomes toys?
Imagine a Zaurus for the price of a lowend Palm OS machine, no don't imagine purchase it in a couple of years.
Sorry Palm buying out your sister is not going to be enough to keep the sector you made your own.
blog and junk
The only difference here is that Handspring is DEAD. I see this more as a nice gesture to Hawkins than anything else. I think Palm wants him back. Palm is starting to get the dillution you speak of from Sony. Clie sales have been on the rise for 6 months straight and should rise even more as prices go down and features go up. Right now The NZ90 is the single most useful all in one device with GREAT integration that I have EVER seen.
The iPaq has also made a huge dent in sales of Palms. Handspring hasn't been a player for more than a year.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I've had a couple of Palms and a Sony Clie... today I carry around an "old school" DayRunner. I liked the palms, and loved the Clie, but I could not get used to using them over the long term.
I don't think I'll ever buy another PDA unless someone releases one that has a form factor similar to Apple's Newton Messagepad. It's a little bigger than most PDA's but he screen size and form factor are pretty perfect for my needs.
Palm certainly doesn't want Handspring for their Visor line. There isn't much value to that. I don't believe there is anything on the Handspring Visor line has that Palm doesn't already have or couldn't add on their own.
In fact, Handspring announced in January 2002 that they would discontinue the Visor line when they were coming out with their Treo Communicator (cell phone) line. My guess is that Palm wants to get into the cell phone business. What else does Handspring have to offer? Would you want a Palm branded reconditioned Handspring Visor?
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
Maybe Palm is getting some nice patents out of it...
Since the iPAQ was more popular than the Jornada, HP decided to stick with the iPAQ line and drop the Jornada saying that they would merge the best features from both. While they didn't take much from the Jornada, one big thing they *did* graft into the iPAQ line is the removable battery. Compaq iPAQ's had sealed battery compartments, Jornada's always had removable batteries. All new iPAQ's have removable batteries.
Handspring has been losing money and slipping market share. It probably will go broke if Palm weren't gonna acquire it. (See the story on The Register.) There'll be one less competitor anyways if Handspring cease to exist.
What's good, however, is that Jeff Hawkins will return as CTO and Donna Dublinsky will return as a board member. They were the founders of the original PalmPilot company and left because of the (mis)management of US Robotics/3Com. Their return to Palm Inc will surely bring more innovations to Palm Inc.
The $30 one at K-Mart and Target is, I believe, a rolodex. Unfortunately, it is fixed-purpose electronics and cannot run external programs. Not much memory, no backups, no real pen imput... It is a toy, like those little electronic things with rubber keypads in pink with Hello Kitty on the cover.
Entry level, $100 Palm based devices (From Palm, Handspring, or Sony) have an extensible, programmable OS. This allows for example, for encrypted password storage vaults, automatically synchronized web page readers, sketch programs, heirarchical planning software, thesauruses, Japanese Dictionaries... whatever someone can think of. They also generally have a greyscale screen and an adequate amount of RAM (well, sony does anyway). When you go up in price you spend more to get brightly colored screens, slightly faster processors, and model-specific features like built-in cameras, cellphones, or MP3 players.
Spend a bit more (300+)and you have a Pocket PC or Linux based device. These are larger and heavier than Palm-based PDAs, but have more compatible software (It is easier to port an existing Windows application to a Pocket PC handheld than to a Palm PDA. Same for Linux). They usually have faster processors, but slower software which take up significantly more ram. Someone else on this board can extoll the virtues of the above, I simply don't like how large and inelegant those devices can be.
Personally I find my Clie to be terrifically useful compared to the dayrunner which was too large to fit in a pocket. But not everyone does. Truthfully, if I hadn't gone out looking for useful software, it wouldn't provide any added benefit over a standard day planner.
In short, the value of one depends on what kind of person you are. Do you love technology? Do you normally keep notes digitally? Do you travel a lot, network frequently, or have an irregular schedule?
I know this whole segue is a bit offtopic, but I hope it helps.
The ______ Agenda
This is a good thing. Why? Because Palm/Handspring gets to consolidate the product line. Some people were bitching and moaning about "what gets dumped? Palm's good stuff or Handspring's good stuff?" I would assume it would be Palm's BAD stuff and Handpring's BAD stuff, thus leaving a tighter product line with the best features from both companies. Sounds like a good deal to me.
This rings familiar from the Apple times. Remember how many products Apple had? And then they had the clones. Buy out the clone licenses, tighten up the product line, and voila. Apple is much more focused. Consumers in the Palm market will have fewer, but BETTER options. No more confusion between 16 SLIGHTLY different products, but instead having more features in fewer models.
I'm an optimist I guess...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Jeff and Donna founded Palm Computing, but they needed captial, so they merged their company with U.S. Robotics.
:)
All is fine until 3Com acquired U.S. Robotics for its line of telecommunication products, and got Palm Computing as part of the deal. 3Com never really knew how to manage the subsidary, Jeff and Donna got upset will the management, so they made an OS licensing deal with Palm Computing and left 3Com to found Handspring.
The usual IIRC restrictions apply to this bit of info.
Are you kidding? Most of my life I was one of those types who wrote things I needed to remember down on random pieces of paper that I shoved in my pocket, lost on my desk, threw away by accident, etc. I lack organizational skills, have a hard time remembering things, and I like gadgets. I tried carrying a paper & pen organizer in college. It worked okay, but I had a hard time finding notes I had written... was it two weeks ago or two months ago? With a PDA I can jot random notes and find them later in an instant with the search feature. I can have all the same addresses in my computer for e-mail and in my PDA for when I need to send a package from the post office. With the calendar, task list, and reminders I no longer suffer from as much anxiety about what I'm forgetting. Plus I've got a pocket calculator, pocket games, free databases that include conversion charts, drink recipes, a basic Spanish dictionary, and anything else I decide to download. Not bad for a hundred bucks. The Handspring Visor Deluxe was the best PDA I ever owned for the money. I had been using a PocketPC on loan from the office, but switched back to the Handspring soon after. The PocketPC was neat, but it just doesn't handle the simple organizational stuff as well.
Springboard is dead.
Almost all Handspring products now are Treos which don't include Springboard slots.
My employer was spending a butt-load of money developing a new Handspring/Springboard based product when the rumor was spread about Handspring ceasing the production of the Visor model line. We sent representatives to their headquarters and we were reassured that the reported comment had been taken out of context and that sometime in the future they *might* go that route, but for now Visors and Springboards were still alive and kicking.
We went back to work and about 30 days prior to the launch of a product that has now had a million+ dollars spent developing it, Handspring came out and announced that the rumors were true, they were getting out of the PDA business and focusing on the 'Communicator' business and would be selling primarily Treos without Springboards.
Needless to say, we were not happy, especially since we had already purchased over a thousand various Visor models we had planned to use as a give away promotion on top of the million+ dollars already spent on R&D.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
So what gets dropped? Palm which has probably a nicer "case" style or Handspring with its less desirable case but some features you don't find on Palms."
Have you actually been following what's going on in handhelds these days? It doesn't sound like it. Palm and Handspring today make entirely different products. Palm makes PDA's; Handspring makes "communication products" - handhelds based on cel phone designs. There's no overlap - neither company has individual models comparable to the others'.
But regardless, I wouldn't buy any model from either company. Others have already mentioned the Sony Clies - I have one of these, and I bought one for my wife too (she loves it). We don't need high-end features, and in the low-end the Clies have several features that Palms don't (and Handspring doesn't even make a low-end device). Sony also is far ahead of Palm in industrial design IMO - it's akin to, say, Dell vs. Apple. I'd actually love to have one of the real high-end models but don't feel they're worth $800. The recently announced top-end Clies, though, do have a lot of useful features - including built-in wireless, a built-in keyboard, camera, and MP3 player. In other words, the best of what both Palm and Handspring offer and in a much better-looking design. But still too expensive for me.
Someone reaches a SVP or equivelant level in a company. Realizes they have maxed their income potential.
Finds something the current company isn't doing well. Finds other internal resources who feel the same.
Starts a spin-off focusing primarily on what the big company is too slow to implement or too big care about.
--- I do not moderate.
It really depends on your needs.
If you want a cool handheld linux device, and you don't care that it is very "sub-optimal" for appointment/contact management, the Zaurus is very nice. Your geek coolness goes up by +10 if you have one.
If appointments/contact management are important to you, you want some kind of palm or palm-compatible. IMO, the PIM software available for the palms are way beyond anything available for the Zaurus (and I'd be willing to pay US$100 for something really good for the Z, but it just doesn't exist).
I have (or used to have) a Palm III, a TRGPro, and a Zaurus 5500. While the Zaurus is cool, I need good PIM apps, and the ones available for the Z do not meet my needs (the Z makes a really cool wireless web browser, though). Because of this, I can't use the Z, and so I recently started looking for a color palm. I eventually settled on a refurbished Sony Clie (the Zire 71 was attractive, but it uses Palm OS 5.2, which has the "new" grafitti, and I did not want to learn a new system). I'm really happy with the Clie (even though I personally try to avoid Sony products in general).
Also, while you can, in theory, run palm apps on the Z, they supposedly run very slowly . I've thought about doing this, but decided against it after reading the reports.
If your a business person, and you use Outlook at work (don't we all?) then you don't want a bulky PDA. The killer PDA application is the whole Outlook paradigm: Calendar, Contacts, Inbox
You need to do some homework on the features of cell phones out there and find one that has Outlook integration. Most can sync appointments and contacts back and forth. Some can download inbox email so you can read 'em offline. Some (Nokaia Communicator) can even connect to the net (with the disadvantage of dial-in costs, low battery life and being bulky & expensive - the speaker phone option on it is amazing though).
In the end we are moving to devive fusion anyway and PDA as we know it will cease to exist. We'll all just be using funkier, move advanced cell phones.
All your base are belong to us!
It was a really bad business move for Handspring to get out of the PDA market IMO. I know of 3 companies that were also developing very interesting springboard modules for business and consumer use. They didn't even know the Handspring line was getting killed.
It's a real shame because SD is too small, CF is not quite large enough for external connectors/cables. Springboard was just the right size and the PDA was respectably priced.
Handspring was the #2 PDA on the market at the time of the shareholders announcement. In 3 months, they were #3( Sony #2 ) and another 3 months later it was all over.
After the first "Connected Device" was shipped, they even tried selling a "Connected Device" that wasn't "Connected"( remember, they were out of the PDA market and into the "Connected Device" marekt ). But it was too late. The Handspring name wasn't worth what it used to be.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I own a Handera 330. I love it; jog-wheel, hi-res screen, switchable backlight, CF & SD card slots. It really was best of breed when I got it. I've been hoping for sometime that they would release an updated version (possibly color, OS5). But I just discovered that they are exiting the Palm handheld arena.
I don't want a phone/PDA. I would extremely miss my jog-wheel. Sony seems to be the only choice for a full featured PalmOS handheld now.
Is the Zaurus a real alternative?
I gave up thinking of a cool sig
"If you were purchasing a PDA right now, would you choose Palm, Handspring, or avoid them entirely?"
..
You're going to hate this, but I'd probably get a Palm. I used to have a iPAQ and then got an Vx from work.
The Vx is bigger and bulkier and the battery life does suck. Oh yes, and I've had it crash about 4 or 5 times but
The software! The diary, notes and calendar is way more powerful than iPAQ's. Varying snoozes on appointments, alarms on tasks, multiple addresses on contacts - the list goes on. Oh yes, and I'm a heavy Outlook user, so it's a boon to have decent Outlook compatibility (PocketOutlook on the ipaq was great - but nothing else would replace the other built in apps and still sync with Outlook).
Also I love the today screen. I have several plug ins and it shows me everything I need to know on one page.
Finally I know some people hate PalmSync but I like it for one major reason. I can pick my palm out of the cradle at any time and know that it's synced with my Outlook. On ipaqs I'd have to hit the button on a regular basis.
Would I go back to iPAQ's? Yes, but only if they dropped their prices (they're a tad pricey) and substantially beefed up the built in software and syncing. Would I go for a Linux PDA? Haven't really thought about it to be honest. For me, I don't care what the OS is - just how well it does the stuff I need (it could be written in Cobol for all I care).
Neither the PPC or Palm are the best. Both have pros and cons. But I can put up with the fact that the Palm is bigger, bulkier and eats batteries quicker because the PIM stuff is more powerful.
Of course, YMMV.
> remember SyQuest?
Do I ever.
Wayyyy back in the day, I was looking for a new removable media solution because, even back then, a 1.44MB floppy was just too damn small to be useful anymore. Iomega's Zip drive and the Syquest EZ 135 cartridge were both pretty new to the market. Neither one had REALLY caught on yet, so there was no question as to which would be compatible with my friends.
Both drives were about the same price. And since neither had achieved dominence, I based my decision on their technical merits. I went with the EZ 135 because for the same price:
The Syquest had 35MB more space per cartridge.
It was MUCH faster than the Zip drive (fast enough to use as a real hard drive... I used to play Mechwarrior and run OSs off the thing.)
When I eventually changed its position on my IDE bus, it was BOOTABLE. And, in those days, both Linux and windows (95) had a small enough installation footprint to fit in 135MB. Thus, I could dual-boot without futzing around with LILO. And I could let friends, roommates, and family use the machine without having to explain partitions and Linux to them whenever windows crashed. (I had to change the drive's position on the IDE cable, because this was back in the days before gates had figured out how to make a peecee boot from anything other than a: or c:)
The cartridges were more durable than Zip disks.
And the drive was more reliable than a Zip (click of doom, anyone?)
I thought I had made an excellent choice. Imagine my dismay when Syquest totally failed to market themselves, and Iomega's slick campaigns won the world over. I mean... fuck... if everyone was going to settle for slow and unreliable media, and REALLY wanted 100MB disks, they should AT LEAST have chosen Sony's "Superdisk" drives, which kept the familiar 3.5" form factor and were backwards-compatible with 1.44MB floppys! But no... Zip it was. Ugh.
Iomega is a FINE example of just about the WORST products in the market segment beating out the others not through superior technology, but with slicker marketing.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Details on the new Treo - the Treo 600 - are starting to leak out, and it looks like a pretty major improvement. The photo from the merger even gave us a decent Hi-res photo of the new Treo. I think it looks pretty cool, but the obvious lacking feature is a higher-resolution screen. I wonder if the coolness factor of the Treo 600 helped encourage Palm to make the merger?
I was really talking about current Mac support from a desk-top, integration, usability point of view. Palm and Apple have, for the time being, formed a business relationship to promote each others' tech.
How long this lasts is always open to interpretation, but is out of our hands anyway. Currently, core funcitionality works Good Enough for me. That is, I can sync to everything I need (on Windows at work, on the Mac at home), and can drag and drop files to the palm via Bluetooth. This is the kind of support I'm talking about.
As for developer support, Palm seems happy enough to provide documents and links to free prc-tools and emulators for all platforms, including Mac. Took me only a few hours to set up a gcc cross-compiler and prc creation system on OS X. I'd never have considered Code Warrior as a dev platform, but according to Metrowerks, they still sell and support Code Warrior for the Mac. Perhaps if I coded for money for a variety of embedded targets and wanted a one-stop solution, I'd consider Code Warrior.
Anyway, my point still stands: if you want a handheld that has good Mac OS X support (where "support" is defined as above), you have to buy a new Palm.
The largest hole in this support is lack of third-party conduits, as these are generally very platform-specific, and tend to be targeted to the most common platform (i.e., Windows). The Mac Plam conduit API still exists and is supported by Palm.
As far as pilot-link is concerned, I didn't see much in the Docs section that gave anything more than what I already have with a default Palm-iSync-Mac setup.
-- clvrmnky