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."

Comments

Re:palm == ugly

[Gothmolly]

I bet this guy is happy to see you!

PocketPC

[Mr_Silver]

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 PocketPC. I used to have a Vx and then got an iPAQ from work.

The iPAQ 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 Palm'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 (KeyContacts on the palm 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 ActiveSync but I like it for one major reason. I can pick my PPC out of the cradle at any time and know that it's synced with my Outlook. On palms I'd have to hit the button on a regular basis.

Would I go back to Palms? 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 PPC is bigger, bulkier and eats batteries quicker because the PIM stuff is more powerful.

Of course, YMMV.