Palm Changing OS Strategy

profet writes "CNET.com is reporting that PalmSource plans to change its OS plans and simultaneously develop/release OS 6 and continue development on OS 5. The names shall be changed to reflect that they are both current. The plan is to have OS 5 for low end devices ($100 price point is a goal), and OS 6 for high end devices. This is a drastic change from their current practice of having one current OS drastically customized (read: hacked) to suit the manufacturer's needs. It looks like PalmSource is aiming directly at Symbian's success with Nokia's series 60 platform."

Comments

Linux on my Palm

[SphericalCrusher]

I see no reason to keep Palm OS over this version...

Re:Linux on my Palm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Basically we're asking SCO to put up or shut up." -Linux

Linux said that? Where did you meet Linux? What was his last name?

Re:Linux on my Palm

[Anonymous Coward]

Torvaldx

BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

what about the BeOS rights they purchase, what was it called yellow jacket or somehting

Re:BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

what about the BeOS rights they purchase, what was it called yellow jacket or somehting

"Raincoat"

Re:BeOS

[mabhatter654]

Well that's part of the issue. much of the BeOS tech would work very nice on higher end palms, but that requires a major overhaul to the software that would leave lower spec units in the dust. Palm bought the IP and hired many of the engineers. The BeOS tech would reduce the need for companies like Sony to hack the PalmOS like they have been by creating a more full featured base...also if they followed the modular model of Be it had a much more "graceful" model of providing clean seperation of OS components...It was Very Un-Microsoft. If a company wanted to extend just one aspect, it's much easier with the BeOS structure.

Remember, they bought the tech...I doubt any actual BeOS code would be in Palm6...but I'd bet it "looks" like BeOS under the hood!

Re:BeOS

[kalidasa]

PalmOS 6 (or whatever they call it) does incorporate a lot of stuff from BeOS, according to published reports.

Re:BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe your sweating is due to you not keeping up with the latest news. The T2 is way old now in PDA time so don't be surprised by Palm actually doing some progression.

Re:BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Spain is different

Re:Linux is superior in every way

[SphericalCrusher]

Amen. It is pretty useless... I could write something better... it's just formatting it for the PDA to use is where I get stuck at.

What's not mentioned

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that under the plan, the company will simultaneously develop multiple versions of its OS and aim them at different parts of the cell phone market. With OS 5, PalmSource was focused primarily on making a hardware transition.

Re:What's not mentioned

[t0ny]

It looks like PalmSource is aiming directly at Symbian's success with Nokia's series 60 platform

Looks more like PalmSource is aiming at finally doing something besides losing money and market share.

With all the buzz surrounding their product, PalmOS could have been the one OS to rule them all (all the small devices, that is). Instead, they waited until tons of other people made the kinds of moves they should have been making (handspring especially).

Speaking of Handspring, if I were them I would have flipped off Palm and purchased the PalmOS after they spun it off into its own company. Why they need Palm (and more importantly, its bumbling executives) weighing them down is something I cant figure out.

Re:What's not mentioned

[panoplos]

And this is just the type of product segregation they don't need.

In fact, Symbian already went this route with their, now defunct, DFRD roadmaps, targeting various form factors for handhelds. They determined that they themselves were not capable of resourcing the R&D necessary to meet the specific needs of their Licensees and soon ran out of funding: they concluded that it is even presumptuous to suppose one could even truly understand what these needs are!

It is a disastrous business model to assume it your responsibility to innovate and steer a market segment that you really have a very limited scope of influence in.

Some things are best left to the experts...

Re:What's not mentioned

[dnoyeb]

They don't. But such is the way of the sleeping executive.

I recall S3 buying Diamond Multimedia. Immediately preceeding the downfall of the combined company (blue something or another.) Why? Because S3 was going down anyway, and it was in my opinion an attempt for S3 executives to switch places with a more successful company. Didn't work. Alas, Diamond *was* the bomb.

I also remember that graphics company that bought 3dfx or vice versa (STB?). Can't remember the name, but IMHO it was the same situation. Attempt by executives to BUY success instead of engineer it.

Re:What's not mentioned

[Firehawke]

3DFX bought them to try to start *manufacturing* the retail cards; they needed a good 2D card to combine with the 3D ones they had for an all-in-one solution that would come from inhouse.

Re:What's not mentioned

[t0ny]

They also thought people wanted cards which could do 500fps in 800x600, rather than true/high color cards which ran at high resolutions. nVidia came along with a design with had 2/3d, high resolutions, lots of colors, and *didnt* lose speed doing it.

Ah, how the mighty keep falling. Im just sad it has to be a company like ATI taking them down (I never liked ATI).

How about a roman numeral?

[Anonymous Coward]

Palm OS VI

Just like Apple did with OS 10.

Where have I heard all this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

PalmOS 3.1 is for desktops.
PalmOS 3.11 for Workgroups is for small networks.
PalmOS NT is the server platform.
PalmOS 95 *is* *the* upgrade for PalmOS 3.1.

This is gonna end in tears...

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[I Be Hatin']

This is gonna end in tears...

Hmmm...

Palm 98 is just like Palm 95, except it doesn't crash as much.
Palm 2000 is the first stable palm.
Palm XP is the Palm Experience... something most Slashdotters are already familiar with.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[licem]

EEExactly. Strech the Palm OS concept to a tiny cell phone screen that doesn't even have a touch screen, all the benefits and reasons that design choices were made break down. The smart thing would be to completely redesign an interface for cellphones that does NOT have to look at all like the Palm OS we know and love. Learn the lessons of Microsoft - do not try and fit a wolf into a dog house.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[mattjb0010]

Yeah, let's not talk about Palm ME :)

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[laird]

"Strech the Palm OS concept to a tiny cell phone screen that doesn't even have a touch screen, all the benefits and reasons that design choices were made break down."

I don't think that they're trying to cover quite that broad a range. The sense I get is that they're intending for PalmOS 5 to run on the class of machines it already runs on (ARM processor, 160x160 pixel or larger touchscreen, 8 MB or more of RAM, perhaps an SD slot), which they project will drop in price over time. PalmOS 6 will run on more muscular hardware (larger touchscreen, more RAM, faster CPU, SD slot) and provide richer multimedia and multitasking capabilities. So it's not so much for this year's cell phones as perhaps set top boxes, G3 cell phones, or high-end PDA's or tablet computers.

It's not clear (to me, at least) how much of a fundamental difference there is between PalmOS 5 and 6. So it's hard to say if it's essentially the same OS with more frameworks (like NT vs. NT Server) or a real forking (like Win95 vs. NT). Perhaps someone with some inside info could comment?

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between PalmOS 5 vs. 6 is similar to Windows 95 vs. NT and MacOS 9 vs. X. Basically it's the transition to a real protected-memory OS, requiring a new underlying system architecture. So, similar to the Windows and MacOS transitions, PalmOS 6 is a completely new operating system, with a compatibility layer to provide the same APIs as on previous versions of the OS and maintain application compatibility.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[John Courtland]

Is it fully protected to the point the palm won't die hard if an app overruns its allocated memory? Every device I've ever used without a protected OS needed the damn batteries removed to restart, and that, my good sir, is a pain in the ass.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. I'd never consider it protected memory if it couldn't even protect itself from application code!

Architecturally, it's basically what you'd expect of a modern OS: an application runs in a separate process, which is torn down when it exits and all resources reclaimed by the system. It is multithreading, so you can run multiple threads (which can do their own UI) in the same or different processes.

And there is much more stuff, which will be revealed at the developer conference next week. :)

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[t0ny]

You forgot Palm 98, Second Edition, and the ill-fated Palm, Millenium Edition. We will probably have to wait a while for the latter.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[evilviper]

Palm 2000 is the first stable palm.

RANT:
Many people say this, but NT4 was just as stable as 2000 by any measure. Maybe you meant to say the first stable OS for the desktop market, but that would be XP, since 2000 was not meant for consumers.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[pigpogm]

Mmmmmmm... PalmME... /></homer>

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[ajagci]

Basically it's the transition to a real protected-memory OS, requiring a new underlying system architecture.

How "real" of an OS PalmOS 6 ends up being remains to be seen. From what I have heard so far, it still falls short in many areas. Unfortunately, it looks like Palm is going to try to prolong the pain by giving us multiple, wildly incompatible upgrades before reaching some reasonable, stable point.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you on crack?

NT4 is nowhere near as stable as 2000. Maybe the OS doesn't crash (MUCH), but the Windows GDI resource issues were still horrible.

Re:Where have I heard all this before?

[mrmez]

There are some major differences. The original Palm OS shipped (so far as I know) on time. The Palm OS has never tried to be Newton OS. Palm OS has always been quite stable. Palm OS actually works. Palm doesn't seem to make a habit of taking the most popular software for Palm OS and making their own versions which they sell for less and/or bundle. The Palm interface is good. Palm released an app allowing users to read their Palm-format eBooks on competing operating systems. Palm encourages developers to build apps to access data in their propietary formats on other machines under other vendor's OSes. Palm OS runs usably on slow machines with very little RAM - it even runs usably on machines meeting the official minimum requirements... anyway, I need to get back to work - I suggest you buy a Palm OS device if you want to know the rest of the differences.

linux PDA?

[axxackall]

If all I need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then what would be the reason to choose PalmOS vs Linux on PDA?

Anyone with some experience with both? I used Palm Vx with Palm OS 3 and found it too buggy. I saw ads about Zaurus and found it interesting. I am really close to get Linux PDA. But before I cash out, is there anyone here who found a reason to migrate from Linux PDA to Palm OS?

Re:linux PDA?

[AnonymousCowheart]

Ive owned both the zaurus and a few palms, the newest model i have being the palm m500. While the zaurus is a great toy, palm "just works." the damn thing is fast, rarely (about 5times a year, due to bad software) crashes, and even then, it takes like a 30second reset.
The zaurus however, does Much more, wireless, mp3 player, video player, etc. however as far as a PIM goes, you just can't beat palms ease of use, and speed. Especially graffitti, works great. Not to bash the zaurus, but i found myself 'setting it up' (see playing, trying to figure things out) more than being productive
in the end, i use the b&w palm, why? besides the above notes, the batteries last MUCH longer in it then any color screen would. Nothing fancy, just a PIM, like you asked for;)

Re:linux PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I migrated from Palm OS3 to the Zaurus platform.
I must say that as a PIM, palm OS was better. ...But for everything else, the Zaurus feels (to me anyway) to be a far superior device. I migrated away from palm OS because I felt "limited" by the capabilities of OS3. I understand that Palm OS has improved since then. ...but now I'm pretty content with my Zaurus, so I haven't felt the need to switch back.

In short, if ALL you need is a PIM, then you should be looking at a cheap Palm OS device. Otherwise, I believe the Zaurus is worth a serious look.

Re:linux PDA?

[bwy]

I have owned a Zaurus and a Sony Clie (Palm OS 4). They are two different beasts. The Clie is a great address book, calendar, etc. and has good desktop software that I like since i refuse to use Outlook for calendaring. It is a small device and great at the traditional PDA functions. Synching is very refined and works well with XP and OS X 10.3 using iSync. I can sync right to Address Book and iCal.

The Zaurus was excellent at web browsing, hacking, running Java, running a real pop3 mail client, etc. Plug in a cheap WiFi CF card and you are good to go. But here is the thing. It is horrible at calendaring, synching, etc. The desktop software is pathetic. You almost certainly have to consider the Zaurus a very small linux based PC that stands by itself and forget about the desktop integration part.

All that being said, I sold the Zaurus on E-Bay recently and kept the Clie. The Zaurus is by far the best "toy". However, having a handheld Internet connected device wasn't that useful (for me, anway) especially since I own a 12 inch iBook. Having a list of important phone numbers and my calendar with me at all times and available instantly is important though and Palm devices do that very well.

Depending on what you want and need, the Zaurus might be a great choice. I had no complaints. It was stable and overall really cool. There is just something cool about using a handheld as a web server. (but then you inevitably end up asking "WHY"!)

Re:linux PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

If only PDAs supported PIM (Protocol Independent Multicast) we'd be all set.

Re:linux PDA?

[Alan Partridge]

The Palm "just works"? Man, you must have REALLY low expectations. My Tungsten T2 has given me more trouble in six months than my Newton MP2100 has in a decade. The Palm syncronisation system is complete and utter crap, the notion of a PalmOS application is an absolute fantasy, with most remotely cutting edge apps being pretty much machine specific and - worst of all - when it decides to freak and lock up, the only way to get it going again is a long charge followed by a hard reset, which kills all of your data and leaves you reliant on the utterly broken backup/sync system to get you going again.. PalmOS isn't really a playform at all, it's an embedded OS.

Re:linux PDA?

[AnonymousCowheart]

Had you read my post, you wouldve seen that i wrote "my most recent palm was the m500." We're talking about PIM's here, not PDA's with a built in kitchen sink. I can't vouch for palms stability when it comes to multimedia PDA's, but for the basic PDA, mine works great. I also can't speak for your backup issues, I use linux, and have no trouble syncing/backing up, and I'm even using the USB cradle. I have crashed my palm before (ran software that required mathLIB,and didnt have it installed) Hit reset, all was back to normal, ive NEVER had data loss with my palm. There is also something to be said for having a MAJOR device like the palm, that is you can upload your contacts to yahoo! and other services as long as they're in the 'palm' format.

Re:linux PDA?

[zulux]

If all you need is a PIM - Palm is definatly the way to go.

I *love* my Zaurus 700 series- it's fun to SSH into a server with 80x24 characters and a real keyboard , but for PIM stuff, it's slow and clunky.

Re:linux PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using an M515 for the past 6 months and I haven't had it die once. Also, although the Palm OS is not open source (unfortunately), there is a ton of free software available for it. The only thing I wish it would do is hotsync over the internet to a remote server.

Re:linux PDA?

[axxackall]

Speaking about hard-reset - that one thing that was annoying me with Palm Vx all the time - at least once a week I've lost all my data because it locked itself up completely. I've noticed that the more I've used categories and the more data I ahd in general (my memory was 8MB) - the more chance of the final crash.

As for syncronizatio, I think it's a general problem in many cases, especially with intensive usage of categories - a sync software usually syncs your primary records, not categories, so, you either end up with duplicated primary records, or with messed up categories.

Is it the same or different on Linux PDA?

Re:linux PDA?

[axxackall]

What's specifically wrong with calendaring in Zaurus? Your answer can be really helpful for me.

Re:linux PDA?

[axxackall]

What specifically clunky about PIM on Zaurus? Can you give few examples?

Re:linux PDA?

[bwy]

The calendaring app on the handheld isn't too bad. But, it really doesn't have a lot of value for most people if they can't sync it reliably to a good calendaring app on their desktop. The Zaurus desktop suite has some major issues- it isn't nearly as refined as Palm Desktop and to me just doesn't seem professional (I could be a bit anal as I develop user interfaces for a living.) The Zaurus can only sync with their desktop software too and there is ample proof in newgroups that synching is unreliable and sometimes just won't work. Also, last I checked they had dropped support for a desktop client that would run on Linux. Imagine that, a Linux handheld that only synchronizes with Win32.

There is also a desktop client that lets you move files over to the device via the USB Cradle, but it turns out that the easiest way to deal with the device is to treat it like the real computer that it is- by setting up FTP and moving the files over that way.

I should also mention that while the plastic case of the 5500 is questionable in quality (I'd prefer aluminum or something), the keyboard is extremely nice. It has a great feel to it and really adds a lot of value to the device. You can fire up Gaim on the thing and IM using the keyboard quite nicely.

In summary- if you decide to buy- buy it for the device, not the synching or the desktop software.

Re:linux PDA?

[serial frame]

You should have waited for the Lycoris ROM to be released, whenever that will be. It doesn't appear to be on Lycoris.com anywhere, perhaps I'm wrong.

Re:linux PDA?

[Stalus]

I've had a Tungsten T for about a year now, and I've been very happy with it. For day to day things, I mostly use the standard aps, but I also use it occasionally as an mp3 player, HP48GX emulator (faster than my real version), and with my bluetooth phone I can check e-mail and look up stuff on the web, chat on ICQ, etc. I have a couple other random aps on there that are useful too.

I had a Treo 300 for a brief stint and it locked up like crazy, and I understand what you mean about that driving you nuts. But with the Tungsten T I think I had one hard lockup, and two sudden reboots, and I've never lost any data. Because of that, I only synch about once every two weeks, and the battery life has been good enough that I generally only remember to charge it about once a week.

I think Palm's problem is that almost every Palm-powered device has a different version of their OS, so there's a little bit of hit and miss. For example, the Treo300 had a version tweaked by Handspring specifically for that device. There seem to be more problems with the devices not sold by Palm, since most of those can't upgrade the OS. You might check their website for updates - they did have some for the Tungsten T to fix an audio level problem for mp3 playback.

And a mention for my problem with the other option - the pocket PC. I have yet to see one with a vibrating alarm, which just astounds me. I usually leave everything on vibrate to avoid having it be disruptive during meetings, movies, classes, etc.

Re:linux PDA?

[akac]

QUite a few Pocket PCs have a vibrating alarm. My XDA II does.

Re:linux PDA?

[firewood]

f all I need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then what would be the reason to choose PalmOS vs Linux on PDA?

Battery life.

The limiting factor in a PDA is the weight of the battery. Energy density has been improving at a microscopic rate compared to transistor density. The biggest consumer of battery life in these devices, other than the backlight, are memory accesses and processor cycles. For a typical PIM operation (look up a phone number or the next appointment time), the total instruction path length and code footprint for everything, including OS calls, database accesses, UI updates, background tasks, etc. during the 10 seconds this may take is far less with a compact special purpose OS and a PIM app customized for this API. The equivalent app under Linux would be more general and talk to more OS and library code layers, thus resulting in more cache misses, more memory and CPU cycles, thus less time with the CPU napping (unclocked) and thus greater power consumption.

Of course this is comparing PalmOS 4 to Linux. The bulk and typical path lengths of Palm OS 6 are still unknown.

Re:linux PDA?

[axxackall]

Also, last I checked they had dropped support for a desktop client that would run on Linux. Imagine that, a Linux handheld that only synchronizes with Win32.

That's a real shame. Last time I've used my Palm Vx to sync it even with Linux.

Re:linux PDA?

[kinnell]

The Clie is a great address book, calendar, etc

I have to say, I can't agree with you less. I recently bought a Clie, and while the hardware design is great (apart from the speaker being way to quiet), the OS (4) is rubbish. It has all the PIM features you need, but absolutely no integration - you can't for example set a time on a ToDo item and have it appear in the diary, or set an alarm for it. There is no way to sync the address book with a phone over irda. It doesn't use any open file formats. The filesystem is brain-dead. There is no multitasking.

My last PDA was a psion, and it was orders of magnitude better. As well as really good PIM software, it had a lightweight database, which was superb for keeping scraps of information, like passport number - you can replicate this functionality with palm OS, but only by using memo, and searching the entire filesystem. There is built in phone syncing. There is a good selection of software. The development tools are great, and as a result there is loads of quality third party software.

Maybe PalmOS 5 and 6 are better, but I don't see why people keep saying that palms are great PIMs, because they don't offer that much over a paper diary IMO. The only thing I find the Clie is notably good for is music, games and ebooks. Everything else is pretty mediocre.

Phew, that feels better.

Re:linux PDA?

[ajagci]

If all I need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then what would be the reason to choose PalmOS vs Linux on PDA?

Well, those applications are what Palm does well (if you define "well" as "doing better than the competition"). And it's pretty much the only thing it does well. So, if that's what you want, hold your nose and get yourself a Palm. That's what I did. The Palm will crash/hang with regularity, but you won't lose data.

The Zaurus (I have one) isn't good for PIM functionality, in my experience, and the GUI is iffy as well. And it doesn't look like Sharp or TrollTech are capable of fixing the GUI problems it has. So, unless you really need Linux in a PDA form factor for some other reason, don't bother.

What we need is a Linux-based PDA with Palm-like applications. But nobody is offering that.

Re:linux PDA?

[Enfors]

I have to say, I can't agree with you less. I recently bought a Clie, and while the hardware design is great (apart from the speaker being way to quiet), the OS (4) is rubbish. It has all the PIM features you need, but absolutely no integration - you can't for example set a time on a ToDo item and have it appear in the diary, or set an alarm for it.

Buy DateBk5 for Palm. It costs USD 25, and has all the features you need and more, trust me. :-)

The filesystem is brain-dead.

Correction: The file system is simplistic, which is one of the things that make Palms easy to use - you don't have to worry about files being installed in the wrong location, because there's only one place to install them. There are no directories.

There is no multitasking.

That's not true, strictly speaking. There is multitasking (how else would an alarm be able to go off while you're running some other Palm application?), it's just that only one application can access the UI at a time. This may sound stupid, but it too is one of the things that make Palms hassle-free. Sure, applications crash, but not to a greater extent than applications of any other operating systems. But besides that, there are rarely any problems with PalmOS applications. This is mostly because PalmOS is so simplistic, there isn't really anything to mess up.

Think about the kinds of things that cause problems with applications on a desktop PC:

1. File locations.

On PalmOS, there is only one place to put files (since there is no directories and no file hierarchy), so you can't mess up in that department on a Palm.

2. File priviledges

There are no file priviledges on Palms, so that won't cause you any problems.

3. Bad drivers

In general, Palms don't require any drivers, unless you buy extra hardware addons, so drivers won't cause you any problems.

4. Running out of memory

Since only one Palm program can run at a time, and the amount of heap space available on different PalmOS versions / Palm devices is very well documented, you'll rarely run into problems because a Palm application runs out of memory.

Combined, these factors come together to make PalmOS devices relatively stable. Sure, there is no memory protection, so when an application does crash, you usually have to "reboot" (soft reset) the device, but that takes about 20 seconds and you're good to go (without any loss of data). Besides, PalmOS 6 will include memory protection and proper multitasking for those who want that.

Some people say that they've had to hard reset their Palm to fix a problem, and that erases all data (the data will normally be totally restored by simply putting the Palm in its cradle and pressing the hotsync button though). Yes, that can be a problem. But you can usually avoid it. Here's how:

When a Palm application crashes, you usually have to "reboot" (soft reset) it. After a soft reset occurs, PalmOS notifies all applications that a soft reset has taken place. This is where bad things can happen. Some applications don't handle this notification properly and crash, causing a new soft reset, and you end up in an eternal soft reset boot which can only be fixed by a hard reset that deletes the offending (and all other) applications.

To avoid this problem, do this: Install a free file manager, such as Filez. Then, should you enter one of these eternal soft reset loops, you can fix it without hard resetting. As I said earlier, all applications are notified when the device soft resets. One of the first applications that is notified (and thus started) is usually the Prefs applications. Use this to your advantage by going to the "button setup" prefs panel, and redefine one of the hardware buttons to start the file manager you installed earlier. Then press that hardware button to start the file manager. Use the file manager to delete the offending application, and soft reset. There. Soft reset loop broken, problem solved, no loss of data.

Re:linux PDA?

[kinnell]

Buy DateBk5 for Palm. It costs USD 25, and has all the features you need and more, trust me. :-)

Given that the raison d'etre of Palm devices is as a PIM, should you really have to buy extra software in order for it to be a good PIM? That's just my point - the PalmOS software isn't very good.

On PalmOS, there is only one place to put files (since there is no directories and no file hierarchy), so you can't mess up in that department on a Palm

Not true. On most devices there is the internal memory, and memory cards. If I transfer a document from memory to my memory stick, it can no longer be read. You make a good point about the simplicity being an advantage, but in this case, the right thing to do would be to combine both internal and external memory into one virtual directory, wouldn't it?

Epoc doesn't suffer from any of the the problems you mention, despite being much more complicated, flexible and powerful. I don't find PalmOS in any way easier to use, the opposite in fact, because due to the lack of functionality, many things are very difficult.

I can only assume people sing the praises of PalmOS so much, because they have never used anything better.

Re:linux PDA?

[Enfors]

Given that the raison d'etre of Palm devices is as a PIM, should you really have to buy extra software in order for it to be a good PIM? That's just my point - the PalmOS software isn't very good.

True. Newer Clie models (Sony's Palm devices) use a much more sophisticated software than the traditional Palm PIM suite. But still, the extra USD 25 are definitely worth it.

Not true. On most devices there is the internal memory, and memory cards. If I transfer a document from memory to my memory stick, it can no longer be read.

Right, I simplified a bit for clarity. But if a user is sophisticated enough to use a memory card, I'm sure he or she can resolve any such problems. I aimed that statement at newbie users, who are unlikely to have memory cards.

You make a good point about the simplicity being an advantage, but in this case, the right thing to do would be to combine both internal and external memory into one virtual directory, wouldn't it?

Possibly. But while that would make the UI in itself simpler, for a newbie it might also "hide" the fact that a specific file is stored on a memory card and not on internal RAM. The user would then be very confused when the file suddenly isn't available anymore. It could be difficult to make the connection that its because he or she pulled out the memory card a week earlier.

I can only assume people sing the praises of PalmOS so much, because they have never used anything better.

Touche. I haven't tried any other PIMs than Palms. Still, I admire Palms for their simplicity when compared to desktop machines, and I fear that implementing too many typical desktop features (proper file systems, multitasking, etc) might bring typical desktop problems to Palm.

Re:linux PDA?

[kalidasa]

Rarely crashes? I'm guessing you didn't make the mistake of flashing the ROM on a Tungsten C. Crashes any time I enter an arbitrary url into the go menu.

Re:linux PDA?

[swv3752]

It depends on Which ROM one uses with the Zaurus. The official Sharp ROM has some lousy PIMs. The TKC apps are pretty good replacements, but personally I prefer the OPIE apps. And if you are going to use OPIE, you might as well go all the way and use OpenZaurus. Someone else mentioned Lycoris PocketPC- it appears to be just OZ with some icons changed to Lycoris icons.

I run OZ on mine and it syncs just fine in Linux. Of course, I only sync to back it up. My home directory and programs are stored on Flash Memory (everything easy to symlink to the SD card is on the SD card), so everything is saved even if I reset/reboot the thing.

Re:linux PDA?

[axxackall]

Thank you (and all other who answered) for the advise. Meanwhile I am adding cell-phones to my comparison too: with cell-phones you can keep all your data on the ASP server and that makes your cell-embedded PIM to be independent from memory limitations.

What we need is a Linux-based PDA with Palm-like applications. But nobody is offering that.

As I've suggested in the other comment: we need CLI-based Linux-PDA with ncurses-based PIM applications. Anyone?

Re:linux PDA?

[swv3752]

The Agenda VR3 is pretty much what you are looking for. SoftField still offers them.

For the Zaurus, I find the Opie apps to be better than the Qtopia ones.

Re:linux PDA?

[axxackall]

What I see on their pictures is GUI based (means graphical, ehile I begin to think about ncurses - just to make sure it's stable). What makes their GUI better and more stable than GUI from Zaurus?

Re:linux PDA?

[clicclic]

Stop being such a dull cheapskate and just buy something. You're talking $200 max. Go for it...

Re:linux PDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you found PalmOS 3 too buggy, you were obviously doing a lot more then the claimed calendaring, contacts, notes, money and short messages. I have been using Palms since the Palm Pilot, and those functions have always worked flawlessly.

Linux on a handheld is interestign exactly there where you want to do more then those limited functions.

I don't know, your 'this is all I use a palmtop for' sounds about as convincing as those computer users who claim to have done nothing at all after their hard disk suddenly turns out being empty.

I suggest that before you go ask for advice, you really think up what you want from a palmtop, and be realistic about it.

Re:linux PDA?

[swv3752]

It is the Fast Light ToolKit (FLTK) running on XFree86. It is as fast as a Palm OS 4 device. It nevered crashed. The only time it was rebooted was if I didn't changed the batteries before it was drained.

Re:linux PDA?

[swv3752]

I should also mentioned that the Opie (the GUI in OpenZaurus) is quite stable. It is somewhat slower though. It does have some more features and overall I prefer it. There are multiple ROMs available for the Zaurus. Many complaints about the Zaurus seem directed at the Sharp ROM's, and many only apply to the older versions.

Re:linux PDA?

[zulux]

It's horrably slow for instant entry.

The Zaurus uses a version of QT for display of all it's wigets - this is great for fast development, but for a little PDA, it's slow. Also - I thing all the apps arn't pre-linked, so startup times for the apps is hoorable.

So with a paml to enter somthing you wait .25 second for your app to load up.

With a Zaurus you wait 1.25 seconds - not much longer, but annoying enouh to make it not fun.

Re:linux PDA?

[a1englishman]

I, too, have a m500, and it works like a champ. Not only do I use the standard apps, but I have Yanoff, Acrobat, WordToGo, and AvantGo. The thing hardly ever requires a reset. When it does, I it the button on the back, and it resets -- no loss of data, and a few seconds of downtime.

Re:linux PDA?

[EisPick]

The parent post has got to be a troll. In daily use of PalmOS 3, 4 and 5 for over five years, I have never once had to do a hard reset. Versions 3 and 4 requred a soft reset (reboot) about once a year for me. I probably did a dozen soft resets on OS5 until I identified the applications that had compatibility problems.

PalmOS has a well-earned reputation for rock-solid reliability everywhere except for on Slashdot. Not sure why there are so many Palm haters here.

Re:linux PDA?

[Ben Hutchings]

The Palm "just works"? Man, you must have REALLY low expectations.

Probably just different experiences.

My Tungsten T2 has given me more trouble in six months than my Newton MP2100 has in a decade. The Palm syncronisation system is complete and utter crap,

It seems fine to me, but so far I've mostly used it for backing up rather than synchronising with a desktop PIM. What exaclty is wrong with it?

the notion of a PalmOS application is an absolute fantasy, with most remotely cutting edge apps being pretty much machine specific

"Cutting edge" meaning "beta", right? What did you expect? So far as I know, most applications will work just fine with any machine above some minimal OS version. I've never yet found an application that was supposed to work on my Palm IIIx but didn't.

and - worst of all - when it decides to freak and lock up, the only way to get it going again is a long charge followed by a hard reset, which kills all of your data and leaves you reliant on the utterly broken backup/sync system to get you going again..

I wonder whether there's a hardware problem with your Palm.

PalmOS isn't really a playform at all, it's an embedded OS.

It is not terribly easy to develop for the Palm but it is certainly possible for a third-party developer to write robust applications for it. I used to work for a company that did just that.

Re:linux PDA?

[Alan Partridge]

The thing is - I LIKE the Tungsten T2, the hardware design is excellent and the screen is superb, but I'm stuck using the tragic WebPro V web browser because the FAR BETTER browser (Netfront)that came with my girlfriend's Sony Clie TG-50 (which has NEVER lost data...) won't run on my Tungsten despite them both running Palm OS 5.2.1. The same is true of ALL the best Palm Apps - blueboard won't go on the Clie; Clie Lancher won't go on the Palm; Aeroplayer's a no-go on the Clie; no Picsel viewer or Flash Player on the Palm!

NOT A PLATFORM IMHO.

Re:linux PDA?

[biglig2]

Well, from a licensing perspective you're not meant to mix and match the apps between different PDAs...

Re:News.com?

[willdenniss]

stupid as it may be - yes it is news.com uses news.com.com as it's domain name

Linux on Palm

[armando_wall]

Alternatives to PalmOS, anyone?

Has anyone tried LinuxDA? It sounds like an interesting alternative, even being a commercial product.

Re:Linux on Palm

[nebelfrau]

I've tried the LinuxDA on an old HP PDA of mine, it worked smoothly. It was very efficient, too, but it's not something I would use permanently.

Re:News.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

com.com is indeed a trick site and I expect the article page to be changed to a goatse image anytime now.

are you retarded?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's the price of the device it's intended for.

get a fucking clue.

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[cleverhandle]

Um... no. If you RTF article, it clearly states that the $100 is the cost of the device to the consumer.

Mods - if you're going to mod something up as informative, isn't a cursory check of accuracy a good idea?

100 bucks for Palm device?

[cgenman]

Nope. That's for the whole device, like the 79 dollar Zire.

Re:100 bucks for Palm device?

[dnoyeb]

Then how much when you go to the Palm site and try to upgrade? Last I checked it was very much too expensive for me. Windoes is not much more...

Cool, erm...

[Ravensign]

I thought this was a really cool article, then I realized its not 1998.

Does Palm have any kind of momentum at all anymore?

Re:Cool, erm...

[Ralph Wiggam]

Does downward momentum count? If it does, then yes.

-B

Re:Cool, erm...

[Kenja]

Are you kidding? Palm is kicking the Apple Newtons ass! I hear Microsoft is working on a product to try and compete, but I doubt anything will come of it.

Re:Cool, erm...

[lpret]

I was really going to mod you down, but decided to discuss this one.

PalmSource has all sorts of momentum. They have created the best PDA experience hands-down. Setup for bluetooth and wifi is a piece of cake compared to Pocket PC. Their applications run fast and are not bloatware. And it's not just me saying this. Although they're not the only kids on the block, they still have a tremendous following for their ability to create a solid OS. By reinventing themselves and allowing their OS to be used on various platforms, they are set up for success.

Re:Cool, erm...

[jalefkowit]

That's not momentum, it's "Joementum"!

Naming suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

how about "Palm OS Full-Speed" and "Palm OS Hi-Speed"?

Re:Naming suggestions

[bakes]

Well then, I would expect V7 to be ludicrously fast.

I know, I know - cheap gag. Sorry.

let's get medieval

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it I'm going back to my stone tablet and chisel!

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[certsoft]

Seems to me there should be a moderation option of "Incorrect". About all you can do now is moderate it as "Overrated".

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[wrenkin]

I think it's the intended price point for devices that will use the 'low-end' OS.

Uh, I think you have it backward...

[WIAKywbfatw]

If all I need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then what would be the reason to choose PalmOS vs Linux on PDA?

If all you need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages), then why would you ever consider choosing a Linus over PalmOS on a PDA?

PalmOS is built for the job, fast enough to do what you want (and more), power efficient, etc.

Stop looking for a sledgehammer to crack a nut and give serious consideration to a Zire or Tungsten. Which one is best for you depends on how honest you are when you say you're looking for "just a PIM".

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[geekoid]

you make a veryt good point. However some people like to support open source, and are willing to go the extra mile to do so.

Now, my base line Nokia cell phone can also act as a pim. I'm prettu sure most cell phones can be your PIM.
I just wish I could load some personal pictures on it.

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[axxackall]

Perhaps PalmOS is built for the job, but also it's built for the crash in the middle of the job. Usually people associate reliability with servers, but it's getting really annoying whn your PDA locks up at the middle of meeting. Even more - you have to press hardware reset and all you data is gone.

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[Felinoid]

Palm Linux runs on many 68k Palm Os devices.
As much as Linux can run on very low end devices the typical Linux PDA is still a very high end device. It's not a simple PIM.
You can run a web server from a Linux PDA but a typical PalmOs PDA makes a wonderful PIM.

I've both a Handspring Visor and a Zaurus infront of me right now.

The handspring is a great device for GPS, e-mail, cell phone or what ever... I even have a digital voice recorder module.

But I skipped the MP3 player due to cost.

The Zaurus is much more powerful and slightly more bulky. MP3 player built in movie player available extra.

The PalmOs device is ok for viewing pictures but I need the Zaurus to edit those pictures.

Also certen limitations on the Palm... I can't e-mail pictures from my Handspring but I can from the Zaurus.

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[RealityThreek]

How did the parent post manage to get rated Interesting? I've only had my Palm crash once or twice, and it was because of a misbehaving program I downloaded and was trying out. And in no situation did I -ever- lose data. It's more reliable most the servers I've seen. :P

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[lpret]

I was going to mod you down, but decided to debate this instead. What PalmOS are you running? I've been using Palm since the Palm IIIx, and I've never had it crash on me outside of poorly designed software. You said you needed a hard reset -- for what? A soft reset should be just fine for any crashes that occur -- the only hard reset I've ever had to do is when I screwed up upgrading the OS.

There's a reason why most industrial PDAs are Palm based. It's very solid. It may not look like mini-windows (like Pocket PC) but it's fast, solid, and just works.

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[Chatterton]

What ?!?!?!

The only one time where my Palm crached and I needed to do a Hard reset and loosing data was due to one of my program. I have just started coding on my Palm with the excellent onboard Pascal Compiler and I do a lot trial and error to progress. I need to do a lot of reset, but the soft one and never loose any data.

On the oter end, all the stock Palm application never crashed on my face.

A very proud owner of a Palm. The most stable platform I never see :-)

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[axxackall]

Hard reset has been usually required when soft rest did not work, and that usuall happened when I used too many categories while too many primary records. The OS was 3.3 or something like that.

Re:Uh, I think you have it backward...

[Anonymous Coward]

I picked up a Tungsten E for Christmas, I love this thing. My previous PDA was an iPAQ 3835 that I converted to Linux, but while ssh was cool the experience wasn't that great (memory cards mounted slowly, apps took a while to load...etc). So, I reinstalled pocketPC on my iPAQ and use the Palm now. I keep my iPAQ around for Simcity 2000.. :-)

And speaking of that iPAQ, while it was charging one day my son got a hold of it and busted the power button; but it was still under warranty! So now I've got an iPAQ 2215 for SimCity 2000 (and my wife is thinking about using it). Maybe when synce can sync reliably with windows I'll start using the iPAQ again; but I really love my tungsten.

My pants are too small

[AvengerXP]

Every time i hear Symbian i cant help but think about the porn device. Fans of Kazaa will get my drift.

On topic, i think having two OSes will just take away needed ressources to put on OS 6. I think it's more Marketing than anything else. Much like Win98/98SE/ME. They're doing exactly the contrary of what MS is doing and creating one single end user/server line. I don't know if that's a good thing.

Re:My pants are too small

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I keep reading Sybian also. I think I've been spending too much time where I shouldnt :)

As a BeOS fan

[That's Unpossible!]

I have high hopes for PalmOS 6. Combine guys that created a great OS with some of the minds that created a great handheld, and ... my fingers are crossed. Does anyone have any details on v6.0? Screenshots? Technical specs?

I envision a white device with yellow borders... ummm.

Re:As a BeOS fan

[biglig2]

The early shots seem ot indicate that OS6 looks pretty much the same as OS5.

Their acquisition of BeOS was not really absed on "BeOS is cool, lets make Palms run BeOS" but more "look, there's a pile of OS developers who can write a good OS, let's get them to write OS6 instead"

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[craXORjack]

WinCE tops out at about 30 bucks per license. A small licensing fee up front added to that if you want to build a PocketPC or Smartphone.

$30+ Per device?! Whoa! No wonder winCE has been such a failure! They should try giving it away.

The new names for OS 5 and OS 6

[Anonymous Coward]

Cobalt.
Chrome.

Re:The new names for OS 5 and OS 6

[MountainLogic]

Cobalt may be more accurate that you might think. The agenda for the Palm Dev Conf. in a few days lists the Cobalt name for OS 6. My guess is that this may be an internal code name as Palm One alrady has a Tungsten line and Palm Source would want to appear OEM neutral. But it may point to the fact that the spec for OS 6 was driven my Palm One.

Palm is losing their niche

[mnmn]

Palm OS is the OS for low-end devices with simple functions which do not require the headache of viruses/spyware/BSOD etc, and which do simple monotasking applications on budget ram and flash and no MMU.

Try to overdevelop Palm OS into a GUI layers, multitasking, and other higher end stuff, and youre directly competing with Linux, QNX, BSD and BeOS (maybe they plan to merge their BeOS with Palm on higher end). They should not want that. Linux with the community backing, applications, tools, hackibility etc will win hands down and we'll see people buying Dell machines, replacing Windows XP with Linux, getting the free PDA and replacing its PalmOS with Linux + XFree86 and its tools.

I think Palm should try to remain as simple as PalmOS 3.5 or 4.0 and instead focus more on applications. The OS should be developed to deal with more hardware, make easy-to-use SDKs to gather applications from the community and to handle nice themes. Thats all. Pretty soon someone will shrink x86 to palm size and make it consume power as little as the ARM720T, and Microsoft will rush to modify Windows XP for it, and people will just replace that with Linux. Palm will then have to rely solely on their lower end OS on even smaller devices.

Re:Palm is losing their niche

[GarfBond]

You have absolutely no idea what a palm device is used for. On a palm device, you *do not* load Windows XP on it. These are items with around 400MHz Intel XScale and around 32-64MB of memory.

PalmOS is for palm-sized devices (e.g. ORGANIZERS) that have very little flexibility as far as data loss, convenience, and user-friendliness. No user wants to open up a console and mess with XF86 settings to try and get their organizer working right in the middle of a meeting.

Part of the reason Palm is still popular is because of the fundamental design decisions made with the OS. Which is to be, above all, a damn good organizer. Part of what Palm realized (and what Apple hadn't yet with the Newton) is that user requirements for an organizer is significantly different from a computer. Users expect it to work just as well as their wristwatch. A great article to read on this is the "Zen of Palm" (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/zenofpalm/ ZenTOC.html)

In the handheld market, Palm is competing with PocketPC (or as it's less affectionately known, Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC) and to a very much lesser extent, Linux on the Zaurus.

In the phone market, Palm is competing yet again with Windows and then Symbian. And this division of markets is why they're concurrently developing OS 5 and 6.

And, for your information, PalmSource owns Be. Part of the whole point of OS6 is that Be engineers are putting significant efforts into it.

Re:Palm is losing their niche

[ce25254]

And how does Palm OS compare to something like TRON / T-Kernel?

Re:Palm is losing their niche

[Anonymous Coward]

On a palm device, you *do not* load Windows XP on it. These are items with around 400MHz Intel XScale and around 32-64MB of memory.

Minimum requirements for Windows 2000 Professional:
133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU
64 MB of RAM

Minimum requirements for Windows NT4 Workstation:
32 bit x86-based microprocessor (such as Intel 80486/25 or higher), Intel Pentium, or supported RISC-based microprocessor sucj as the MIPS R4x00, Digital Alpha Systems, or PowerPC.
12-MB RAM minimum for x86-based systems, 16 MB recommended
16-MB RAM minimum for RISC-based systems

Other than not supporting XScale (for the technical reason that it did not yet exist), it sounds like these are now a class of device that you could run Windows on. (oh yes, and hard drive requirements... but you didn't think of that ;)

Yellow Tab has a version of BeOS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yellow Tab has a version of BeOS called "Zeta".

I think the story is that they could licence everything but the name. There's an awesome preview up on Zeta Journal.

And there are also the two open clones in the works: Blue-Eyed OS (by building BeOS-workalike bits on top of Linux) and OpenBeOS (a from-the-ground-up reimplementation of BeOS)..

Where have I heard this before?

[teamhasnoi]

I really think that Palm should drop support for their embedded OS and focus on a Desktop OS, that they can give away for free and compete with Microsoft for bootmanager rights on OEM desktops.

What could go wrong?

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[webtre]

SCO litigation

Re:Where have I heard this before?

[evilviper]

Yeah, I noticed that too... It's nice to know that when they aquired the company, they didn't just get rights to the code and technology; they also got the rights to any crazy ideas formerly owned by the company.

Too bad it doesn't always work that way... It would have been nice if Compaq inherited DEC's ideology as well, instead of getting the least of both worlds.

With the competition from PowerPC devices . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . I'm wonder what the next chapter in Palm's history will be. Chapter 7? Or 11?

~~~

Re:With the competition from PowerPC devices . . .

[zapp]

PowerPC? So now Macintosh computers are taking market share from Palms? ;)

Re:With the competition from PowerPC devices . . .

[squiggleslash]

I think IBM and Microsoft need to battle out what the "PPC" set of initials should actually refer to...

Re:With the competition from PowerPC devices . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL--%s/PowerPC/PocketPC/g

Sorry!

~~~

Gadget lust and price points

[Grrr]

I want to root for Palm. Really.

Even broke down and bought a used IIIXE... which died a month later. I know there is much newer tech out there now, and geeky individual buyers are not the preferred target market. I could probably get this doorstop fixed - but my cell phone and Blackberry are covering the basic PIM and game bases.

And I've never had to reboot the piece of paper in my wallet with all the phone numbers on it. Even a phone with an OS of any complexity makes me nervous. Again, I know they don't care about incidental sales...

This is a toy I would like to be able to con myself into "needing" -but at $300-$400 and formidable network access charges, it isn't that inconvenient to check e-mail with the cell phone or haul the laptop around.

While there many not be many people with the same mindset, I wonder if a $100 price point (for a device with some expansion capabilities) wouldn't get people like me off the fence.

<grrr>

Re:Gadget lust and price points

[GarfBond]

Lucky for you, palmone already thought of that: http://www.palmone.com/us/products/handhelds/zire2 1/

If $99 is too much for you, then there's a slower, older, less memory version of it for $79.

Granted, there's no backlight or expansion on either of these, but they're cheap.

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[citog]

I prefer 'Redundant'. But 'Incorrect' would be useful.

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

wince is actually a tremedously great product (the newer versions)

i bought a pocketpc with the expecation of dropping linux on it, because i dont use windows (veryy substandard product in my opinion and experience) on the desktop, so why would i bother on my ppc.

i have to say, microsoft deserves credit on wince, its nicely integrated with the features, and its a great system.

pocketword + handwriting recognition is superior. i do wonder about how IE will be in the future with its track record. but then again i have read that windows ce is a different code base so i assume IE wouild be too (much tighter controls and actually done, um WELL :)

Palm Dev Conf

[code_rage]

The Palm Developer Conference will reveal the details of the new OS. San Jose, CA, Feb 10-12 2004.

Re:News.com?

[LnxAddct]

no its not.
-Steve

What I've Gathered

[Eideteker]

Palm OS 6, according to palminfocenter.com, is basically redesigned from the ground up to embrace wireless networking. Palm OS 5 is staying because, quite honestly, it works. I never owned an earlier generation PDA, but I swear by my T3. I haven't experienced any of the bugs I hear about from OS 3 users.

Plus, it doubles as my mp3 player to take to work in the morning (with the addition of a handy SD Cruzer drive) and it impresses the heck out of people.

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still Cheep compared to linux at $699

May there be a quick end to SCO!

Developers, developers, developers, developers

[Imperator]

PalmSource has made a mess of the platform from a developer's perspective. It used to be that all Palm OS systems were more or less the same--slow 68k processor, very small address space, small 160x160 monochrome touch screen. As the technology moved down in price, Palm OS systems started to get improvements like faster ARM processors (endian change!), more memory, and high resolution color screens. The problems are several:

• The hardware became too varied. Palm OS form resources use absolute positioning, so it's not easy designing a form for different screen resolutions. Having multiple copies of each form is a pain in the ass, both when creating the forms and when writing the code.
• The APIs became fragmented. Until recently, every device manufacturer with a resolution above 160x160 (or a collapsable input area) had its own API. Some developers of 3rd party apps go out of their way to support all of these--but most just support none.
• The development tools became too complicated. POSE was great, but now every device seems to requires its own emulator or simulator. Not every simulator makes it to every development platform. It becomes a pain in the ass to test for all the devices out there.
• Backwards compatibility was either overpursued or underpersued. For the former, consider sysAppLaunchCmdFind. Find is enormously painful to support--no globals, no exceptions, etc. But with the amount of memory in today's machines, there's no reason this launch code can't be accompanied by globals. Then in apps I can't be bothered supporting Find in, I'd be more likely to write the code--though it would only run if I had a launch flag to tell me my globals are present (sysAppLaunchFlagNewGlobals | sysAppLaunchFlagSubCall). For a lack of backwards compatibility, look at VFS.

So in summary, life has been frustrating for Palm OS developers. But the real losers here are the users. What used to be a vibrant community of 3rd party developers has somewhat dried up. People simply aren't writing as many good, device-neutral Palm OS apps as they used to.

Re:Developers, developers, developers, developers

[BenjyD]

It is hard supporting all the different types of Palm hardware. I get a lot of email requests saying "can you support feature XYZ" on my SuperDuper PalmClone. I just don't have development time to include them all.

One thing at least is guaranteed though - a (not-badly-written) app written for an old Palm will at least run and look identical on any new device. It may not support new features, but it will work.
My biggest annoyance is the fact that there is no Linux version of the Simulator. Rebooting into windows in order to test on PalmOS 5 is really annoying.

Re:Developers, developers, developers, developers

[panoplos]

... ARM processors (endian change!) ...

ARM possesses the ability to run in both little-endian and big-endian byte order modes; byte order can be set by the OS at bootstrap by flipping a bit on a flag.

overpursued or underpersued

ugh... choose a spelling and stick with it, already ;-).

Re:Developers, developers, developers, developers

[Imperator]

The 68K family is big-endian, but the ARM family is little-endian as used in Palm OS systems. Now I wasn't aware they could have used it as a big-endian chip; was there some disadvantage that might have prevented them from doing it?

(As to the spelling, I bow my head in shame.)

Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[zapp]

Boy are you guys gonna hate me for even suggesting Microsoft....

A lot of people are asking for alternatives to PalmOS... well, how about it's #1 competator: PocketPC?

I have been playing with the HP iPAQs recently, and am trying to find one at a reasonable price, and lemme tell you I am in love.

I owned a Visor Delux back when they came out, and it just sucked after a while. Handwriting was a pain in the ass; the software worked, but was limited; there was no good solution for document editing/viewing; audio, video and networking functions were nonexistant at the time. Even then, the top of the line HP Journadas could play mp3s and had a color screen.

If you want something to replace your pocket pad of paper, go with a palm I guess. If you want a *computer* in your pocket, go with a PocketPC... I personally am drooling over the HP h1945, h2215, and h4155's.

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[evilviper]

If you want something to replace your pocket pad of paper, go with a palm I guess.

So far, so good...

If you want a *computer* in your pocket, go with a PocketPC...

No, if you want an incredibly unstable, and feature-stripped WINDOWS PC in your pocket, then get a WinCE device. If you want to hit the reset button twice a day, get a WinCE device. If you want to waste a good part of your day staring at the pretty colors the screen displays, while getting nothing at all accomplished, get a WinCE device. Yes, 'wince' is quite a good name for it...

I personally am drooling over the HP h1945, h2215, and h4155's.

It's a typical ploy these days. Load a device with tons and tons of features (none of which are complete, or even usable in real terms) and people will be suckered into buying them... That's the same strategy Microsoft uses with Windows... It includes an "image editor" (MS Paint, it's not Photoshop or Gimp, but it gets the same moniker), MP3 playback (forget the fact that WMP sucks at music playback compared to Winamp, XMMS, Zinf, etc.), video editing (that's sure a joke), and many many more like this.

I found out the same thing about a month after I bought my Casio E-100... It seemed so great, fast, and could do anything (at least on paper). After I threw it away, I got a Psion with a CPU about 1/3rd the speed, that outperformed that E-100 by leaps and bounds. Yes, Windows is slow as hell on the desktop, and WindowsCE is keeping that tradition alive on low-end processors. My Psion also had infinitely more USEFUL features than my WindowsCE device.

Instead of a crappy text editor that can do nothing (WinCE), I got a whole office suite that could do 99% what the desktop equivalent could. Even embedding images, graphs, charts, or spreadsheets in word documents. My WindowsCE machine couldn't even print on it's own, meanwhile my Psion could print directly to an Infrared or Serial-port printer, without any other computer attached.

Windows CE, you see, is meant to be nothing more than a "desktop companion", which depends very very heavily on your Windows machine. Psions (aka Symbian, aka EPOC), are full-fledged computers on their own, and have every feature you would want if you intend to do REAL WORK on them.

Palm devices are glorified notepads with alarm clocks, and they do that particular job quite well. WinCE machines are just expensive toys, that claim to do everything, but aren't proficent enough to do anything even reasonably well. Psion/Symbian/EPOC devices are incredibly powerful, stable, intuitive, high performance, and are quite nearly desktop replacements.

As a matter of fact, my last year of college, I didn't do anything on my desktop or notebook... I typed up all papers in the word processor, wrote and tested all C programs, typed up and sent out all e-mails (to instructors and other students), browsed the web, uploaded/downloaded files, and printed out everything directly from my Psion. And on the handful of occasions I needed to connect to a computer, I used telnet, a seral-port terminal emulator, and a Java SSH program to connect to them.

Windows CE sucks, hard, and I'm more than qualified to say so.

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[kamapuaa]

MP3 playback (forget the fact that WMP sucks at music playback compared to Winamp, XMMS, Zinf, etc.)

May I ask, why does WMP suck at playback compared to Winamp and the others? Just that it's a bit of a resource hog?

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[ertw]

I have crappy karma, so no one might ever read this, however....anecdotal evidence below (I have an HP iPaq 1940, use it ~10 times a day)

"If you want to hit the reset button twice a day, go with a PcoketPC"

I have had to reset the unit once since I got it (Christmas), and that was to properly finish a program install.

"(none of which are complete, or even usable in real terms)"

I'm curious to know what features you are talking about. Everything I have thrown at this machine (movies, mp3s, etc) have all been handled very well, and the syncing is excellent.

"and WindowsCE is keeping that tradition alive on low-end processors."

I find that apps launch instantaneously...maybe you're looking for some sort of predictive launching?

"Instead of a crappy text editor that can do nothing (WinCE), I got a whole office suite that could do 99% what the desktop equivalent could. Even embedding images, graphs, charts, or spreadsheets in word documents. My WindowsCE machine couldn't even print on it's own, meanwhile my Psion could print directly to an Infrared or Serial-port printer, without any other computer attached."

Word/Excel (as much as you may hate them) come free with the unit, and work much like their desktop equivalents. Printing, on the other hand, is somewhat hit or miss depending on what brand you buy, however the ipaq can print over a network or bluetooth (which is included on this one) if so desired.

"Windows CE sucks, hard, and I'm more than qualified to say so."

I'd like to hear these qualifications. Anecdotal evidence vs other anecdotal evidence never really gets anywhere, but you're saying these things like they are facts!

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[radish]

But the features I care about are hardware, not software, because software is replaceable. I have an iPAQ 4155 (used to be a palm boy too) and this thing is nice. Firstly it's tiny, something like 1cm thick, very light, with a nice large clear screen. The battery life isn't stellar, but for a handheld it's not bad (something like 4-5 hours if you're careful). Doesn't sound like a lot, but better than a lot of laptops, and quite good enough to run a few days without a charge in normal use. Also, the battery is replaceable so I can keep a spare in my pocket if I'm going to be away from a charger - most Palm's don't have that AFAIK. It's got the obligatory SDIO slot, but what's really nice is the built in WiFi AND bluetooth. I've seen other devices with one or the other, but very very few with both.

So what some of the bundled apps suck? There are a million replacements. I don't need an mp3 player for it (use a Karma), but I have loaded ACDsee mobile for managing photos from my digital camera on the go, a bunch of games, ssh client, wifi sniffer, etc etc. Saying Windows (or PocketPC) is crappy because the bundled apps are crappy is kind of short sighted. Some of the apps which come with your average linux distro suck too....but that doesn't devalue the distro, or the computer it's running on.

The basic choices for PDA are palm (best if you want a simple, reliable, notepad type thing), pocketpc (if you want more power, more whiz factor, but at the cost of battery life and reliablity), or linux (if you don't mind being on the bleeding edge).

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[zapp]

What a nice bit of FUD. Go try any modern PPC device out in the stores, and you will be quite impressed with how much it has improved.

It is no longer Windows CE. I have seen older CE devices, and your complaints about them are fairly accurate. PPC2003 is quite improved.

Equating a Casio E-100 to a HP h4155 is like equating a Palm III to a Tungsten T3

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Word/Excel come free with the unit, and work much like their desktop equivalents.

Surely you jest.

Not that Hancom MobileCrap is much better, though.

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[evilviper]

But the features I care about are hardware, not software, because software is replaceable.

While that's very very true for desktop systems, it is not the same thing on handheld devices... If you are thinking it's easy to just replace the OS on a handheld device, I'd be willing to bet that you've never attempted to do it before.

The battery life isn't stellar, but for a handheld it's not bad (something like 4-5 hours if you're careful).

The Psion I mentioned runs about a months on one pair of standard AA batteries...

a bunch of games, ssh client, wifi sniffer, etc etc.

Games may be okay, but you're in for an unplesant surprise with the rest. I know I got suckered into the same idea when I bought my first handheld, but the truth is, they aren't nearly as functional as a real computer, so expecting you can do the same things is crazy.

For instance, you expect to install an SSH client... How well do you think it's going to work without a keyboard? How well do you think it's going to work with a screen that is twice as tall as it is wide? You'll be able to use it, typing about a word a minute, but it'll be completely useless and you'll ditch it immediately.

So what some of the bundled apps suck? There are a million replacements.

No, on desktop computers there are a million replacements, on any specific WindowsCE device you may have (perhaps) 2 other programs that do the same thing... One will cost $30, and the other will be worse than what's bundled with the device. What's more is that you'll waste lots of space storing all these programs, you're device will slow to a crawl, and the more you install, the more likely it'll crash sooner. Installing even just 20 programs to a handheld device is time consuming... And with Windows CE, you should plan that you'll be doing it once a week.

Some of the apps which come with your average linux distro suck too....but that doesn't devalue the distro, or the computer it's running on.

Once you've used a handheld for a month, you'll understand very clearly that it is NOT like a normal computer, like a notebook, etc. It is a very very different environment, and you'll learn that soon after you've wasted $500 on a device that you'll end up sticking in a closet.

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[evilviper]

Go try any modern PPC device out in the stores, and you will be quite impressed with how much it has improved.

I have, but I didn't really need to... There are any number of show-stoppers that are obviously unchanged.

Color screens suck. They are hard on your eyes, and if you are in a well lit area, you can't read them. If you are outdoors in the daytime, you have no chance, even in shade.

Battery Life... It has improved but it's still incredibly short. I like the 2 months I can get on my Psion thank you.

Screen dimentions. What idiot thought that a vertical screen was a good idea? TVs and computers are going the opposite direction, yet nobody in the handheld world got the message. Having a screen that isn't tall enough isn't very bad, because you can scroll up/down after you've read the 20+ lines on the screen... Having a screen that isn't wide enough means you have to scroll side to side, TWICE for EACH LINE you read. My Psion has a 640x240 screen, and it works great.

Lack of a keyboard is the biggest one of all. On my Psion, I can actually type... Whole documents are a breeze. On a WinCE device, you input at about 1 word per-minute, with errors, using either the crappy handwriting recognition, or the barely usable on-screen keyboard.

3rd party keyboards that plug-in just don't work... It's too much hassle to take out multiple parts, hook them together, and unhook them when you are done. It just doesn't work in the real world.

The keyboards I've seen on devices like the Sony, make the devices very bulky, and are not layed out so you can actually type. Better than on-screen, but a simple keyboard still blows it away.

That's just the start, but it makes my point well enough.

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[evilviper]

May I ask, why does WMP suck at playback compared to Winamp and the others? Just that it's a bit of a resource hog?

That's certainly a big part of it... It has a lowsy interface, lowsy playlist support, lowsy support for creating/modifying/sorting playlists... Little if any support for editing metadata.

It doesn't give you much config options on how you'd like playback to happen. Doesn't give you much flexibility in visulizations.

It doesn't allow you to created a tree of your music based upon the metadata, like Freeamp/Zinf does.

Well, that's all I can think up in 2 minutes, off the top of my head... Good enough?

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[radish]

you are thinking it's easy to just replace the OS on a handheld device

I don't want to replace the OS. Just some of the bundled apps.

The Psion I mentioned runs about a months on one pair of standard AA batteries...


Excellent. How's the wifi?

For instance, you expect to install an SSH client

No. I _have_ installed an ssh client. With a rollup keyboard it makes an excellent pocket terminal. On the move, I can get by with the stylus, but it's of course not ideal. Luckily, I can usually find a table when I need to do something like that ;)

What's more is that you'll waste lots of space storing all these programs, you're device will slow to a crawl, and the more you install, the more likely it'll crash sooner


Er - surely you're not subscribing to the "computers slow down when they get too full" rubbish are you? Why would a PDA slow down when you install apps if they're not running? It's not like it's got anywhere to swap out to... and crashing sooner? Likewise. If it's not running it's not having any effect.

Installing even just 20 programs to a handheld device is time consuming... And with Windows CE, you should plan that you'll be doing it once a week.


Why? I haven't had to reinstall anything ever. Why on earth would I? I guess if I reformatted the device...I think if you left it without power for long enough for the backup battery to fail (a loooong time) it would lose stuff in ram, but 95% of my apps are in flash. So no sweat.

I think you misunderstood my post - you seem to think I'm new to all this. That's not the case, I had a previous PocketPC for over a year, the 4155 is a recent upgrade. All those apps I mention - I use them all the time, and have done for a while. I'm glad you psion suits you, I used to have one a bunch of years ago, but it's too big, slow, and grey for me now. It just can't do what I want. Like I said, it's all about what you want out of a handheld. Everyone is free to make their choices...and I hope everyone's happy :)

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[evilviper]

How's the wifi?

Not my thing, so I don't know. It's certainly not built-in if that's what you were wondering.

With a rollup keyboard it makes an excellent pocket terminal.

It's much better, and much less hassle to have the keyboard part of the device.

Er - surely you're not subscribing to the "computers slow down when they get too full" rubbish are you?

Nope, not computers, just Windows CE.

Why would a PDA slow down when you install apps if they're not running?

Hmmm... Registry entries? I don't know why, but I know WinCE does.

Why? I haven't had to reinstall anything ever. Why on earth would I?

Because WinCE has this nasty habit of crashing and corrupting the filesystem (in RAM) so that you have to reinstall.

but 95% of my apps are in flash. So no sweat.

What difference does that make? You can't just run uninstalled program... WinCE wants to have the registry entries installed with the program, so if the OS is blanked, you'll have to reinstall the programs.

I had a previous PocketPC for over a year, the 4155 is a recent upgrade. All those apps I mention - I use them all the time, and have done for a while.

You know, it's just a matter of how much someone is willing to put up with. Lots of people were/are willing to deal with Windows on the desktop, so it doesn't surprise me that there are people willing to put up with it on a handheld as well. It's just a matter of standards. I like a device to work, I don't like to have to fiddle with it constantly to get a program that suddenly failed, to work again. So, I use a decent OS. You are, of course, welcome to do whatever you like.

Re:Go ahead, mod me -1: Microsoft fan

[radish]

Because WinCE has this nasty habit of crashing and corrupting the filesystem (in RAM) so that you have to reinstall.


Well I guess we've had different experiences. I've been using PocketPC for well over a year and that has never happened to me. Still, if you're basing your experiences on WinCE (which is several years old) maybe that's what used to happen. Whatever.

What difference does that make? You can't just run uninstalled program... WinCE wants to have the registry entries installed with the program, so if the OS is blanked, you'll have to reinstall the programs.


Crap. When I switched from my old PPC to my new one, most of the apps were installed on an SD card. I simply put the card in the new device and the apps still worked. A couple lost preferences (no biggy), and I had to set up shortcuts to them all in the start menu, but I can live with that. No need to reinstall in most cases.

I really don't want to turn this into a MS vs the world argument, because that's not what I'm into. But you seem to be very misinformed about PocketPC - yes it does hang more than my palm did, and yes it eats batteries faster than my palm did. But I have never lost data, never had apps "magically stop working" and in general it's a decent system. The feature set it offers over other systems is worth the occasional push of the reset button to me. YMMV.

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[zapp]

You think $30 is bad for an OS? Gimme a break.

Most apps for either Palm OR PocketPC run $10-50.

PocketQuicken (which requires a desktop copy of quicken) costs $40.

AOL Instant Messenger for PPC costs $20!

Now... I don't concider $30 bad for an OS, but $20 for AIM?

I like my Palm(s)...

[MsGeek]

I paid $50 for a refurbed Palm m100 about two years ago. The thing is still running, fat, sassy and happy. I now basically run my life on an m125. Again, bought refurbed, this time for $60 after you factor in the rebate.

I had to move to the m125 because there's a glitch in PalmOS before version 3.5.2 that conflicts with certain apps running on MacOS 9.x, and the m100 can't have its OS upgraded because it's burned to ROM. The m125 has PalmOS 4.0.1 burned to ROM and it coexists beautifully with my Mac G3 Blue-and-white, my Windows desktop and my dual-booting Thinkpad 600e.

The thing that really kicks ass about Palm is Palm Desktop. You can still download it from palmone.com for FREE as in beer (not free as in freedom but what do you expect from a closed-source for-profit software/hardware company like Palm) and it is a great little PIM program regardless of whether you use it for syncing your Palm or just keeping your appointments straight.

Sure, a Zaurus would be able to do more. Yes, PalmOS is crashy and cranky...what do you expect from something that basically is like MacOS before the MultiFinder was born? Still and all, it does what I need it to do, no more, no less.

Most importantly, carrying around my little Palm is easier on the shoulders and back than carrying around a 3 pound paper-and-pencil planner. That you cannot deny.

Re:I like my Palm(s)...

[Big Nemo '60]

This is probably redundant but... I much share the same experience. After thinking about a handheld for a long time, I had a chance to grab a refurbished m125. The biggest issue is, I've become addicted to the little thing since then :-)

The software supplied with the Palm covers most of my needs. My biggest - and most expensive - addition is a MS Money companion - which actually turned the Money desktop software into something USEFUL, as now i do almost all the data entry on the Palm and work on the desktop PC only for balancing, planning and printing reports.

A few nice small applications and utilities - mostly freeware: HandyShopper and MetrO for example - made it even more useful and/or user frendly. Lots of stuff like that for the Palm.

Also, since I keep some confidential data on the thing, I added an encryption software and a hack that allows me to lock and unlock safely the Palm in a snap.

I found it pretty stable. Got crashes trying a few mis-behaving applications - hit the reset button and delete the offender, I never needed more than that.

And I actually like the AAA batteries. I get 20 to 24 hours of operation with two fresh batteries (I make very little use of backlighting), that's more than two weeks of operation for me, and even in the middle of nowhere all I need is two replacement batteries in my pocket. I am going to miss that when I will upgrade to something else...

What I miss? A little more memory (but I could add a SD card), a speaker able to reproduce dialtones (you can do that with OS5 devices, and with Clies as well IIRC). Also, if my next cellphone will have Bluetooth in it, I'll probably want Bluetooth connectivity for the Palm. There are rumors of an upcoming model (Tungsten E2?) like a Tungsten E with larger display and built-in Bluetooth, should be much cheaper of the T3 hopefully! If only they made one with a grayscale display...

Yes, I'm hooked - and what matters, I REALLY use it and it makes my day.

Re:I like my Palm(s)...

[versus]

I had to move to the m125 because there's a glitch in PalmOS before version 3.5.2 that conflicts with certain apps running on MacOS 9.x, and the m100 can't have its OS upgraded because it's burned to ROM.

I have PalmOS patch v3.5.3 in the RAM of my m100. No need to have it in ROM - just download the patch after every hard reset (which happens once a year for me).

Don't play OS wargames - be compatible

[vik]

I'm a developer of PalmOS and WinCE/PocketPC applications and I realised that fighting any kind of multiple-platform market required a cross-platform tool that works under top-notch IDEs like Eclipse. And there is one. And it's Free.

By writing programs in SuperWaba - a cut down Java VM - I avoid most of the crap associated with who has what version of what device. Palm V2.0 to WindowsXP/CE, I have just one application to develop and it runs on all platforms - even in a web browser.

Don't leave home without it :)

Vik :v)

Re:Don't play OS wargames - be compatible

[mclove]

Well as of next week you can develop for Palm under Eclipse too, and performance-wise at least on slower Palms you might be better off with a compatibility framework like SHARK. But not knowing what exactly you do I can certainly imagine that for many developers it's easiest to just write once in Java and not have to think about it.

Re:Don't play OS wargames - be compatible

[vik]

One of the nice things about SuperWaba is that it is actually 3x faster than Sun's JIT compiled code. Version 4.2 is sceduled to be released on Monday, and that will have significantly (>10x) speeded up graphics capabilities. Can't wait!

I already use Eclipse to develop Palm and WinCE code with SuperWaba, and I must say that the debugger is brilliant. There is a plugin available on SourceForge to allow debugging on the Palm emulator itself, but I generally just run under native Java.

For us, sticking with Java was a no-brainer because of the abundance of in-house Java expertise. But I think it was the right long term decision anyway.

Vik :v)

Their strategy should be to _GET_ an OS.

[MMHere]

I don't intend this to be a troll.

They don't currently have a RealOS(tm), so why is acquiring/building a real OS considered a change in OS strategy?

When I say they don't have an OS right now, I mean:

- It doesn't do preemptive multitasking, so multiple tasks don't run simultaneously very well. It requires tasks to voluntarily yield, much like MacOS's before OS X. (Palm software people are old Apple software people anyway...) The Palms I've used also did very little in the way of letting multiple tasks run simultaneously. Usually the "top" app is all that's happening (possibly ignoring some interrupt driven background I/O).

- It doesn't have process memory space protection, AFAIK. Without multiple tasks actually running at the same time, this is less of an issue. Palms do, however, "crash" and need to be rebooted sometimes. Certainly this happens more often than on ucLinux PDAs...

If they're making those things possible (and PalmOS 6 is claimed to be "better at multitasking," so it sounds like they are), then it may be worthy of actually calling it an Operating System.

Re:Their strategy should be to _GET_ an OS.

[hacker]

"It doesn't do preemptive multitasking, so multiple tasks don't run simultaneously very well."

PalmOS' kernel (AMX) is actually licensed from Kadak. Under the terms of that license they are seriously limited for upgrades: they're restricted from preemptive multitasking or using it on different/multiple processors, BY LICENSE, not by design.

Tablet PCs!

[lpret]

Yes, this is something I've been saying for quite some time! Why can't we create basically a palm with a really big screen to be a tablet PC? some palms already have bluetooth and wifi built in -- and they're the same size as a deck of cards! This would mean we would only need our ~400 Mhz chip used in PDAs now, and have a compactflash slot -- and it could even have 10x the battery life of current PDAs! Turn it in landscape mode and have a soft keyboard. The options are endless, and this is all using technology that already exists.

Well, to be pickey...

[Ghengis]

having preemptive multitasking, or multitasking period is NOT a requirement for being an OS. Neither is having memory protection. All an OS has to do control (allow) execution of programs and *may* provide various services such as accessing hardware. Now, this doens't mean that an OS without multitasking or memory space protection is any "good", but it is still an OS.

Palm crashes?

[jackDuhRipper]

Others'MMV, but I've owned / used / beaten to near-death 4 different Palms since the III (c.1998) and I can count on my fingers & toes the number of crashes I recall. The preponderance of those are recent*.

When I say "owned / used ..." I'm talking every day, shutting the thing on and off probably 20 times each day, taking meeting notes (~40 WPM with Graffitti), and reading AvantGo news and PDFs as well as playing games. This in addition to the calandar and To Dos tracking I originally intended.

Never have any of them (III, IIIx, IIIxe, Tungsten T) locked up in the middle of doing these things - they've locked up when syncing, when Finding (searching) against "bad apps," when attempting to switch from a live "Arkanoid" game, but never in the middle of real usage.

*- Also, at least in recent Tungsten memory, when I have reset it, it hasn't lost a damn thing - Not a Note, not a To Do, nor a Calendar entry.

OS 6 - architected and built by the BeOS engineers - looks interesting. I use it much more for "traditional PDA" stuff, but the BeOS was always smart and ass-kicking.

S

Re:Palm crashes?

[ajagci]

Others'MMV, but I've owned / used / beaten to near-death 4 different Palms since the III (c.1998) and I can count on my fingers & toes the number of crashes I recall. The preponderance of those are recent*.

My Tungsten T3 crashes and/or hangs with some regularity. The previous T3 (which went back because of a bad digitizer) crashed even more frequently. So did the Sony Clie I had before.

The m500 I was using before that was fairly reliable, as long as I did not install any third party software.

Never have any of them (III, IIIx, IIIxe, Tungsten T) locked up in the middle of doing these things - they've locked up when syncing, when Finding (searching) against "bad apps," when attempting to switch from a live "Arkanoid" game, but never in the middle of real usage.

Well, gee, and those don't count as crashes in your book?

No, entering words in the Date Book usually doesn't cause the Palm to crash, but so what?

*- Also, at least in recent Tungsten memory, when I have reset it, it hasn't lost a damn thing - Not a Note, not a To Do, nor a Calendar entry.

Yes, there I agree: data usually survives crashes intact.

But I have lost lots of data from incompatibilities between different Palms (when migrating) or differing desktop versions. So, back up your data frequently anyway.

Same strategy.

[Trillan]

This isn't news at all. This has been Palm's strategy for the past few years -- one OS for low-end devices, one for high end.

The only difference is the previously high-end OS is becoming the low-end. Which will happen again one day with Palm OS 6.

Lust or Love?

[SuperKendall]

Of all the people I have ever seen buy organizers, I recall only one that has bought and used a PocketPC for longer than a few months (as in - carried with him/her frequently).

I have had my Palm V for years and years now, and it has been with me every day.

The PocketPC appear to have some nice features, but after you settle down and just want a no hassle device that works without fuss (or a lot of charging) people often head for a Palm, even now.

PalmOS =5.x limits what you can get from the hw

[schmaltz]

Look, Palm devices have gone from being about as fast as your wristwatch, up to today's being as powerful as laptops of a few years ago (400mhz, 32MB+ RAM, hundreds of megs in SD/MMC.) For a handheld computer that runs for days on battery power, that's quite a bit of power, and possibility.

They're powerful enough to play mp3s and movies, they do wifi, the pen interface has gotten simpler and more accurate. But it's all limited by the operating system. The problem with PalmOS is, it's built around a Windows 3.x-style event loop with no threading. "Cooperative multiprocessing," if you can call it that.

Word today from a developer at a biggish PalmOS app development company, is that Palm has gotten some of the BeOS blokes to develop a microkernel, threading, and device driver architecture; that'll be OS 6.0. It won't be open source, sadly, but it'll have Palm's usual level of documentation and support.

Look at the Zaurus for the example of a pocket computer that's reaching in the right direction: Linux with multitasking, device drivers... mad extensibility. Palm don't got that today.. although I think running KDE is a bit of overdevelopment. Who needs a terminal window, these things have enough power to process speech recognition? That's why the O/S needs to grow.

Re:PalmOS =5.x limits what you can get from the hw

[dirgotronix]

Yes, but the difference here is that Palm devices, at their roots, are organizers. People seem to forget that.

I don't need to have a linux machine in my pocket. I don't need to worry about permissions and security and config files when I'm checking my schedule. I don't need to worry about the proper graphics library to open my address book.

PalmOS just works. That's what it's supposed to do. It's amazingly easy to use, simplistic, and intuitive. You don't have to learn how to use it. When you do something on it, it does what you expect it to do, and that's what most people are looking for.

I've played with the zaurus, and the first thing I noticed was that it didn't work as I expect a pda to work. It wasn't intuitive, I had to ask the owner of the device how to do the most simple of things. With my Palm, when I want to check out the address book, I tap on the address book. It's that simple.

Games on PalmOS are also really well made, for the most part. I have a Clie NX70V, and I love it. I started out with a Palm Personal (back when palm first came out!) to which I moved to a Palm IIIe, a Palm V, and now my NX70V. I know PalmOS. Each version acts and looks exactly like the last.

It just works.

Re:PalmOS =5.x limits what you can get from the hw

[schmaltz]

Agreed on all counts. I was speaking as a developer, however, so let me explain--

A multitasking PalmOS would allow for something I and others have desired: concurrently running apps. Today, a running PalmOS app sees its peer apps as a static database -no APIs (only PalmOS's), no services, so that interaction is only possible through direct reads or writes to that app's database resource (a programming practice avoided for good reason on most other platforms), or via the very limited PalmOS clipboard.

Accessing a second app from the current app -in part or whole- is basically impossible. At the very least, being able to pop up a form from another app, without losing the current app's context, is not possible, but it would be a much-needed enhancement to PalmOS's already elegant interface. Concurrency shouldn't affect the user interface, or the simplicity of the Palm UI that most of us prefer--

Case in point, on a PalmOS Smartphone, the dialer, the call history, and the address book are separate apps. If you call my phone, and I want to save your number to my address book, I have to: 1) End the call (which is an app), 2) Switch to the call history app and look up the call, 3) Select "copy this number to address book" which inserts the number as a nameless record into the addressbook database, 4) Close call history app by switching to the PalmOS app menu, 5) Select the addressbook app, 5) Find the number and edit it.

That could be slimmed way down to: 1) Click "Save this number to addressbook" during the call, which would pop up the addressbook app's new entry form with the current call's number already inserted into it, 2) Enter name / make changes and save.

Judicious use of concurrency would keep things from getting out of hand. Threading would let the phone app continue to update call info onscreen, while other apps can be accessed concurrently. It would also allow more sophisticated programming models for the apps that need it, such as multimedia apps. Heck, even relatively simple chores such as displaying a clock or animation onscreen within an app can be a hairy piece of business in PalmOS today.

Re:PalmOS =5.x limits what you can get from the hw

[DigitalJEM]

While i'm all for what you speak of "concurancy", I also fear that once Palm goes to Threading and the such, we're going to start having issues with it, as we do with Windows. Applications are going to be fighting for rights, fighting for the "floor" and then all of a sudden, when you're trying to figure out what board room you're supposed to be in, your palm is sitting there, with a cursor, spinning, waiting for the current in use application to give up the "floor".. and by the time you figure out where you were supposed to be... you've already lost your job.

Re:PalmOS =5.x limits what you can get from the hw

[WuphonsReach]

Case in point, on a PalmOS Smartphone, the dialer, the call history, and the address book are separate apps. If you call my phone, and I want to save your number to my address book, I have to: 1) End the call (which is an app), 2) Switch to the call history app and look up the call, 3) Select "copy this number to address book" which inserts the number as a nameless record into the addressbook database, 4) Close call history app by switching to the PalmOS app menu, 5) Select the addressbook app, 5) Find the number and edit it.

Huh, not on my Kyocera QCP6035 PalmOS "smart phone". The phone easily flips between phone/palm mode just by flipping open the keypad. If I want to look something up while on the phone, I either use a headphone or change it to speakerphone mode temporarily.

That could be slimmed way down to: 1) Click "Save this number to addressbook" during the call, which would pop up the addressbook app's new entry form with the current call's number already inserted into it, 2) Enter name / make changes and save.

Hmmm, and I open up my Call History application, scroll down to a phone call from today, click on it and I get (3) options:

- Create address book entry
- Update address book entry
- Create expense record

Dunno what phone you're using, but the Kyocera got it right.

Re:PalmOS =5.x limits what you can get from the hw

[PCM2]

The problem with PalmOS is, it's built around a Windows 3.x-style event loop with no threading. "Cooperative multiprocessing," if you can call it that.

Actually, Mac OS-style might be more accurate (meaning pre-Mac OS X). When I fiddled around with Palm development a while back, I was surprised by how much Palm had "borrowed" from the Mac OS. I shouldn't have been, I guess, since a lot of the original developers came from Apple.

Compare apples to apples please

[Anonymous Coward]

It cracks me up to see all these PocketPC fans compare their latest big, heavy PocketPC beast to the ancient Visor Deluxe or Palm IIIXE. Those machines are at least two generations old!

I had just about given up on Palm -- until I got hold of the new Tungsten T3.

The Tungsten T3 has a gorgeous aluminum case with the same form factor as the classic Palm V-- meaning it will actually fit in your shirt pocket, and it runs at 400mhz with 64mb of RAM. It plays movies, it plays mp3's, has a built-in voice recorder, bluetooth, and plenty of other *actually useful* features, plus a huge library of software.

So please, if you're going to compare, be fair.

well.. i have both Palm and PocketPC devices

[keeboo]

Several months ago I bought Sony Clie SJ-22 (Palm OS 4), and just after I got an iPaq 3650 (Pocket PC) as gift (cool but uninformed gift, as I already had the Clie).

Well... The Pocket PC is now collecting dust, while I use the Clie everyday.

The iPaq has an interesting hardware (206MHz ARM compared to the Clie's 33MHz 68k) and runs 'desktop-like' applications (yet I'm not sure it's really a useful thing on a palm-sized device).

For things that matter (phone numbers, memo, appointments etc) the Clie does it better and faster than the iPaq. Palm OS simply has a better interface for fast portable use.
I don't have to worry on the Clie's battery as a paranoid, compared to the short-lived charge in the iPaq.
The Clie is small, light and has a 320x320 _good_ TFT display. --- The iPaq is a _brick_ and, compared to Clie's its 240x320 TFT display is low quality (contrast-wise).

But the iPaq plays MP3 and Doom while the Clie doesn't.
So, yes, if you want a _toy_, PocketPC is great as there are lot of games, emulators and media players for it.
If you want a device to help you with day-by-day work, then a Palm OS-based is the one.

Get a Nokia 9210

[Moderation abuser]

I've had them all, the Linux Zaurus stuff is among the worst of the bunch in terms of software. The hardware is fine but as a day to day PDA it is just the pits. My SL-5500 is acting as a coaster at the moment it's largeley useless on a day to day basis. You might just write me off as a troll, but I use Linux every day, my entire home network is Linux based and it is the wrong tool for PDA technology. Unless someone comes up with an entirely new user interface of course, qtopia is just dreadful.

So far, easily the best PDA by far is the Symbian based Nokia 9210. And hey, it's a phone too so you only have to carry one device.

Re:Get a Nokia 9210

[axxackall]

... is Linux based and it is the wrong tool for PDA technology. Unless someone comes up with an entirely new user interface of course, qtopia is just dreadful.

Speaking about GUI for PIM ... Is it really necessary to be Graphical? I mean, in PIM requirements there is no actually graphics per se. So, the small, simple, stable (and yet useful!) ncurses-based dialog should work fine.

Anyone seen ncurses-based PIM for Linux?

Re:Get a Nokia 9210

[swv3752]

Which ROM? I hated all the ROMs based of the official Sharp ROMs, but OpenZaurus is great. Other people prefer Cacko, TKC and others.

I've used a PocketPC and it was awful. My sister has a Visor, my Brother-in-law has a Palm, many friends have Clies (and I am intimately familiar with the Clie hardware and software), and all Palm OS devices seem to kinda suck. Either you get half the screen taken up by the Graffiti area and a slow limited device or you get a bigger screen and a device that is still limited by not being multitasking.

The only other PDA that I found useful was my Agenda VR3. It is in about the same class as a Palm Zire, but was a better device.

Re:Get a Nokia 9210

[axxackall]

The only other PDA that I found useful was my Agenda VR3.

It is based on Linux, isn't it? How is it in terms of quality of GUI? Is it stable? And how are PIM applications? Are they OK with many categories?

Re:Get a Nokia 9210

[swv3752]

The GUI is fast and stable. It is XFree86 and FLTK. It has true multitasking so one can have many windows open and switch between them. The best thing about the PIM was that a recompile and they worked on your Linux desktop. They were somewhat basic but worked well for me. I never ran into a limit on the number of categories, but then I only created a couple beyond the defaults. It is $99 available from SoftField.

no, it isn't

[ajagci]

Palm OS is the OS for low-end devices with simple functions which do not require the headache of viruses/spyware/BSOD etc, and which do simple monotasking applications on budget ram and flash and no MMU.

Well, since even the low-end Zire has 8M of RAM and a 126MHz ARM processor--more powerful than desktop workstations of maybe ten years ago--obviously, that makes it "the OS" for absolutely nothing anymore.

PalmOS regularly BSODs anyway, and the only reason it doesn't have viruses or spyware is because it is nearly incapable of downloading anything from the network even if it is connected. But since people do want to download things, that will come.

Palm will then have to rely solely on their lower end OS on even smaller devices.

I doubt it: technically, it's just not up to it, and there are better choices for small-device operating systems anyway.

I think Palm should try to remain as simple as PalmOS 3.5 or 4.0 and instead focus more on applications.

Strange as it may seem, building better applications depends on having a better OS. Right now, Palm applications are each trying to reinvent more and more of what should be in the OS in the first place. That's what we have operating systems for: to standardize functionality and support application programming.

Palm *market* does have momentum

[Alan_Peery]

Yes, the Palm market does have momentum. The lower prices of the Zire and similar models is making them more attractive to non-technical consumers. One instance of this is Rymans (a UK office supply chain commonly found in the center of towns), who have recently begun stocking them.

The biggest threat to the overall Palm market is Dell's recent low cost bundle of the Axim. I haven't seen any manufacturer bundling Palms with system purchase...

PalmOS...

[ajagci]

PalmOS is for palm-sized devices (e.g. ORGANIZERS) that have very little flexibility as far as data loss, convenience, and user-friendliness. No user wants to open up a console and mess with XF86 settings to try and get their organizer working right in the middle of a meeting.

I have a Palm (a T3 if you must know). It crashes with regularity, it hangs with regularity, it has weird "breathing spaces", where it doesn't respond for a few seconds. When migrating between different versions, I have lost data (all the birthdays went away going from one Palm to another) because Palm's database design sucks. Don't give us this b.s. that the Palm "just works". It doesn't. PalmOS can be a royal pain and require hours of fiddling.

And stop trying to assassinate Linux by raising the dreaded "messing with XF86 settings" issue. If you buy an organizer running X11, it graphics system just runs, there is nothing to "mess" with. People "mess" with Linux and XF86 settings when they are trying to install it on hardware that the manufacturer doesn't support it on; that's not a design flaw with XF86, it's a testament to its flexibility and openness that you can do that with it.

So, if it is such a pain, why am I using a Palm? Because its PIM applications are fairly usable, because the file and communications formats are open and documented, because the devices are pretty small, and because they are comparatively cheap. In part, that's because the platform is so old, and in part it's because the platform is so dominant. If someone gave me an X11-based PDA with Palm-like applications, I'd take it in a minute and I'd know already that it would require less "messing with" and crash far less than Palm.

But the notion that PalmOS is a well-designed or stable OS, or that the Palm developers have some special touch ("The Zen of Palm") is ludicrous.

is that user requirements for an organizer is significantly different from a computer. Users expect it to work just as well as their wristwatch

Yes, and I'm still waiting for a PDA for which that is true. Palm, at least, is moving further and further away from that goal. Maybe a Linux PDA will be able to deliver this.

Re:PalmOS...

[GarfBond]

OS5 does seem to be a little different, and yes, it does seem that it's very easy to drift away from design principles.

Nevertheless, I stand by my original comments. Visit the palminfocenter.com forums, and while there are some people experiencing problems like yours, most seem to be getting by fine. And Palm is commendable for even having design principles to begin with (keep in mind these were probably published with some of the very early palms)

I only brought up XF86 because the original poster did, who obviously had no idea of what we're talking about here. He seemed to think these were mini laptops or something.

Look around on the comments around here, and you'll notice most people are saying things like "it's cool I can do linux-y things on my Zaurus, but my palm still handles PIM functions better"

BTW, OS6 is supposed to fix some of those database problems, but I guess we'll see on Monday :)

Re:PalmOS...

[ajagci]

Nevertheless, I stand by my original comments. Visit the palminfocenter.com forums, and while there are some people experiencing problems like yours, most seem to be getting by fine.

Those are not contradictory. The fact that Palm crashes with regularity does not make it unusable as a PDA, so most people don't bother mentioning it. But if you actually claim that it's a robust, well-designed platform, I have to disagree: technically, both the design of PalmOS and its implementation suck. The only thing that makes a Palm worth buying is its PIM applications, which are mature and the best there is.

Look around on the comments around here, and you'll notice most people are saying things like "it's cool I can do linux-y things on my Zaurus, but my palm still handles PIM functions better"

Of course it does. I have said the same thing. But the reason for that isn't some "Zen of Palm" or some particularly deep insights by the Palm engineering team, it's simply because they have the oldest, most widely-used platform in the market. And, if anything, Palm is standing in the way of progress the same way Microsoft did for years in the desktop space: because they have market dominance and control a few, key applications for the platform, they can get buy releasing buggy, poorly engineered systems. Palm is the Microsoft of the handheld space. They can try to hold on a little longer through dirty tricks (and their continuing refusal to give PalmOS standard APIs really is a dirty trick), but eventually, open source and competition will kill them no matter what they do.

BTW, OS6 is supposed to fix some of those database problems, but I guess we'll see on Monday :)

I seriously doubt it. It's simply not in the genes of either Palm or BeOS; they are thinking along different lines. And their public statements, too, indicate that they simply don't even get what the problem is, let alone know how to solve it.

Re:PalmOS...

[twalk]

All the first run T3's were affected by a bug with the sound interrupts. It was sending huge number of them, bogging down the device, and sometimes making it crash. There is an update to fix this.

Playing words

[varjag]

Since when an operating system have to have preemptive multitasking?

Primary function of an OS is to provide operating environment for applications, that is: handle I/O, interface to hardware, do some common low-level operations. Other features (e.g. any form of multitasking, memory management, GUI) can be included or not, based on specific needs.

And you know what? For an organizer, preemptive multitasking isn't anywhere near top priority: typically one uses a limited set of applications for very short periods of time, one at a time. Convenience and responsiveness are far more important.

Palm was designed to be a handheld organizer, and it is very good at that (even the early models). However, with time people pushed it much further, way beyond its original goals, hence it is worth updating.

Am not a typical Palm user, and often whished for Palm to have multitasking (e.g. I sit in IRC and suddenly need to look up someone's address), but for most Palm users it is not an essential feature.

Re:Playing words

[ajagci]

Am not a typical Palm user, and often whished for Palm to have multitasking (e.g. I sit in IRC and suddenly need to look up someone's address), but for most Palm users it is not an essential feature.

The consequences are quite visible even to people who don't do that sort of thing. For example, you can't switch apps when certain dialog boxes are up and views change haphazardly when you go from one application to another and back again. Multitasking would solve that. You don't need multitasking to solve that, but since application programmers are obviously incapable of doing it themselves, it seems like the only solution.

BeOS

[octal666]

I've heard PalmOS bought a while ago the old good BeOS, might it be they are planning to use it as the new PalmOS 6?

By the way, just yesterday I bought a Tungsten T2 and it's my first PDA, and the first thing I see this morning is Palm is changing something, I've broke in cold sweat while reading the story. Slashdot is going to kill me one day.

Simple reasoning behind the scenes

[Jouni]

It's very easy to see why Palm would be doing this - there is a fairly big stock of devices out there.

Touting the new OS 6 as the best thing since sliced bread would make it extremely hard to ship pre-6 devices, both for themselves and all the licensors. So understandably they have to downplay its meaning to avoid sitting on warehouses full of Tungsten devices nobody wants to buy.

It's somewhat amusing that the only named benefits they can find for the old OS is smaller footprint and cost. :) If there are two real market segments for the two operating system versions, they would be "people frustrated with crippled non-multithreading 16-bit legacy OS" and "people who just don't care". Unfortuntely, you can't sell Tungsten @ 400 USD for the second group.

I will hold my judgement on whether Palm OS 6 really is the savior of Palm, but as with any projects this magnitude, expect this too will take a while to mature.

Jouni

PalmOS vs Symbian stability experience

[Cato]

My Palm devices (Palm Pro, Visor, M515 and Zire) have hardly ever crashed using various PalmOS versions (pre OS 5) - particularly the Zire since I don't have many hacks or apps installed.

By contrast, my Symbian based SonyEricsson P800 is incredibly crash prone - sometimes it just locks up and I have to restart the phone; other times it just goes into a weird countdown screen requiring a restart. It's also very upset if it goes out of coverage for a long time (e.g. a day) and usually crashes after that. And putting it in Flight Mode where the radio side is off also causes it to fail to get any SMSs for a long time (until next restart). I only have a couple of extra apps installed (Opera and MIB) but the phone often gets into a state where all memory is used and that requires another restart.

The OS is only one factor in crashing these types of devices - the Palm is very mature (both the OS and apps) and just doesn't crash unless you load it up with huge numbers of hacks and apps, even when it has virtually no memory left. The P800 is just a lot more fragile for some reason, despite Symbian being a better OS generally (more like PalmOS 6).

Re:PalmOS vs Symbian stability experience

[Cato]

I forgot to say that over Xmas I took some photos on the P800 and it then had a really bad crash that re-formatted the C drive (yes, it really said that as it was booting), requiring a full restore from backup.

This was made worse by the very slow backup process on the P800 (unlike the Palm's incremental one), which prevents you receiving calls - hence my only backup was some days old. The result was that I lost a lot of photos... This is the main reason I'm buying a Treo 600 even though it's less than a year since I got the P800.

Palms tend to simplify your life - just sync them frequently and all is well. Friends who use the P800 and sync it for calendar etc find it is even less stable, and if you forget to backup you could lose a lot of data. Not a life simplifying gadget...

Re:PalmOS vs Symbian stability experience

[axxackall]

I used Nextell before, like 3-4 years ago. Too primitive for todays phones, but it worked. The best part - it kept all the data on the server. So I could through away my phone, get anotherone, tune it to my number - and - ta-da - all my data was back with me. Besides, it still could sync with your external devices through the serial cable. Too bad the screen was too small, and too bad I can find a local provider here (in Ontaro) with the same service.

Honestly, why?

[Roguelazer]

I've used Palms and PocketPC's since Palm OS 3.0 and Windows CE 3.0 (PocketPC 2000, that is). The WinCE is a real OS, yes, as many people have pointed out. However, I ask WHO NEEDS MULTITASKING? You can only fit one program at a time on that screen anyhow... Load times for Palm are next to nothing, so what's the point of multitasking when it's just as fast to open the app anew... You can't compare PocketPC to Palm. PosketPC is like Windows, with separate storage and execution memory, and with a footprint bigger than most Palms' RAM + ROM amounts. Palm is a handheld OS that does its job well.

Now if only ParaGraph would release Calligrapher for PalmOS, we'd be good...

So buy a Palm with a keyboard -- it's useful!

[Alan_Peery]

"Handwriting was a pain in the ass"
Graffiti is slow, and difficult to do while standing on a train. I have recently acquired a Sony TG50 and love the device. Some recent activities:

• Downloading 30+ Word format docs(some up to 150 pages) that make up the user level and internals documentation for new systems management software I am learning. Reading this on the train, tracking required revisions or unanswered questions in TODO items. Details go in via cutting and pasting, or typing away on the keyboard.
• Also reading PDFs.
• Tracking passwords for 45+ systems in an RSA encrypted store that is backed up daily when I sync
• Sending SMS messages using a keyboard, rather than the mobile phone "press three times if really want a letter C"
• Reading online newspapers from across the world without the fuss of finding, buying, and throwing them away.

Alan

Too bad Palm didn't listen to developers

[Dr. Manhattan]

They could have had at least cooperative multitasking a long time ago. See here. The key problem with Palm apps is that, if you're not the 'running' application, you don't have access to your globabl variables. Add 'persistent globals' and all kinds of fun things become possible.

Re:Too bad Palm didn't listen to developers

[ajagci]

I don't see why that would help. If you want persistent globals, you can have them right now: copy your "persistent globals" into a database on deactivation and copy them back on activation. The problem is that developers aren't paying attention.

And that's why built-in multitasking makes sense: it ensures that every application can be switched to/from without demanding any extra effort from the programmer. It gives the user more consistency and makes the programmer's life easier. That's what an OS should do.

Re:Too bad Palm didn't listen to developers

[laird]

"They could have had at least cooperative multitasking a long time ago."

To provide a little more detail, PalmOS has always been multitasking, but only one process was allocated to user applications based as a UI decision; they wanted to avoid the UI complexity of managing multiple "active" applications. There are (from what I recall) four processes licensed in the underlying kernel license and that PalmOS licensees could negotiate to get additional processes (e.g. telephone manufacturers would want an additional process to handle the phone). So PalmOS is multitasking, but it only supports one active user application -- kinda a weird model, but there you go.

Now that they're adding "multiple active applications" to PalmOS 6, it'll be interesting to see how they address the UI issues. I'd hate to see Palm's UI get as cluttered as WinCE...

If all you need is just a PIM...

[StressGuy]

From your post:

" If all I need is just a PIM (calendaring, contacts, notes, money, short messages),...."

There are a lot of cell phones out there that can do that much for around $100 - $150.

Depends on what you mean by "money". If you mean something like Quicken of GnuCash, then you do need a PDA. OTOH - if you're just talking about keeping track of daily expenses, you might be able to do it on a full featured cell phone these days.

I'm mostly happy.

[LogicFlow]

I own a Palm T3, and I'm quite happy with it.
There was a huge bug in the beginning, with SD cards 256MB and over getting trashed, but the patch works fine. And there is a freely(beer) available upgrade for the included browser for T3's, some things were missing. Like support for frames. Java is sopposed to be handled a bit better too.
And they shipped the T3 before the DIA (dynamic input area -- you can hide it) API was complete. Often you have to load a couple of support PRCs for apps to be able to use it to get the 320x480 screen.
But, I'm ok with all of these. Other than having to load a few things that should have already been there, the unit has performed flawlessly. With my bluetooth phone I can use pssh and PalmVNC to get to a "real" OS.
However, if I have to deal with this sort of crap with OS6, I'll be looking for a linux based PDA next time, or an iPaq. Check out familiar.handhelds.org, linux on quite a few iPaqs. If I want an OS with problems, I at least want to be able to see the source too!

But, for now, I'm happy with my T3. I accepted OS5 is basicly what DOS would have been if it was GUI to begin with, and that's all I need. And physicly, it is a work of art. If I want a laptop, I'll buy a laptop. If OS6 turns out to handle multitasking well and is easy to work with, I'll stay with palm.

Agreed, device not a must-need, yet

[Ars-Fartsica]

Most buyers of these devices seem to grudgingly admit over time that there is no real need for these devices in their lives and they are simply geek toys.

My advice is to use whatever wireless communications device your company will pay for. In my case it is a Motorola two-way pager with a little keypad and crappy LCD display on it. Its not that cool, but "free" goes a long way.

Its neat to see web pages come up on Palm Treo devices, but the fees are outrageous. You have to think in terms of per year costs in order to grasp how much cash you are forking over for these devices.

OT: Tungsten T2 is a great choice

[b-lou]

Fear not: I bought two T2 units, one for my wife and one for me just last September. I don't regret the purchases a single bit. The T2's screen is great, the unit is fast (i'd been using a vintage Handspring pda), and it holds a bunch of data. Combine the T2 with key products from BlueNomad (I use WordSmith and BackupBuddyVFS) and you have a very powerful tool. I don't anticipate upgrading the hardware for three or four years unless there's a very compelling reason to do so (the screen quality takes a quantum leap would be one). One last geek thing to share, I'm considering buying the WiFi solution from Enfora because it comes with its own battery supply in the form of a PDA case. Seems cool.

Just my $.02.

Tools and toys

[hey!]

If you want something to replace your pocket pad of paper, go with a palm I guess. If you want a *computer* in your pocket, go with a PocketPC.

I think you hit the distinction between the palm and WinCE philosophy pretty squarely. However the picture is not that rosy for PocketPC when you remember that engineering is about tradeoffs.

The PPCs are now reasonably practical, whereas several years ago they were not really. Back then the screens couldn't be read in bright sunlight and the battery life sucked. If you're supposed to run your life on this little thing, it's no good if it dies after two or three hours of use. Time marches on and new processor, screen and battery technologies catch up with the PocketPC vision. This is why PocketPC is gaining momentum -- it had nowhere to go but up from being a total loss in terms of real world practicality.

Nonetheless tradeoffs still exist, but they are in the area of usability. I know whereof I speak because I develop for both platforms and we do support for both platforms. Shrinking a multitasking GUI onto a PDA is a lot like the guy who does the complete plays of Shakespeare as a one hour, one person show. It's an impressive accomplishment, but it's not as satisfying in the long run as the real thing.

No, there is no comparison in actual day to day usability between PocketPC and PalmOS. We well mostly on PocketPCs because that's what IT departments like to buy, but I can tell you the users have a lot more trouble with them. OK, so maybe you're an expert, so you aren't going to have any problem right? Every try to debug a network problem on a PocketPC? Good luck. They've papered over all the complexity of networking (which we all understand here) with chrome -- and non-sensical chrome at that. PalmOS wrestles with the same problem, but the solution at least makes some sense.

Multitasking simply doesn't really work that well on the PDA. When you launch a new application, it takes over the whole screen, but the background application doesn't release any of its resources. You have no room to spread out, and task switching in a cramped, keyboardless GUI is not much fun.

No, the simplicity of PalmOS wins here. I've gone through a number of PDAs, from the Newton, Palm III, Palm V, Journada, a series of iPaqs, Dell Axims, and now a Treo 600. I actually used the Palms for my own personal stuff, but the other devices I only used for demos. It's because for a busy person doing real work, simplicity wins hands down. When I need to do something that requires access to several simultaneous applications or multiple windows, I go to my laptop.

For busy people, technology that demands their attention is a curse. Whether it's sifting through spam that escaped the filters, having to learn new telephone interfaces because of features they don't want, or having to screw around with an overwrought PDA interface, their productivity is bleeding to death through a thousand paper cuts. If you want a toy, sure, go PocketPC. Toys are supposed to take your attention. But PalmOS is a better tool.

Aren't we forgetting?

[Wireless Joe]

Palm BOB?

Re:100 bucks for Palm OS?

[clicclic]

AIM for Palm is still free (beer). Go to the AOL UK site. It's still free there.

Best Buy dumped PDAs

[clicclic]

I love my Sony NX70 with its gorgeous big screen, but the writing is on de wall...

Best Buy stopped selling PDAs. Cell phones sell VASTLY more than Palms/PPCs so Best Buy said sayonara to geeky handhelds. Also geeks like me kept taking back their old handheld and exchanging it.

If a handheld isn't "connected" via Bluetooth or 802.11 then its lifespan is about zero. Pocket PCs have Palm beat in this department. Stupid PalmOne and Sony are just NOW getting 802.11 and Bluetooth on their entire line.

Palms stink in the game department. We now have Warfare, which is great, but thats' about it. My favorite game is a freeware game called Bee, but what do I know. PPCs have tons of great games.

The bottom line: the days of unconnected PDAs are gone. PalmOne/Palmsource/Sony had better get with it. The T3 is a beautiful device (as was the Palm V and 515) but unconnected ain't gonna cut it any longer.

Cheapest way to get WiFi on a PDA?

[dspyder]

I currently have a Palm IIIc (way outdated) and a SymbianOS Nokia 3650.

I want to get something smaller than a laptop but hopefully with slightly more of a keyboard than my current gizmos... but... here's the catch...

It's got to have 802.11b WiFi. Either built-in or with a cheap expansion card. I have to have that surfing at Starbucks, Instant Messaging at inapproprite places, downloading porn in the pet shop....

Ideally something used and on the cheap, or a plugin to my 3c, but the Dell Axim 3xi or whatever has the builtin wifi for like $299 would be OK minus the WinCE factor.

Any suggestions?

--D

Success CAN be bought

[Moochman]

Here's another story. AMD and Cyrix used to be neck-and-neck niche players, manufacturing cheap x86 chip alternatives. AMD bought NexGen and used its chip design for the K6, which was quite successful. That gave it enough capital to design the Athlon. Meanwhile, can you even remember the last time you heard the name Cyrix?

As for 3dfx, nVidia was the company that bought it, because of its Voodoo graphics chips. nVidia. Maybe you've heard of them. I don't know how much Voodoo technology went into later designs, but 3dfx was at least negated as a competitor (and the consolidation helped kill S3 IMHO).

Microsoft bought Hotmail and has since integrated it with its products, to its benefit. Point being, yes, success can be bought, sometimes, temporarily. No technology purchase will provide a permanent solution, however. All of the above examples were replaced with new technology somewhere down the road.

On a different note, and more to the point, Palm and Handspring is a very different situation. The Handspring execs were in fact the original developers of the PalmPilot. The best comparison would be Steve Jobs' return to Apple and the re-invigoration and return to innovation he brought to that company.

As for Palm's purchase of Be, I am skeptical about its utility. I see it as a tragedy, really, because Palm has insisted on holding onto all the BeOS source code. yellowTab Zeta is basically a hack of the half-finished BeOS 6; without the source code, there's only so far they can go before it becomes obsolete and unsupportable. So here's hoping for the success of OpenBeOS.

And here's also hoping for the success of PalmSource, Symbian, Linux, and anything else that can one-up Microsoft. Until the next generation of corporate shortsightedness makes those names obsolete, and the next generation of revolution begins.