PalmOne Commits to Treo Fix

Kodi writes "After the brouhaha over the Treo 650's memory architecture resulting in less usable space, PalmOne has committed to upgrading the ROM to fix it. In the meantime they'll send Treo 650 owners free 128MB SD cards on request."

Comments

Z31

[John Pliskin]

So if I can find enough Z31 owners, does that mean we can all get a 64MB card as well?

$

Free card?

[Anonymous Coward]

But do these customers have to return these SD cards after their devices got fixed?

fp too!

Re:Free card?

[Anonymous Coward]

if modding please at least use the correct reason. modding the 2nd post to a story "redundant" when the first was an FP is just ridiculous, fuckers.

Wow - that's sounds like a good deal...

[ThogScully]

I haven't read the article, so if the summary is misleading, then I take back all these comments...

But I kinda wish now I was an earlier customer of these just to take advantage of this offer. They seemingly turned a customer service nightmare into a great spell of luck for early adopters... I wish more companies were like this.
-N

Re:Wow - that's sounds like a good deal...

[JPriest]

That's because you can buy an entire PC for the cost of a Treo.

Re:Wow - that's sounds like a good deal...

[Boltronics]

When I discovered that my Palm m130 didn't show the number of colours as advertised, I was quite upset. ScummVM for example refused to run because the colour depth was not high enough on my display. Palm said that they would offer a free copy of SimCity for m130 owners, due to the misleading advertising. Just fill out the details on an online form, and click the URL in the e-mail you get. The only problem... the e-mail they sent me contained a broken link! I sent them an e-mail explaining the situation, but never received a response.

Now PocketPCs are taking over the market, and it's clear to me at least one reason why this is. With the support Palm provided me, I'd never buy a Palm again. My current PDA is now a HP iPAQ 5400.

Palm is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

The PalmOS is dead anyway. I know this group hates MS, but PocketPC has always served me well. I don't think linux is ready for the handheld yet.

Re:Palm is dead

[ThogScully]

And how does your comment have anything to do with this story? I hate feeding the trolls... don't know what the fascination is that keeps me doing it on occasion...
-N

Re:Palm is dead

[DuncMan]

This group doesn't hate MS as such; it hates bad businesses which harm the IT industry and users. For the last few years that's been Microsoft. Next year it could be Linus Torvalds. Who knows?

Anyhoo, palmOne and PalmSource are far from 'dead', though Microsoft's advertising might give that impression. Palm OS is still the most appropriate operating system for a PDA (sorry Linux), creating a versatile tool that happens to be a computer rather than a computer which happens to have PDA features.

More at http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/?PROCESS=show&ID=2 0020611&AT=39147405-39024180t-30000029c .

Re:Palm is dead

[Akimotos]

Yeah, thought so too. Than I got a SonyEricsson P900 ... a real browser, a real emailclient, modern software and a more stable os. More phone than PDA.

Never thought that I would drop Palm and switch to something else. But for me right now it is Symbian. More balanced devices and it fits in my pocket.

Re:Palm is dead

[DuncMan]

I actually moved from Symbian; I had a Psion Revo but its battery was getting old and unreliable, and I wanted colour, Java, USB, SD card and Bluetooth (my palmOne Zire 72 is terrific).

I'm not sure if a PDA integrated into a phone would be a good fit for me (I prefer a modular approach with smaller devices), but if I were to get one then it would /probably/ be a Sony Ericsson P910 :-) .

In any case, I won't waste my time with Windows Mobile ever again.

Re:Palm is dead

[Akimotos]

Yeah, that is why I bought a P900 8 months ago: small and versatile. The Zire 72 was my second choice, because it was too big for me. Especially considering the fact that I also needed a phone (and probably a stowaway keyboard).

I'm still thinking about upgrading to the P910 ... but it looks like the phone still misses out on the memorystick IO part. Looks like you can't use WiFi cards in it. Do like the Nokia 9300 and 9500 though, but still have to give it a real testdrive. The 9500 is a little big.

I think Symbian (Nokia series 60) has more modern software available compared to Palm, especially if you consider internet being important. Palm lacks a decent browser and real mail only comes as a third party tool and that means no integration of SMS and MMS. With Symbian you have one 'communications' suite that is pretty okay.

There are tons of software available for Palm, but most of it is showing its age. That's too bad, because I've always loved the OS and Graffiti. Still use my Tungsten T in the car with GPS and roadmaps ... for old times sake :)

But the P900 basically has replaced my notebook when going out for short trips (2 days). Being a writer that's fairly easy off course, since all I need is a decent browser, mailclient and msg/chat functionality. Not to mention some editor. The P900 does a good job on that and even allows me to take a decent picture, even at bad light conditions (you do need a steady hand, or some place to put the phone on).

And Pocket Windows? Not in a 1000 years and never on something as important as a phone. Imagine you need to dial 112 (of 911) and the screen shows up saying that you need to reboot because of an 'illegal function'..... yeah, like opening your phone application while working on your schedule, hahaha.

Why 128MB?

[jerichohol]

Thats not even 1 mp3 album and + my address book is bigger than 128MB. On topic, how did this get through QC?

Re:Why 128MB?

[NetNifty]

Your address book being bigger than 128MB is the problem they're trying to fix :P.

Priceless:-)

[khrtt]

* Treo 650 - $599
* 128 MB SD card - $15
* Staisfaction from having been given the $15 card for free - priceless.

Re:Priceless:-)

[ThogScully]

Well, in all fairness, I haven't bought any solid state storage in awhile, so I didn't really know how cheap it had gotten... but still, this has got to be better than the PocketPC world of just ignoring the storage needs or just not acknowledging the problem to begin with.
-N

Re:Priceless:-)

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually sells for $40 on the PalmOne store. SD is more expensive than other types of flash memory.

Re:Priceless:-)

[khrtt]

SD is more expensive than other types of flash memory.

I actually went to the trouble of getting the $15 price off pricewatch (no URL for you, figure it out for yourself). Surprizingly, 128MB SD, MMC and CF all start at $15, and 1GB sizes show only about 5% price difference. So, your information is outdated.

*ducks*

Than, again, my girlfriend got a 128MB SD card at RadioShack, two weeks ago, for $79.95. Good deal, if you ask me (for RadioShack).

*unducks*

Re:Priceless:-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, You can get 1 GB SD card now for about $50-$80. The same for Compact Flash. Just tech any tech deal site.

HUH?

[Run4yourlives]

At 6-7MB a song, it's most definatley an album.

Re:HUH?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can even squeeze a dictionary in there. For fuck's sake, THERE'S NO A IN DEFINITELY!!!

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

That sure is nice of them.

Brouhaha

[fireboy1919]

Whoa. I mean, I knew about the memory issues, and stuff, but I never thought it would escalate into a full-scale brouhaha. Maybe I should return my palm.

I don't want to get any of that, you know, brouhaha on me.

So...um...what's a brouhaha?

Re:Brouhaha

[mcg1969]

Jefe: We have really caused quite a stir about the NVFS issue!
El Guapo: How big of a stir?
Jefe: A big stir!
El Guapo: Jefe, would you say that it is a brouhaha?
Jefe: Yes, El Guapo. It is a brouhaha.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a brouhaha?

Re:Brouhaha

[anglete]

The american heritage dictionary defines it as:


brouhaha Audio pronunciation of "brouhaha" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (brhä-hä) n. a hubbub.

Re:Brouhaha

[fireboy1919]

I knew this was going to happen.

Somebody was going to come along and ruin the joke by telling everyone what a brouhaha was.

Fine.

brouhaha (noun) - a large, rather hairy, south American snake known for it's prized tusks. Because of their value, and inability to breed in captivity, they have been hunted nearly to extinction, and are therefore considered unlucky.

Re:Brouhaha

[Anonymous Coward]

So, this dictionary of yours can't tell the difference between IT'S and ITS? That's rediculous!

Re:Brouhaha

[sharkey]

brouhaha (noun) - a large, rather hairy, south American snake known for it's prized tusks. Because of their value, and inability to breed in captivity, they have been hunted nearly to extinction, and are therefore considered unlucky.

As such, nature preserves have been set up to guard these rare and exotic creatures. No hunting is allowed on these preserves, and the ban is enforced by troops of full-grown, attack-trained kwyjibos.

Re:Brouhaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you sucked in one moderator. And now at my cruel hands he suffers the fate of getting metamodded unfair! That'll teach him.

GSM?

[sulli]

So when is the GSM Treo 650 coming out?

Re:GSM?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been available for about a month from AWE/Cingular. It works well for tethering via bluetooth too in Linux too.

Re:GSM?

[Zane Edwards]

Your a year behind. They carry the 600, not 650.

Jolly good show!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Brouhaha" is a much underused word. Everyone should try to use it at least once a day. That will be all.

Re:Jolly good show!

[kfg]

"Brouhaha" is a much underused word. Everyone should try to use it at least once a day. That will be all.

And for bonus points try to use it with one of my favorite underused words at least once a week: "Behoove."

"It would behoove you to avoid all the brouhaha, otherwise you might get up in a kaboogie dance."

Ok, I slipped another one in there on the sly.

Kaboogie Dance: any overly complicated interaction

"Yeah, it's got a $50 rebate offer, but they make you go through this whole Kaboogie Dance to get it."

KFG

Surely they knew this was a problem already

[PierceLabs]

I have to wonder if they just decided that shipping it out and paying the $15 was a better option than actually making sure their marketing information was right the first time.

Dude

[Run4yourlives]

One word: chill.

Re:Dude

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're surrounded by illiterate pigeons, it is difficult to soar like an eagle.

128 SD? Sah-weet!

[Kujila]

"Hey Palm, I have a Treo 650, could you send me that free SD card now?...Proof of purchase? What? You don't believe me? OF COURSE I have a Treo 650, it's right here!....somewhere..."

hehe

[MHobbit]

Time to buy a Treo 650, request and get a free 128MB SD card, then sell or return the Treo 650 and in the end have a free 128MB SD card. :P Actually I wouldn't do that, but it was a funny thought.

Re:hehe

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a retard.

warning: troll food inside

[khrtt]

I've programmed for both. MS design is better. Palm got too entangled with its "Zen of Palm" concept, and was late to adopt to faster processors and larger memories. As a result, the darn things have a nasty kludge for a filesystem, which makes programming anything but organizer-type applications a nightmare.

This lack of proper filesystem is what Palm is trying to patch now, but the original design is so inappropriate that fixing it only puts more kludges on top of other kludges. Which is where the current Treo bug really comes from.

I don't know if the Palm is dead, or not, but it would take a good system architect to fix PalmOS. I kinda wonder if Palm would hire me; i'd enjoy the challenge.

Re:warning: troll food inside

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a job for you.... lick my bleeding bung hole.

Re:warning: troll food inside

[khrtt]

Is it bleeding because your Treo 650 didn't quite fit along with your new free SD card, or are you offtopic?

Re:warning: troll food inside

[NDPTAL85]

The Palm OS 6 operating system which is way past due addresses all of your complaints. It heavily integrates BeOS technology.

Re:warning: troll food inside

[Archibald Buttle]

I've programmed for neither, so I can't comment on the programability of either a Palm or whatever name they're marketting WinCE as these days.

However I do know quite a bit about design for handheld systems, and have tried using both Windows based phones and Palm based phones. For me the Palm wins in terms of usability.

The problem I find with all of the mini versions of Windows is that they're too closely based on desktop Windows. The inclusion of a traditional filing system as the main storage mechanism is a big problem IMHO. It makes for confusing applications.

For example setting the picture on a Windows phone involves you navigating a filing system to find a picture. You have to know where the phone's camera stores its pictures, and where pictures downloaded from the web are stored before you can use this properly.

In contrast on a Palm all the pictures are stored in a database, making it easy to pick a picture. You can still file pictures away under different categories.

Frankly for the most part you don't need a filing system on a device like a phone or PDA. One place for contacts, pictures, email, appointments, music, etc. is fine.

Re:warning: troll food inside

[Anonymous Coward]

A filesystem is considered a database. There is nothing stopping you from writing all your apps on the phone/PDA to throw everything into a single directory. It's be messy as hell but it'd be "easy" to find stuff.

There are multiple database types in PalmOS as well so just saying it's "stored in a database" means nothing. I've seen apps which store images in their own proprietory databases which you can't access from anything else.

You do need a filing system on a phone or a PDA. The device doesn't just need to store stuff for the user you know. Data files for built in app and actual built in apps for one. Unless you're recommending that we go towards a massive monolithic binary which does everything in one. Feel free to debug that one.

PHB

[Gryphon]

Who wants to bet that a "Dilbert" probably pointed out the problems with the new memory architecture, but was over-ruled by a PHB with no clue?

Re:PHB

[Mr_Silver]

Who wants to bet that a "Dilbert" probably pointed out the problems with the new memory architecture, but was over-ruled by a PHB with no clue?

Who wants to bet that the PHB who over-ruled him had his hands tied behind his back because of the head of marketings commitment to the board and an already pre-paid advertising campaign which would have costs millions to pull at the last minute?

As much as it would pain Slashdot readership to know this, not all managers have no clue.

Re:PHB

[Anonymous Coward]

Who wants to bet that a "Basement Dweller" probably pointed out the problems with the new memory architecture, but was over-ruled by his Mom with no clue?

Re:PHB

[mOdQuArK!]

Who _also_ wants to bet that, if your scenario was the case, that the non-PHB & his team members will be the ones blamed for the memory-design problem, and that the marketing idiots who set up the schedule won't receive so much as a slap on the wrist?

No, but, yeah, but, no...

[WIAKywbfatw]

It's like the international equivalent of a kerfuffle. Now shut up and have a nice bit of cake.

According to the dict extension for firefox...

[Anonymous Coward]

"WordNet (r) 2.0"
brouhaha
n 1: loud confused noise from many sources [syn: hubbub, uproar, katzenjammer]
2: a confused disturbance far greater than its cause merits

What a refreshing change.. go PalmOne!

[nightfire-unique]

Wow. Now *that* is a company that wants your business. Litigious corporations apt to sue their customers to silence them in a similar situation, take note:

This is how you're supposed to do business!

Kudos to Palmone.

Re:What a refreshing change.. go PalmOne!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how you're supposed to do business!

Let's see, the Treo 650 is selling for $600, or $450 with a 2 year service contract. The bill of materials cost on the device is about $130, and from Digitimes we see NAND chip pricing is sitting at $6 for a 128Mbyte part.

If your material cost is $130, and your selling price is $650, then you are looking at 80% gross margin on a device. In short, you are getting screwed at that price. If an IPOD was sold with 80% gross margin it'd cost nearly $700 for the mini.

So, let's re-look at your analysis: A company that is raking users over the coals in terms of mark-up decides to "give up" less than 1% of margin to make a customer happy. Duh it's a no brainer when you are screwing users so hard in the first place. And yet you applaud them?

Consider Dell usually lives on gross margins around 25%.

Re:What a refreshing change.. go PalmOne!

[TheRain]

Take this for what it's worth. I bought a used Treo 600 for $400 a while back. The speaker on it went dead which I learned is a common issue from reading around the web. I called palmone and they will do absolutely NOTHING for me unless I pay them $179 to fix it. That's a hugely inflated price for a speaker.

Granted, had I bought the phone from a retail outlet they'd have repaired it for free.

Re:What a refreshing change.. go PalmOne!

[CrackerJack9]

When was the last time you bought something used and it still had a full warranty? Just curious, because I can't think of any.

Also taken for what it's worth: I had a 600 that they replaced for free (and even shipped me a new one before sending the busted one back) and they even paid shipping for both ways. Granted, it was covered under warranty because I didn't buy it used from Jimbo's Pawn Shop down on 15th street.

Re:What a refreshing change.. go PalmOne!

[TheRain]

I understand that... but the point is it's a speaker that you can just take out of your phone yourself. They won't even send me the speaker and refuse to do anything unless I pay them $179.

Re:What a refreshing change.. go PalmOne!

[CrackerJack9]

That's understandable (your side), but if they let just anyone rip the thing apart to replace the speaker they would be opening a gigantic can of worms...what if you solder incorrectly and blow the whole circuit board, what if you short something out with the screwdrive as you pry it open...I'm not saying they shouldn't fix your problem, but since it was purchased used it's also understandable. However, maybe if you could get the new speaker and sign a waiver making any future warranty void (since you're ripping the thing open and soldering stuff together), but then it just comes back to the 'purchased used' dilema...but even still, 179 bucks is rather crazy, but still cheaper than a new, fully guaranteed one.....

Re:What a refreshing change.. go PalmOne!

[js7a]

This is how you're supposed to do business!

Sure, but if they really wanted to compete, they'd offer their SDK for free instead of charging for it.

Please point me to it if they already do, but last time I checked, they didn't. It's not like it would cost them a whole lot to make them count the number and size of the end-user's compiles, the information for which would be periodically (quarterly?) necessary to upload in exchange for a new access code to keep going. That would get them out of any potential licensing thicket that they might be in at present.

This is good

[ribo-bailey]

I always get a good feeling when companies do the right thing to fix their mistakes. Where's my free harddrive from Microsoft?

Re:This is good

[bob beta]

I got a free hard drive from Microsoft for buying Office XP, years ago. It was a 30GB drive. Have sold the Office XP, the drive is still fine.

Re:This is good

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Harddrive, what are you talking about. Where is my free iMac?

Similar thing happened before

[Jacco de Leeuw]

Some Palm and Handspring models shipped with faulty DRAM. Instead of replacing the unit, Handspring released a patch which slashed the battery time in half. Still bitter about it...

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

that is money. Too bad some folks are going to need help "getting it". i'd explain it, but then, it wouldn't be funny...so, i'll just laugh and thank you for a funny on Thxgiving :)

Palm Customer Service

[mszeto]

Palm has me as a loyal customer, pretty much forever. Not only do I like their design and their OS, I also like their customer service. A few years back I brought a palm IIIc, and it had a screen problem, so a new one was given to me. Then, the same one, 7 months later had a faulty screw, and they gave me another.

These both happened to be known issues to them, and they gave me a new one with no questions asked. I'm not surprised at this move at all.

especially...

[Run4yourlives]

when you're trying to carry around an ego that weighs a ton.

Fix Tungston T5's too?

[gandy909]

I didn't glean from the article if they are going to 'fix' the T5's also or not? It matters to me quite suddenly, as we just won one from a radio contest last night!

Engineering gone bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck were they thinking? PalmSource are actually to blame for this monumental fuck-up of a memory scheme as it's integrated into the OS 5.x (oh sorry "Garnet") and OS 6.0 (aka "Cobalt").

I can't believe anybody thought this scheme would fly in a consumer device! IMHO it's yet another sign PalmSource is a sinking ship. I've been a PalmOS developer since 2.0 and I'm going to start working on Symbian devices. All PalmSource need is for PalmOne to release a PocketPC based Treo and it will be goodnight nurse.

Too late

[metamatic]

I was considering a Tungsten T5, but this problem combined with the lack of a silent vibrate alarm made me decide to get a Tapwave Zodiac instead.

So, the screwup made them lose at least one customer...

128 SD cards are worth about $1 at most - free

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?dpno=43 6465

Free 128 MB SD card after rebate

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably costs more for palm to mail these than it does for them to buy them

Free after rebate