Posted by
Hemos
on from the but-i-just-got-my-palm-five! dept.
Bartmoss writes "According to the german computer magazine C'T, 3Com will release two updates to the PalmOS and, as 3Com-president Alan Kessler told The Business Journal, a "Palm Organizer with a color display." The article is in German; learn German or use Babelfish. "
Damn...now I can't knock the WinCE pads as much.
by
slothbait
·
· Score: 2
I always liked that the Palm was monochrome. Its useful for text, organizers, and maybe small games (chess and interactive fiction!). I see little benefit that those apps would receive from color.
Plus, the Palm platform is all about *efficiency*. One of the coolest thing about them is that a III will run for months on the same batteries. I fear that color displays and the processors to drive them will greatly increase the battery consumption of these devices, and provide little benefit.
Of course, color makes people say "ooooh, aaaaah", which might sell more Palms, but does it really help productivity? I've always knocked the wince machines for being hardware pieced together with no direct use in mind. They just don't seem well thought-out. It's as if the designers were thinking: "Cool! It's like Windows, but smaller!" That's how I think of the color displays, as well. Why does a pad need to have color? "Because my desktop system has color!"
Now, the one thing that *could* be done with bright colors is a transition to a combined portable organizer/game machine. (Heck, even Game Boy went color). I must confess, I would like a Palm that could occasionally pick up a Game Gear game or two. Of course, none could be as cool as Palm Chess, but...
--Lenny
Re:Why are these $@&! articles always in German?!
by
otis+wildflower
·
· Score: 2
Because c't is a swell magazine worth learning German for?
;)
Oh my God, they've killed PalmPilot. You bastards!
by
jabber
·
· Score: 4
I think, with Jeff Hawkins gone, that the whole Palm division of 3Com has been floundering for a vision.
Dead right! It sounds like 3Com is marketing a Good Thing into oblivion. The PalmPilot has always been a cut above the other PDA offerings. WinCE, with all it's marketting couldn't squash the good design and excellent performance AND spirit of (true) innovation... Hell, they got my money (bought a Nino, and am regretting not choosing the Palm)...
Now 3Com sees just how ubiquitous and popular is PURCHASED PRODUCT is, and they're pulling a Microsoft. Fracturing the market and customer base, alienating faithful Palm users by versioning and offering replacement upgrades... Yes, the Palm costs as much as a M$ Word Pro, but that doesn't mean we want a new version every other month.
Clue to 3Com: Commit to good engineering. Keep the interfaces standard. Take a lesson from the PC revolution and make the PIECES upgradable.
I'd gladly buy a PV if I could upgrade the SCREEN to a color one. Or if I could replace one of the two stylus barrels with a wireless comm module, or if I could use lithiun or NiCad or OTS batteries. I'd make the investment if I could swap processors, add RAM, plug in a PC card for hard storage... I'd gladly buy a new titanium case to replace the aluminum one, if the guts fit. But for chrissakes, don't force me to buy a new modem and cradle every six months.
--
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Somebody please give me just one reason why my pilot needs color? Just one? I'll always remember the person who said to me "I don't want a pilot until it has 8Meg of memory. I don't know why I want it, I just do." Sounds like color is the same sort of reasoning. Saying you need a color pilot is like saying you're incapable of drawing a diagram on the back of a napkin unless you have one of those goofy fat pens that writes in 4 different colors.
Games? Isn't this the crowd that would hail Space Invaders and Pacman, two games that can be played in monochrome, as two of the best games ever written?
Aren't there enough Lynx users in this audience to understand that it's the *information*, not the *presentation* that is important? Maybe, maybe there's an argument that color can be used to get more information onto a screen (such as showing a red number instead of a number in parentheses to signify a negative on a spreadsheet). But do I really want to deal with higher price and lower battery life to get that?
Things I'd rather see in the next pilot:
Sound recording/playback. Voice reco.
More natural handwriting reco.
More resolution.
Built in wireless connectivity.
JavaVM in ROM (yes, I know it's coming:))
Not changing the form factor of the device every other generation. (I have a PalmPro, PIIIx and a PalmV and all use different cradles.)
I like my Pilot. I don't want color. I won't upgrade in order to get color. I think, with Jeff Hawkins gone, that the whole Palm division of 3Com has been floundering for a vision. The PalmIV, "Razor", was shelved (is this new color one the second coming? I didn't read the article). We all hated that they came out with the IIIx and the V simultaneously. Nobody things the VII is a good idea (too expensive). The IIIe is a stupid way to make more money. So does anybody really think that, just by saying "color", 3Com suddenly has a long term plan in place that will benefit the consumer? Or will they simply scrap that idea 6 months from now and decide that wireless is the way to go, and make a new wireless model based on one of the old monochrome pilots?
Time to start saving money for one
by
anticypher
·
· Score: 2
I've used palms a few times, and I cant see all that much use to them.
But with a color screen, and a built in IP stack, now they are getting into the useful realm.
Can't wait. Hurry up, 3Com!
the AC
-- Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Re:If you don't see a use, look again
by
anticypher
·
· Score: 2
Actually, I am going to look again. Everyone around me uses them at this point, so there has to be something there.
I'm a bit jaded because I used one of the original ones a few years ago, and there wasn't enough good stuff on it to keep using it. Lately I've been using a V, which is much nicer. It would make a nice activity organiser, and I suppose I could get my act together and enter all my phone numbers into something on a PC and DL it to the palm. But since I carry a Nokia phone with 200+ entries in it already, the palm wouldn't get used all that much.
The thing that turned me off earlier was the lack of connectivity to anything other than mac and windoze. Now there are lots more linux drivers to do the same thing, so that point is gone.
The best app I could think of would be to have a mailbox which could get DLed every so often, either through infrared or docking or a low power wireless connection. I get hundreds of emails a day, and there is always down time during the day when I could be reading through all of them. But the palm would need 8Mb of storage just to hold a few days worth of my emails (attachments could be left behind).
It would also be cool to have the palm just be another IP address on my network, so an IMAP or similar process running on a linux server could sync up the mailboxes, and delete all the emails I delete on my palm.
Color is useful for highlighting important objects on the screen. I wouldn't care if it dragged the batteries down a little faster, if I could get recharging docks at work, home, in the car, etc.
Didn't mean to be a troll, I'll probably have one before Christmas (or as soon as a color one comes out)
the AC
-- Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Re:If you don't see a use, look again
by
anticypher
·
· Score: 2
I do not want a wince machine. Tried them, they have crossed the line of bloat, and don't seem to have the nice integrated feel of a palm.
I did have a wince machine for a while with a Proxim wireless lan, and the connectivity was cool, but the apps were pure winblows and the machine kept crashing every little while.
the AC
-- Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I couldn't agree with you more, that color, from a technical standpoint, is not warranted. However, from a marketing standpoint, it is necessary to maintain dominance. WinCE machines are coming out with color. You and I don't care about this, because we know that we don't need it. But, the average consumer is going to "ooh" and "ahh" at the color screens, and buy them first, because they look pretty.
Most of the time, the average consumer doesn't know what their needs are, and just buy the thing with most features, not stopping to think if they really need all of them.
As a Palm champion, this type of thing is a necessary marketing move, which will hopefully allow them to keep MS out of the market in force.
Slashdot Mirror
I always liked that the Palm was monochrome. Its useful for text, organizers, and maybe small games (chess and interactive fiction!). I see little benefit that those apps would receive from color.
Plus, the Palm platform is all about *efficiency*. One of the coolest thing about them is that a III will run for months on the same batteries. I fear that color displays and the processors to drive them will greatly increase the battery consumption of these devices, and provide little benefit.
Of course, color makes people say "ooooh, aaaaah", which might sell more Palms, but does it really help productivity? I've always knocked the wince machines for being hardware pieced together with no direct use in mind. They just don't seem well thought-out. It's as if the designers were thinking: "Cool! It's like Windows, but smaller!" That's how I think of the color displays, as well. Why does a pad need to have color? "Because my desktop system has color!"
Now, the one thing that *could* be done with bright colors is a transition to a combined portable organizer/game machine. (Heck, even Game Boy went color). I must confess, I would like a Palm that could occasionally pick up a Game Gear game or two. Of course, none could be as cool as Palm Chess, but...
--Lenny
Because c't is a swell magazine worth learning German for?
;)
I think, with Jeff Hawkins gone, that the whole Palm division of 3Com has been floundering for a vision.
Dead right! It sounds like 3Com is marketing a Good Thing into oblivion. The PalmPilot has always been a cut above the other PDA offerings. WinCE, with all it's marketting couldn't squash the good design and excellent performance AND spirit of (true) innovation... Hell, they got my money (bought a Nino, and am regretting not choosing the Palm)...
Now 3Com sees just how ubiquitous and popular is PURCHASED PRODUCT is, and they're pulling a Microsoft. Fracturing the market and customer base, alienating faithful Palm users by versioning and offering replacement upgrades... Yes, the Palm costs as much as a M$ Word Pro, but that doesn't mean we want a new version every other month.
Clue to 3Com: Commit to good engineering. Keep the interfaces standard. Take a lesson from the PC revolution and make the PIECES upgradable.
I'd gladly buy a PV if I could upgrade the SCREEN to a color one. Or if I could replace one of the two stylus barrels with a wireless comm module, or if I could use lithiun or NiCad or OTS batteries.
I'd make the investment if I could swap processors, add RAM, plug in a PC card for hard storage... I'd gladly buy a new titanium case to replace the aluminum one, if the guts fit. But for chrissakes, don't force me to buy a new modem and cradle every six months.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Games? Isn't this the crowd that would hail Space Invaders and Pacman, two games that can be played in monochrome, as two of the best games ever written?
Aren't there enough Lynx users in this audience to understand that it's the *information*, not the *presentation* that is important? Maybe, maybe there's an argument that color can be used to get more information onto a screen (such as showing a red number instead of a number in parentheses to signify a negative on a spreadsheet). But do I really want to deal with higher price and lower battery life to get that?
Things I'd rather see in the next pilot:
- Sound recording/playback. Voice reco.
- More natural handwriting reco.
- More resolution.
- Built in wireless connectivity.
- JavaVM in ROM (yes, I know it's coming
:)) - Not changing the form factor of the device every other generation. (I have a PalmPro, PIIIx and a PalmV and all use different cradles.)
I like my Pilot. I don't want color. I won't upgrade in order to get color. I think, with Jeff Hawkins gone, that the whole Palm division of 3Com has been floundering for a vision. The PalmIV, "Razor", was shelved (is this new color one the second coming? I didn't read the article). We all hated that they came out with the IIIx and the V simultaneously. Nobody things the VII is a good idea (too expensive). The IIIe is a stupid way to make more money. So does anybody really think that, just by saying "color", 3Com suddenly has a long term plan in place that will benefit the consumer? Or will they simply scrap that idea 6 months from now and decide that wireless is the way to go, and make a new wireless model based on one of the old monochrome pilots?d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I've used palms a few times, and I cant see all that much use to them.
But with a color screen, and a built in IP stack, now they are getting into the useful realm.
Can't wait. Hurry up, 3Com!
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Actually, I am going to look again. Everyone around me uses them at this point, so there has to be something there.
I'm a bit jaded because I used one of the original ones a few years ago, and there wasn't enough good stuff on it to keep using it. Lately I've been using a V, which is much nicer. It would make a nice activity organiser, and I suppose I could get my act together and enter all my phone numbers into something on a PC and DL it to the palm. But since I carry a Nokia phone with 200+ entries in it already, the palm wouldn't get used all that much.
The thing that turned me off earlier was the lack of connectivity to anything other than mac and windoze. Now there are lots more linux drivers to do the same thing, so that point is gone.
The best app I could think of would be to have a mailbox which could get DLed every so often, either through infrared or docking or a low power wireless connection. I get hundreds of emails a day, and there is always down time during the day when I could be reading through all of them. But the palm would need 8Mb of storage just to hold a few days worth of my emails (attachments could be left behind).
It would also be cool to have the palm just be another IP address on my network, so an IMAP or similar process running on a linux server could sync up the mailboxes, and delete all the emails I delete on my palm.
Color is useful for highlighting important objects on the screen. I wouldn't care if it dragged the batteries down a little faster, if I could get recharging docks at work, home, in the car, etc.
Didn't mean to be a troll, I'll probably have one before Christmas (or as soon as a color one comes out)
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I do not want a wince machine. Tried them, they have crossed the line of bloat, and don't seem to have the nice integrated feel of a palm.
I did have a wince machine for a while with a Proxim wireless lan, and the connectivity was cool, but the apps were pure winblows and the machine kept crashing every little while.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I couldn't agree with you more, that color, from a technical standpoint, is not warranted. However, from a marketing standpoint, it is necessary to maintain dominance. WinCE machines are coming out with color. You and I don't care about this, because we know that we don't need it. But, the average consumer is going to "ooh" and "ahh" at the color screens, and buy them first, because they look pretty.
Most of the time, the average consumer doesn't know what their needs are, and just buy the thing with most features, not stopping to think if they really need all of them.
As a Palm champion, this type of thing is a necessary marketing move, which will hopefully allow them to keep MS out of the market in force.