Slashdot Mirror
More details on the Visor/Handspring (Update)
Thanks to Ian Hopper> for the current story on CNN about the Visor. Pictures-and in a very cool turn of events-two very cool peripheral ports in the back of the machine. It runs about 20% faster then the Palm III or V, 8 MB of RAM in the high-end version of the machine. Oh-and about 2/3 the cost of a Palm V. Check out the Palminfocenter for more details, as well.Update: 09/14 03:33 by H :The corp. website appears to be up and running as well.
Visor Solo $149 - no craddle, no syncing
Visor $179 - 2MB, craddle, etc.
Visor Deluxe $249 - 8 MB, craddle, etc.
All use AAA alkaline cells (maybe accumulators?) - standard battery use is a Good Thing (tm). They are designed for easy use of plug-on modules (cell modem, GPS receiver, MP3 player, etc.)
The interesting questions are: will it be compatible to the 3Com - so the 3Com applications can run? Will there be support for programmers (like with the 3Com)? Support for Linux? As for the websites cited:
The Deluxe model comes in 5 colors and has a leather case.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
>It's nice to see widespread use an idea that's
>been around since the apple II.
Now wait a minute, that's overstating it a bit.
Each slot in the apple II had a 256 byte region reserved for ROM, with a decoded enable so the card didn't need to know which slot it it occupied. There was also a 2k area it could bank-switch, shared with other cards.
But to launch these drivers, you had to type
PR#6
for example, telling it to send output to card 6. This launched the driver. In the case of card 6, this usually booted dos, then returned output to 0, the screen (even though there was a card 0, which was sort of special). There was also a corresponding IN# command.
Later, with the II+, the autostart ROM's would automatically try slot 6 (or was it all slots???)
The overall design was amazing, and easy to homebrew hardware to fit. I have three waiting for me (IIe's, unfortanately; I'd rather original II's): one to run a railroad, one for the kids, and one for spare parts.
hawk, who misses the 8 bit machines
Now what is 3Com's thinking in spinning off Palm Computing to a separate company? It was a cash cow, now what is the future?
3Com wasn't able to market and develop the Palm concept very well. They suffer from MS-Word Syndrome where 'average Joe' personal technology is concerned. They're great with networking and MODEMS - things you install and forget. Hands-on, in-your-face-every-day devices are alien to them.
I mean, the Palm VII, Palm III, Palm IIIx?? Whom are they kidding? Their marketting people were beginning to have useless and 'buzz' features put in, in an apparent attempt to establish a variety of 'trim' levels. Much like being able to select the color of the underlines beneath your misspellings in Word. They were selling them in college bookstores - in a variety of 'fashion' colors for chrissakes!
Just like the Nokia cell phones... All we need now is clip on transluscent flip-up screen covers and interchangable, color case covers... Feh! The Pilot was beginning to suffer from a lack of competition. After all, the only alternative in the same class of device is WinCE.
Spinning off Palm into a separate company is the best thing that could happen to the Pilot. This way, a product specific marketting department can work closely with the product specific engineering staff, without too many suits munging up the process.
Hopefully they'll come back to the exceptional fundamentals that made the Pilot a great tool. A little of it shines still in the Palm V, and hopefully the compatition (despite what they claim, it'll be there) from handspring will force some innovation and usefull feature development in both camps.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Now why couldn't a wireless interface on the Visor be in constant contact with a host 'supercomputer' at all times? I don't know that this would be anything other than a convenience though, but having access to something to run Mathmatica or something else similar 24/7 would be nifty.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
What, a Visor with the appropriate Springboard module isn't your taste? I'd imagine Visor would come out with it before Palm would.
What would you do with it, btw? It would be only useful if you could either use the data(mp3s?) or transfer the data, and I don't think 340mb would transfer very quickly...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
From what I can read the Visor(Solo) is just a Visor without a cradle; it can still sync, but it doesn't come with a cradle, on the assumption I guess that you can have 8 Visors sharing one cradle or something.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Wow. One of the planned Springboard modules would be TigerWoods 99 or something like that.
I wonder if they have any plan to do a GameBoy emulator/interface to pop in GameBoy cartridges into the Visor?
Or if Nintendo would license the PalmOS for their Gameboy Advance coming out next year...
Heck, Visor could just design and release a free GameAPI for PalmOS I guess.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Um, so it's cheaper, comes with more memory(8mb on the deluxe version), and has superior upgrade capability with the Springboard. What would you call extraordinary? It can tell you bedtime stories? They talk about GPS, cellular connectivity, mp3 playback, dictation, voice control, wireless communication...
There is nothing out there with this capability except maybe the Gameboy.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I used to try to sell Palms in a college bookstore, and 90% of our units sold to professors, doctors, or departments. Why? Two reasons: Price and 'technology'.
Palms are simply priced out of the average college student's market. Even at $229 for the cheapest unit, there's no way a college student could afford it. Now, at $149 or even $179, a college kid could scrimp a little on bar funds or donate plasma a couple of times and pick one of these cool puppies up. Or ask for one for christmas and actually maybe get it. If the plug-ins (literally!) cost under a hundred for useful modules, then better still! Imagine - an HP Calculator module that turns your palm into a high-end graphic calculator. What Engineering/Physics geek wouldn't drool over one?
Now, that second reason, 'technology'? The problem with a high-tech toy like this is that a good portion of college students have problems running word processors in computer labs - they just don't have the technological savvy that lends one to go, 'Oooh! I have to have one of those!', mostly because they don't understand it, can't get it to work, could never learn the shorthand... A myriad of reasons. However, something like this - something that with a mere plug-in of a module, changes the unit into something else equally useful - as long as it's relativly intuitive for use, could sell very well in a college market.
Even at $150, I'd be willing to shell out money for a *very* good calendar/address book in a college market. It would have come in handy to keep track of assignments and phone numbers when I was in school. Here's to Handspring, and the hopes that they spark a market for inexpensive, easy-to-use handhelds that even a Freshman Sorority-pledge can use.
Will the speaker be powerful/loud enough to play DTMF tones for auto dialing of phone numbers?!
...the Holy Grail of the PalmPilot users everywhere...
Stupid thing - I would be willing to spend a couple hundred dollars to get a feature that probably costs 23-cents extra to make possible.
The Visor sounds QUITE sweet! 3Com may make bucks off of PalmOS licenses, but is going to lose a ton of sales of hardware to Handspring.
...Now what is 3Com's thinking in spinning off Palm Computing to a separate company? It was a cash cow, now what is the future?
--
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
I was browsing about the development page, and found this.:
Q. Should we put rechargeable cells in the Springboard Module? If we do this, can we recharge FROM the Visor Cradle THROUGH the Springboard module connector TO our rechargeable in the module? OR do we need to have a wall adapter jack on the module for recharging?
A. Unfortunately our first generation cradle will not supply power to the VDOCK pin. If you want to use a rechargeable battery, you have three options:
Put a barrel connector in the remote itself and charge it separately from Visor. This probably makes the most sense in the short term, since people who use their Visor quite a bit during the day when they are out of the home would be perfectly happy to recharge their remote at home during the day. If the remote had to be recharged through Visor, that puts Visor out of commission during recharging (or at least makes it cumbersome to use).
Build your own charging cable. We will have connectors that hook onto the bottom of Visor. You could use these to build a charging cable for the remote, using the VDOCK pin. But again, users would have to effectively give up using their Visor during recharging....could be unattractive.
Build your own charging cradle. This could be a pretty interesting product, not only for the remote but for other rechargeable products as well. However, it would be expensive, and Handspring will come out with a charging cradle sometime next year which will probably be standard with our products. So it might also be riskier. But since most people hotsync anyway, this solves the problem of users losing Visor functionality. Long term this is the way to go, but short term it's probably not
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Q. Should we put rechargeable cells in the Springboard Module? If we do this, can we recharge FROM the Visor Cradle THROUGH the Springboard module connector TO our rechargeable in the module? OR do we need to have a wall adapter jack on the module for recharging?
A. Unfortunately our first generation cradle will not supply power to the VDOCK pin. If you want to use a rechargeable battery, you have three options:
Put a barrel connector in the remote itself and charge it separately from Visor. This probably makes the most sense in the short term, since people who use their Visor quite a bit during the day when they are out of the home would be perfectly happy to recharge their remote at home during the day. If the remote had to be recharged through Visor, that puts Visor out of commission during recharging (or at least makes it cumbersome to use).
Build your own charging cable. We will have connectors that hook onto the bottom of Visor. You could use these to build a charging cable for the remote, using the VDOCK pin. But again, users would have to effectively give up using their Visor during recharging....could be unattractive.
Build your own charging cradle. This could be a pretty interesting product, not only for the remote but for other rechargeable products as well. However, it would be expensive, and Handspring will come out with a charging cradle sometime next year which will probably be standard with our products. So it might also be riskier. But since most people hotsync anyway, this solves the problem of users losing Visor functionality. Long term this is the way to go, but short term it's probably not
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
It would be nice to see whether it is possible to recharge it's batteries from the docking cradle - it's one of the things that I miss from my PalmIII.
Also, the GPS module sounds *very* interesting. It'd be great if it could integrate with some of the 'alarm' functionality in the calendar application, as I tend to find that I want to be reminded to do things when I'm in certain places, rather than at specific times - i.e. to be able to specify rules like:
o Remind me to pay my phone bill 10 minutes after I get home.
o Remind me to buy some weedkiller next time I'm the the town centre.
o If I'm still at work at 7:30pm on Tuesday, remind me that the first episode of 'Futurama' is being shown on Sky1 at 8:00...
Tim
It's not the real URL, but if the cap fits...
:)
Looking at the PalmInfocenter site, the first thing that struck me was the poll in the top right:
My next PDA will be a...
o HandSpring
o Palm VII
o Palm V
o Color Palm
o M$ WinCE (ed: their use of "$")
I'm a little surprised there wasn't a "Rob sux" option down the bottom
Anyhow, I guess it's not an official site, but it's exceptionally well done nonetheless. There's even a "palmtop edition" that's formatted to work on the 'lil suckers. Most cute.
I suspect one of the main reasons that they've not got Linux support is that they've probably licensed large amounts of the PC/Mac-side PalmOS-related software from Palm as well as just the basic operating system. They could probably get away with just rewriting the actual communication sections, so as to get it to work over USB.
Linux would require substantially more work.