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Psion Revo and Palm Vx launched
krp writes "Psion has lauched it's new Revo, a kind of cuter 5mx, but with better Internet/comms software and a free ISP specialising in content for handhelds called psion.net (see an article at Yahoo). Also Palm have released the Palm Vx, a Palm V with 8 meg memory and bundled with AvantGo. See a V series comparison and an article at Yahoo. Prices of older Palm models have dropped accordingly. " The Palm VII has also had a higher rollout, with the push on for more sales.
In order to support having bloated things like Perl or Python, you need to have probably 20-30MB of storage available, and more realistically somewhat more in order to supply space for both system memory as well as some filesystem space.
This probably dictates waiting a year for WinCE to bloat further so that LinCE can have adequate hardware to run on.
Smileys all around, of course...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Although, I got my III for $165, and I find it VERY useful and worth the price. Not as useful as the Visor Deluxe would be (I got mine the DAY BEFORE the visors were announced. DOH!).
I don't have much use for the V's or VII's, though. Not enough for the money. My next Palm will probably be a Visor.....
jf
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Can we please move on now?
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The current state of the project is that it is able to translate Psion Word files to ASCII, HTML 3.3 and HTML 4.0. I am working on RTF (Rich Text Format) output right now (ugh! talk about an ugly file format!). And images and stuff will be supported Real Soon Now (tm).
I have recently set up a CVS archive; if others want to join me on this project, they are very welcome to do so. Contact me at frodol@dds.nl.
By the way, psiconv is of course distributed under the GPL, and the file format documentation is completely in the public domain!
I'll wait to get myself a Visor. Palm stuff looks cool but then as soon as you buy something they come out with a more expensive feature laden model and you're stuck with the one that wasn't the cool toy youy thought it would be. The stuff from Handspring is priced much better than 3Com's not to mention has Tiger Woods. The Visor looks to me like a much better buy, you get what you pay for plus Palm OS which tops all others in my opinion. The Visor also seems to be much better at expanding with the slot on the back (a great idea) for modems, games, memory, microdrives, ect.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
My biggest concern is the lack of a backlight on the Revo ... that and the $499 price tag.
... 3Com is just MUGGING people at $24.99 for 100KB/month and $39.99 for 300KB/month and .20 cents per 1K above that. That's just SICK and they need some competition.
I love the idea of free Psion.net service tho
I've written a little more about it at PDABuzz.com
I use it for specific data on my company's intranet. All of the exec's and a handful of developers have a Palm device -- being the IT manager, it's so simple to distribute updated information.
<editorial>
I read people complaining about the display and about the memory -- let's keep in mind that the Palm device is a PDA, not a PHED (Personal Home Entertainment Device). Yeah, it would be very cool if I could control my car gadgets with my Palm Vx (which has been done), but that wasn't the intent of the device.
</editorial>
As soon as you're born you start dying
Psion have been around for a long time. Orignially they produced 8-bit micro software - most of Sinclair's own software was written by Psion, and it was of the very highest quality. They produced both serious and game software, which was rare at the time. They went on to produce the office suite for the ill-fated QL.
Since then they have been producing handhelds of increasing complexity. The first model looked like a pregnant pocket calculator, with a single line text display and an alphanumeric keypad. It was succesful, and I recall insurance salemen used them for calculating premiums.
Psion (together with ARM) are all that really remains of the British small computer industry, and industry that was at its peak around 16 years ago. Everyone else has either died, been absorbed by a multi-national, or is simply shipping PC clones built from out-sourced components.
The current crop of machines are excellent, and there is a Linux port being worked on. And more importantly, they don't run anything written by Microshaft!
When I get enough money, I will probably buy a Psion. This assumes someone can give me a job where I am used to my full potential.
I wonder if the Palm "Vx" is going to be popular in countries with chemical weapons programs?
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
This push for web content on PCS phones, PDA's, winshield holograms... etc is starting to make me sick. When html was developed it was intended as a simple markup language, not an entire document development, management, and display environment. Most websites were designed with simple markup for text browsers or small resolutions like 640*480. As Hardware has progressed, we have seen a shift towrads extremely complex documents that require an average display of 800*600 or larger. To get that kind of content down to a PDA sized display is a daunting if not impossible task unless you want to lose severe amounts of content. With the investment many companies have made into document conversion and content development not to mention database integration (or disentigration if you prefer) and whatnot it seems sad that we should all want to shove that information into a format so incongrous than what it was designed for. Sending short email from a PDA/PCS is a great feature, but do I want to use it to read and sort my daily 50-150 messages? I think not. Do I want to squeeze down my research on E*trade so that it is unreadable and indecipherable? No again. Simple information like a single stock quote or I-95 south in downtown richmond is blocked, or heavy snow this afternoon is usefull but that is about as far as it goes. Why reinvent the wheel. There is an OLD well developed, directory structured protocol perfect for information like this. It's called gopher. Anyone remember it? Any gopher horror stories?
Flame Away!
www.mp3.com/Undocumented