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Color PalmOS Devices Soon?
PDA Buzz writes "Looks like we may see a color PalmOS device sooner than later now that Motorola has released the Dragonball VZ which supports 256 color LCD on-chip and runs at 33MHz.
" One Word: Yum.
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Get the rechargable alkalines. They cost about twice as much as regular alkalines, butput out the same voltage, and can (obviously) be recharged.
They don't suffer from memory, and actually benefit from an early recharge.
Then there's the nickel-hydrides that have now appeared in regular battery sizes . . .
Years ago, I considered making the modification to hold a 5th nicad in my tandy 102, thus reaching then intended 6v (5x1.2=4*1.5). The manuals warned of brownout for the insufficient voltage, but I neverhad a problem running the thing on 4 nicads. They probably lasted longer, too, as the higher voltage would have increased the current drawn . . .
For the last two months or so, I have been using NiMH batteries in my Palm III, and been loving it. There are, however, a couple of things one needs to take into consideration with NiMH batteries:
Compared to alkaline batteries, NiMH batteries have a sharper curve. In the early stages of discharge, they lose voltage much more slowly. Then there is a sharp voltage decrease at the end. You'll probably want to install the Battery Level Hack (which you can get from PalmCentral).
C'mon, folks, this entire post is wild speculation. The Dragonball family is used in many things other than the Palm/Visor devices, and has a number of capabilities that are not currently being leveraged.
Heck the EZ supports 640x512 LCD's, so is it reasonable to expect a big-screen Palm out soon just because the chip supports it? IRIC, the Dragonball also supports PCMCIA, but we've never seen that, either.
Just because the VZ supports color displays doesn't mean anyone's going to build a color PalmOS device. (Especially 3Com or Handspring, both of which seem to correctly recognize that color has a negative value in this application due to cost and power usage concerns.)
It's hard to have a rational and valuable discussion about entirely hypothetical flamebait.
Now,instead, if someone were to post an informative and well-researched article on the challenges involved in extending the PalmOS graphics model to support larger screens and color, we might have something worthy of News for Nerds...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
For example, we have a database with a web interface. We have dial-in access. I have an 8810. Today I'll be trying to query our database with a Palm and wireless connection. I'm the one developing the Database, so I can code special Palm pages. This staff member currently doesn't enter stuff into the database, so his required functionality makes it all plausable.
That's just one example, but when you boil it down, most PC users in a work environment don't code, they don't develop MultiMedia presentations either - they just deal in small scraps of information. An order here, a date there, a price somewhere else. It doesn't need bells and whistles. They don't need a 500MHz PIII.
I believe that I can fit at least 80% of day to day functionality into a Palm as a primary device. I'm currently moving my e-mail/messaging onto my 8810. The smaller the better. Wish me luck.
It's cool that there will finally be a colour version of the PalmPilot out, but there have been colour version of various WinCE Palm PCs out for a while now, with far more colours to boot (65K vs. 256). Plus, the innards of a WinCE device tend to be more impressive (32 bit processor over 75mHz vs 16(?) at less than 33mHz), and the WinCE devices tend to have more memory, too (no, WinCE doesn't use all of it, either).
The only two advantages I see Palms having now are:
Just my two cents on the whole thing
Wow, the last one didn't work at all. This is how it should look:
Here, just follow the links on the bottom.
No information on the VZ yet though.
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What I'd like to see in a PDA is simple color support. Yes, more than 16 colors would be great, but I don't really want much. What would be even better is if they could have a black and white (or at least grayscale) mode; what I mean by this is that if you have used one of the color WinCE machines, you'll notice that the backlight is always on. This, I imagine, is the biggest drain of the batteries, but why not have some 16-grayscale mode (translate/dither/whatever) that doesn't require the backlight?
If Handspring / 3Com comes out with one of these things at a reasonable cost, I'd upgrade from my Palm III.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
The cool thing with the Palm is that it is an appliance. It is not a general purpose computer, but a magic notebook. It does one thing and it does it really well.
All these general purpose features just for the sake of features diminish what made it so great. It will end in tears!
Keep the focus. Don't fix what's not broken. Make it even better at what it is. Smaller, longer battery life, better screen resolution and lower price would be good goals. But they'll probably add a CD burner next...
Thanks for the pointers on those devices.
My point was about overall convenience. I have an E100, Palm IIIx and Newton here on my desk. I won't even try this with the Newton, but I just put the E100 and Pilot in my pocket. Hmm. The E100 is just a tad heavier, a tad thicker and a tad longer. Somehow, when you add those things up, the E100 feels pretty clunky. Likewise synching information is just a bit cleaner and simpler, although ActiveSynch is more powerful.
It's really an apples and oranges thing though. I actually use the palm whereas I mainly play around with the Cass.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ugh. It's not that I like or dislike MS that I chose a Pilot. It's simply product superiority. Just as with their WindowsXX OS. Linux is superior. Pilot is superior.
I tend to judge products based on how much I need to refer to a manual to use them. With a Pilot, I picked up Graffiti in about half an hour (except I still don't remember some of the special chars) and was able to use every app that came with the thing - immediately!
I frequent places like CompUSA. One passtime is to go to the counters where they sell that Windows CE crapola and just TRY to use them. That blasted Win95-like interface is all over the place. It's not obvious how to change apps or enter a new appointment or address entry. I'm not talking about a cursory examination either (unless you call 30 minutes cursory). The thing is just hard to use.
Graffiti might be hard to get used to - at first . Give it 30 minutes and you'll get it. And, the only thing you'll use the manual for is to learn the extent of the apps' capabilities.
Daniel - first non-AC post
I wonder if there will be a Visor version of this. You KNOW Palm will have one, but they are simply to expensive for what they can do.
I'm also guessing that this 'feature' will drive up the memory consumption of a 'colorized' Palm OS. PalmOS Themes, here we come..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I use a Palm Pilot and a Sharp Tripad (Windows CE). In the past I've also used other solutions too. I found that Graffiti work better for me than any other handwriting recognition software. I will however say that if you have 'nice' hand writing you might find that Calligrapher works well too. I've used Calligrapher and I can get OK results from it and I really like how configurable it is. My handwriting is just too sloppy for Calligrapher to grasp though. For those that don't know already here is how the two system work: Graffiti only recognizes characters written in a very particular manner. You must learn to write the letters it expects to see. Most Palm Pilot users I know (about 6) picked up Graffiti in about 20 minutes. I only know one person who still cannot user Graffiti. Calligrapher doesn't try to learn how you write, instead it knows about a wide variety of writing styles and you configure to know you prefered writing style. When you configure Calligrapher, you would tell it that for the letter 'A' you mostly write it in one style, that you sometimes write it in another style, and that you never write in yet another way. You pick the writing method for each letter for a list; It typically knows about five methods to write each character. Calligrapher has some 'correction' method built in which amounts to a spell-checker linked with the handwriting recognition, but I've found that using it's correction is much slower than simply erasing my mistakes and re-writing the words. I can't fathom how anyone would choose Windows CE over the Palm Pilot. Windows CE crashes on me, requires a tonne of RAM (and thus requires lots and lots and lots of batteries) and it is very costly to buy all that extra software for CE to make it synchronize with anything other than Office (assuming you can get software to synchronize with the programs you use). And of course you can't sync Windows CE under Linux it and we probably never will be able to (MS keeps chaning Windows CE... there are currently 3 versions shipping... all very different).
I wonder if the Handspring folks were the push behind this... I'm definitly getting the impression that they are interested in innovating with the design of the Palm platform,, while Palm itself is settling for goofing around with the form factor.
While color is sweet, color plus cheap wireless connectivity (emphasis on cheap) would make these suckers really big-time.
Alas, 32 Mhz, while useful for the more data crunching that a higher bit display will require, still isn't enought to do the seriously neat stuff, like voce recogntion.
Finally, it's sort of sad, because a color Palm would really cause a split in software development. Up until now, you could run just about everything out there on any Palm. I have a Pilot 1000 that's been upgraded several times, and I can use all of the latest software available. Once color comes out, I suspect developers will have to decide whether to support color or not...
Oh well... I got way more life out of my 1000 than I every would have expected... certainly more than if I had bought a 1st generation WinCE device.
Urgh! Get it right, Palm. Give me a higher resolution (600ish X400ish), high-contrast LCD with 5 bit greyscale. I don't need color to suck my batteries, I just want to be able to read my Palm and maybe view some _ACTUAL WEB SITES_ and not web clippings or whatever you are calling it.
Skippy
"False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent." - The Stainless Steel Rat
Quite a tricky situation. I tried rechargable batteries in my palm pro once, then realized that it really sucked. I looked on the palm homepage.. and found.. that rechargable batteries doe not provide high enough voltage to be highly effective. Regular batteries last much longer.
:)
What we need is regular-voltage rechargable batteries.
To begin withm I've never been impressed with a color screen on a PDA. A friend's Nino with it's hi-res color screen isn't nearly as readable as my trusty palm v's screen. in fact, i'm not even impressed by the palm's support of grayscale. the display is crisper in b/w, and that 0.5 second delay switching modes just bugs me.
The speed doesn't impress me. No app I run is bloated enough that I wait for it. Well, automatically adding bookmarks in my doc reader takes a while, but this should happen on the desktop anyway.
What I want to see is a smaller, more rugged PDA. I hate the fact that I can't put my palm in my back pocket. Well, i did once, and now the case has some interesting stress marks where the metal bent. And I hate the fact the I have to treat the screen like it's made of gold. I want to feel safe touching the damn thing when I want to press an on screen button, even if my hands are dirty from changing a flat tire or something.
So I'm rambling. But when I pay $400 bucks for a PDA that I always have on me, I'd like to be able to treat it like the other things I always have on me: my watch and wallet. They take a lot of abuse, they keep on going, and they're well below the size limit that makes me ask "do i really need to bring this with me?"
blah
And, I hope it is the pressure of competition that makes them rush it to market. Lord knows we need a lot more competition all over the industry!
While it's great to see the PalmPilot crush WinCE devices (because it's nice to see competition), it's too bad it's been crushing so handily: the PalmPilot has not exactly been innovating that much.
The one nice thing about Microsoft is that while they are stealing everyone else's ideas, they are putting a lot of stuff into this windowing monopoly product (like they didn't with DOS). Listen, clearly, Microsoft sycophants, saying one nice thing is not saying that monopolies are good. Monopolies are bad, even if they are arrived at fairly, which this one wasn't so it's doubly bad. And yeah, bloatware blah blah blah, save your breath. You can disagree with the way that they implement things and tie them together: I'm simply making the narrow point that Microsoft has put a lot of stuff into their windowing product, in order to make the point 3Com has not. The software has been unchanging for too darn long and I think it's because they face not enough competition.
My pet feature? I wish the to-do list had dependencies between events, like a mini project scheduler. uh-oh, shoulda kept my mouth shut, someone will undoubtedly tell me that this already exists ;)
I hate to use this word, but it's a matter of synergy. WinCE machines have TONS of cool stuff; they have the features computer buyers look for, in spades.
PalmOS machines, OTOH, just work. They don't try to act like computers, they just work.
This is why they can win even in a review so otherwise ignorant as to give WinCE the edge in every individual category. (If the categories were better reviewed PalmOS would win in more of them.)
As for Grafitti -- people who prefer Jot to it are simply excercising their rights to have a closed mind. No offence, I hope. Spend a few minutes learning Grafitti and it's just as good.
Calligrapher, OTOH, is a different matter -- it's quite possible that some people can't handle switching back and forth. I've never met anyone like that, but I have heard people say that they didn't like doing it. WinCE has the edge there; PalmOS machines lack the power to do full HWR. I guess it's a fair choice -- do you want full HWR or long battery life?
Try before you buy. I like full HWR too, but it sure is nice to not have to mess with batteries.
-Billy
(if you have never seen the Anime known as Dragonball, you will not get this)
And if you collect 7 of the Dragonball VZs, a giant dragon appears and will grant a wish for you!
Just watch out for the evil guys. You can tell who they are because they either have veins sticking out all over themselves, or an evil sneer.
(in further news, an updated version of the Dragonball VZs will be released, called the Dragonball NameckZs. These will have the added functionality of being able to tell an enemy's power level, turn into a motorized vehicle when smashed on the ground, and when seven are collected, will summon a more powerful dragon to grant 3 wishes instead of one.
For further information, see Kami-san, the God of Earth.
hehe
Know ye not that ye are Gods???
The Cass E100 rocks, but its display is completely unreadable in direct sunlight (try reading PocketStreets outdoors, for example).
You can't rate a system on raw power, whether its MIPS, number of colors displayed, whatever. You have to look at how all fits together. In terms of doing the PDA thing, the Palm Pilot is very hard to beat, not because of any one statistic, but the whole package meets the needs of the typical PDA user (simplicity, size, integration, battery life etc.).
I view the E100s and their ilk as a different class of machines, more than you need in a PDA but much smaller than a laptop. You can use it as a PDA of course, just like you could use a laptop, but you can't put it in your pocket without noticing its there.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I never thought it was processor features that were preventing color screens in palmtops, it's the price and power consumption of color LCDs. It still needs some external logic to support color LCD anyway.
I just don't see any reason to get excited about this.