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Palm Pilot with Hard Drive
Russ Steffen writes "TRG, Inc, a maker of PalmPilot accessories has announced an interesting Palm clone. The TRGpro is similar to a normal Palm IIIx (OS3.3, 8MB RAM) with one major exception: it has a compact flash (CF) port. This means that only can you have more than 96MB of non-volatile memory in this thing, you can also have a 340MB IBM microdirve. Other interesting add-ons that can interface through a CF slot include a bar-code reader, a super-small v.90 modem, ethernet and a high-speed serial port."
GoType makes a keyboard for the Palm series...it's not quite a full keyboard (no F* keys, for example), and it doesn't have that useless Windows key we all hate, but it works quite well....last quarter I took all of my class notes on it (was difficult in stats...and no ability to sketch diagrams....)
:)
Of course, then I had to delete all those notes to make room at the end of the quarter...guess why I'm not repeating the performance
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MP3's are one application that would chew up lots of space fairly quickly; another would be geographical maps, which would tie nicely in to a GPS card. A third "neat idea" would be to have a wireless network connection (and I'm not thinking cellular/PalmVII here).
Unfortunately, many of the things that would make such extra storage capacity useful represent peripherals that would require a "slot," and which thus might not fit in simultaneously with the disk drive.
And I shudder at the rate of battery supply depletion that would result...
Methinks these applications will remain "niched" for a while yet.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
It all sounds good to me. The palm is the closest thing I've seen that approaches viable 'wearable' technology (Yes, I know you don't wear it, but it's as portable as your wallet... about as close to actual wearing as you're gonna get without worrying about color-coordination. "Does this pilot match my tie? Hmmm... maybe the blue one..." ;)
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
This is not happening as you say. This device, while packing many more feautres then the Palm, costs approximately the same AS a lower range Palm does.
And removing things in the way you state get's you solar powered calculators that are bastard children of older Scientific computers.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
A palm isn't meant to replace a laptop, it's meant to 'SUPPLEMENT' it. Primary example, the IrDA port. I for one, would NOT want to have to open my Laptop as often as I open my Franklin Planner, and a Palm could replace it, easily. And run over a month on AAA batteries.
And it's usa is as likely to be abused as a person with a pen and a peice of paper. Staff Room Art, anyway?
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I have a sweet little IR keyboard with a little stick mouse in one corner. Found it for only $25 bucks, and it is about the size of a Happy Hacker keyboard (Not too big, but slightly bigger than the GoType Palm Keyboard).
So I wonder if it is possible or how hard it would be to make the Palm/TRG/Handspring grab the IR keyboard signals?
ed
With UPC scanning, the Palms can do shopping-list stuff WITHOUT having to manage a cart, a toddler and keeping the point on the screen all at once. SWIPE - the item is checked off.
btw Are there any decent barcode scanners for Linux systems in the home? A machine in the kitchen could use one to complete the loop, scanning and listing pantry goods as used. Although I suppose the Palm could be chained in to do that...
First you have the Palm. Then you add a modem. Then a bunch more RAM. Then arbitrary peripherals. Then color. Now a hard drive. Each of these adds complexity, size and cost--all of which are anti-thetical to the purpose of the original Palm.
Well, if by "the original Palm" you mean "those little palm-sized yellow post-it notes", then sure.
If you actually think that the original palm computers wouldn't have had color screens, hard drives, peripheral expansion, and modems had that been practical at the time, on the other hand, you're nuts. How is a tiny hard drive more complicated to the user than battery backed memory? It isn't, it's just more spacious. How does a color screen make things more complicated? Again, it doesn't. I guess you have to figure out that "complicated Internet thingie" to use a modem with your Palm, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. And arbitrary peripherals, well, that involves the complication of buying the peripheral, plugging in the peripheral, installing software for the peripheral... but if you want to listen to your MP3 playlists on the road, it sure beats whistling.
The Microdrive was an endless-loop tape drive invented by Sinclair (as in ZX-81 and ZX-Spectrum) in the early 80's. The cartridge was about 1 inch square and could store 110K on its tape arrangeed in an endless loop. The Spectrum could, with the Interface One, have up to 8 of these drive attached.
In 1984 the QL came along with two of these built in, and with slightly enhanced capacity.
This was in the days of 360K floppies etc.
The microdrives and their media were 1/10th of the proce. The only problem was reliability.
Good old Sir Clive.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
With 340MB of storage, I could finally turn my PalmPilot into the portable reference library I've always wished it could be.
Hmm... These guys are just down the street from me. Wonder if they have any in stock?
PalmStation has a hands on review of the TRGPro (The device in question here). Check it out here
-Hal
-Hal
I have a Palm III. I have a Sony Vaio superslim 505TR.
I use my Palm as a "dreamcatcher" for my thoughts. It's small, it's quick, and it remembers. I, on the other hand, do not remember. And it's a simple device. It does what it's supposed to, and it does it well. That 'rut' to which you refer, is exactly where I want my Palm to stay.
I use my Sony Vaio as my development workstation, when I have a chance to set up on a table somewhere. It's bigger, quick, and remembers more. But it's also heavier, doesn't fit in my pocket. But it *does* have a bigger screen. So it's good for sitting down and coding.
I don't care what kind of leapfrogging we do past Moore's Law, but no matter how small the electronics get, I'm still going to need human interfaces of a size and shape compatible with my purposes. And, call me crufty, but I'm NOT impressed with headgear. I don't want VR, I don't want a 'virtual 36" screen' floating in front of me. I want an object (of the atomic kind) in front of me.
I want a small and simple device for quick things and a larger more complex device for longer term interaction. And I use them for different tasks.
So, I say, go, go gadget Palm.
> fucking ey!
OK. Blame Canada.
I'd like to have video out on a palm device for the same reason that I have it on my laptop and desktop computers. Someday, I want a palm device to run Linux and serve as my primary machine that I take everywhere and use everywhere. That means that if I want to hook my palm device up to a silly looking head mounted display, I should be able to do that.
I want a palm device that can use the keyboard from www.thinkoutside.com, and allow me to write C++, Java, TCL, or Perl code wherever I am. I don't care about writing documents, which is what all palm computers allow you to do. Take the silly word processors off the palms, psions, wince's, and give me vi and a compiler. I write only a couple more documents a year than my dead hamster used to, so I don't want a word processor.
All these little devices are going to be more and more powerful, and that means that we're not going to be stuck in the little rut that 3COM thinks we should be in. I want a device that is powerful enough to let me use it the way I think it should be used, not wasted on meetings, notes, and other administrivia.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Linux on the PalmPilot's been done. Check out http://www.uclinux.org. That's Kenneth Albanowski and Jeff Dionne's group. They've got some cool stuff, in addition to the PalmPilot work, they've got a version of linux that runs on a processor and chipset the size of a SIMM stick. Check it out!
Well, it's the same endless-loop dichotomy that we get in other computer-related instances.
:)
If you want your new computer to be better...wait.
Take me, for example...I bought a Palm IIIe a couple months ago...a couple of weeks before the Visors came out, and boy don't I wish I had waited now.
On the other hand...I've had the use of the IIIe for those last two months, and will have it for more months to come...and when I get my financial aid at the beginning of the next semester, well, a friend of mine is already willing to buy it from me whenever I'm ready to sell it, and I'll upgrade to a new model. By then it should be apparent which new flavors of Palmoid have the best prospects (and their already-low prices might have come down even further), and I'll know which one to get.
My advice to you is to go ahead, jump in. If you're uncertain which new one to buy, get an older one; there are plenty of used Palm Pros & IIIs floating around on Ebay. One of those should do you just fine 'til you're ready to make the big investment.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Not!
Trying to make Palm devices all things for all people would hurt its momentum.
One of the reasons why the CE platform (and the Newton before it) hasn't been successful is the attempt by various manufacturers to make, essentially, a mini-laptop...
This has the effect of sucking batteries and increasing size... which is the antithesis of the current Palm platform.
Color screens and CF coming to the platform may hurt big-time in the battery deparment... time will tell, although I must say, the prospect of having a Palm device with CF and stereo audio out (not there yet... but it will happen) has me jonzing for a Palm based MP3 player... perhaps Handspring will deliver.
This is all so reminiscent of the PC market back in the mid-80's when Compaq and Microsoft stole the PC market right out from under IBM's big blue nose... heh. (3 COM, R U listening?)
-t
Imagine the possibilities this opens for;
An integration consultant.
Client "Do you have and documentation on that?"
IT guy *whips out his PalmVII* "Can I use a printer? I have 300MB of PDF's on this card"
Client thinks 'Wow, that's cool. We should go with this mob'
Or for an engineer, no more lugging 40,000 pages in manuals around, etc.
The portable storage of information (forget music and MP3) is far more usefull that a lot of you people are giving cred to. 340MB can store an entire encyclopaedia (if you cut down on the pictures), and for a bit over $300, that's damn good value.
Remeber when ordering a manual set (for a large vehicle or machine) meant waiting for a 50kg box to arrive? Not anymore, they come on CD. Now when you're doing an on-siter You can keep all the infomation, litereally, in your shirt pocket.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
This kind of thing is EXACTLY why I don't think network computers will ever get anywhere. (yes, I realize the Palm is not an NC--this is an analogy)
First you have the Palm. Then you add a modem. Then a bunch more RAM. Then arbitrary peripherals. Then color. Now a hard drive. Each of these adds complexity, size and cost--all of which are anti-thetical to the purpose of the original Palm.
As long as people continue to think "more is better" the network computer (and similar devices) will not last longer than it takes to fall down this slippery slope.
The correct mindset for this kind of device is exemplified by a (paraphrased) quote from Ton (last name?), the creator of Blender: "My favorite activity is taking code out of Blender."
---
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What will happen to the size of Palm apps once storage like this is available?
I have always been in a slight degree of awe at the compactness of apps for the Palm. I have a Palm Pro myself, and even in that meager 1MB, I can have a teeny C compiler, a BASIC interpreter, a few games, a text reader, all apps the designers managed to squeeze into a few K.
Not to hinder the cause of progress, but what will this suddenly huge storage capacity do to the Palm's compactness? Bloat is almost inevitable, like inflation, but what of those of us who can't afford a new PDA each year? Are we doomed to the fate of those still scraping for tools to run on 386's? (My school is like this, and it's not pretty.)
As for actual physical compactness. Could you lug that hard drive, modem, battery (you'd HAVE to have some more power than a few AA's to juice all that stuff) headphones, etc, etc, in your pocket comfortably? Or would you have to have a case for it?
sub silly {
#Eventually, perhaps our Palms will get so full of peripherals and other items that we'll finally have a DeskPalm. Then our written alphabet will slowly be converted to Graffiti, and the #1 cause of death among young people will be carpal tunnel.
}
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me...
Trying to make Palm devices all things for all people would hurt its momentum.
That's not what I think there going for, I think its more like, all diffrent palms, for all difrent people.
A palm with a hard drive for mp3 players, color screens for people who like color screens, audio IO for people who need audio IO, Linux for Linux hackers, and a palm with every thing for us geeks.
As with the proliferation of PCs, diffrent systems for diffrent people big fat XTs for offices, and Tandies, for the home (Ok, I don't know if those were out at the same time, or even used the same OS, but I was very young at the time...)
With Palm licensing there OS, they are giving the OS a chance to become the defacto palmtop standard. wince blowz, to many companys tried to shove in to much tech (and a bloated OS), at to high a price point. Sure, some people will make palms like this, and they will die (or overtake wince's 25% market share). but with companies like handspring around, there will still be some 'simple, elegant' stuff around to.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The real value of these expandable Palms is fulfilling numerous niche markets with nearly the same hardware and, most importantly, the same software. Since the TRGpro (and the Visor) use the PalmOS, you utilize the software already written.
:-)
As a college student, I've bounced around to several different work enviroments in the past four summers. In just a brief scan of the CompactFlash components avaliable now, I'm drooling with the possibilities of what I could have done. My mind is still racing with the number of ways we could have done things better with these Palms and their hardware. In too many places, I have had to use an entire desktop system to accomplish a small repetitive task that these new Palms can now do. Too bad I'm not still around those big coporate budgets to roll these things out. But I did send off a few quick e-mails to the guys I worked with.
J.J.
Yes, this undoubtably adds complexity to the Palm. But notice that this is being done not by Palm, Handspring, Symbol, Nokia, IBM, or any of the other big PalmOS licensees, but by a garage-based, engineering company like TRG. This is a geeky niche product! It's a great geeky niche product, but not ready for the average user.
Now, Handspring's expansion port, that's something the average user can use. Plug it in, it works; no software to install, nothing tough. The fact that something plugging in here is designed for a Handspring, and not a PCMCIA adaptor and a WinCE &c&c - that's a GOOD thing. And you can't complain that that will limit the market too much, because it is so incredibly easy to design Springboard hardware - it's right on the bus with the processor and data, so there's nothing in your way, no need for smarts in the card as long as you have memory.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
I like what Palm has been doing to blaze new trails and sell a boatload of units to people all over the place. However, CompactFlash is one of only a few standards in the PDA/camera market, and I for one am very happy to see a company take advantage of it.
Now if we only had this coupled with a color screen -- although, to be honest, the combined increase in power consumption and CPU load would take a bit of usability out of the beast.
This unit should fit in nicely into a niche market or two. 340MB can only be filled with Doc files at the moment -- the average PalmOS app takes a couple dozen K. Hopefully someone might make a TRGpro-compatible adapter to play MP3's to a headset. Now THAT would be sweet.
For more information, click here.
Handspring modules carry their own applications with them - if you plug in the module, the software installs itself, if you take it out, the software gets uninstalled. Transparent to the user (freaky!), and supposedly pretty stable (details here).
Is this good or bad? I don't know, I rather have controll over the installed applications...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Seriously, I think there is a line to be drawn here, but a 340 meg harddrive could be really useful in a palm-top. Ethernet is kind of stupid, because it's rarely portable (Airport?) and a full-sized keyboard is just plain ridiculous.
I don't think Linux has a place on the palm, yet. At least not in the CLI sense. Maybe if someone developed a decent GUI that could be useful at such low resolutions and would work with pen-input. That would be neat.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
For $330 (wonder what the street price is?), that ain't bad. If they update it to the color version that's supposed to be out next year, that would be even sweeter...
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I've had a Pilot for a year. It has changed my life. I carry it everywhere.
For this I use 103k of the 480k it came with.
I'm just shaking my head at all these new mindless features. I could use a cheap, small, light, durable Pilot with long battery life though. Wonder if anyone is working on such boring issues anymore...
But compact flash cards are much less expensive. That and a 340 meg drive is hard to pass up. You could use it as a portable mp3 player also.
treke
With 340MB you could store:
- 1,020,000 addresses (I KNOW where you live, hehe)
- 425 years of appointments (been busy lately?)
- 255,000 to-do list entries (see above)
- 255,000 memos (see above)
- 34,000 emails (many, many, Slashdot headlines)
So, if you combine this latest development with Qualcomm's pdQ, you could do some pretty awesome stuff. How much voice data could you fit in 350 MB? Using a good modern codec, I suppose it would be about 500-1000. Sync that with your PC and you could have a complete voice recording of every phone call you ever made.
Cool, huh?
Can your IM do this?
... that best buy gives away computers (for an ISP contract), yet a palm pilot - a stripped down one still costs $300?
sure you can buy all kinds of extras, a modem, an ethernet card, etc, but what your failing to recognize that this is little more than a day planner crossed with a Tamaguci(?).
For a few dollars more, buy a junk laptop, and a wireless ethernet card and/or wireless modem - same thing - but probably more versatile...
"...but a laptop is so... heavy"
Don't even start with that.
"...but I've already got a laptop, I need something for meetings"
Then buy lotus notes.
"...but palms are so cute"
Buy a tamaguchi.
Why write again, when you can carry something to play tetris on instead of pay attention during meetings?
You say you want a revolution?
Awesome! IMHO, this is the way Palm can overtake CE - ComapctFlash support. Bu having compact flash it becomes amazingly more expandable... you can hook up to a network, have more memory, and do all the other cool things CE devices can do...
There is obviously a different niche for these two classes of devices. One cannot reasonably expect to enter the realm of the other successfully. If the Palm becomes too bloated with all these extra features, I'd rathar just dump it and buy a laptop, especially with some of the advantages that I mentioned above. But you still can't beat carrying it in your pocket. There is only so much you can fit into that little package without making it bigger (and therefore not fit in your pocket anymore).
Please, guys, keep the palm in Palm, and the lap in laptop. ("Notebook" is a better term, when it is clear that you are referring to the size of the computer. Good luck getting a real notebook to run Linux
Kenneth Arnold
PS - I want a laptop. Badly.
Real PS - My sig is stupid. I'm changing it as soon as I sumbit this.
Don't get to prematurely excited. Keep in mind that the battery life of this thing HAS to be considerably less than the current ``one month'' battery life of the PalmIIIx. In addition I don't see anything available for this device that is not already (?) available for the Handspring Springboard(tm) thingee. Frankly I think the Springboard is a more open interface and already has market acceptance (despite its only just shipping this week). you can have a Palm clone and plug memory into it, or your can get a Visor made by Trip ``The Original Pilot'' Hawkins himself, have a greater variety of plugable devices to choose from, and pick from one of 5 fruity flavors of plastic molding to boot. I wonder which people will choose...?
--
The palm isn't meant to do everything possible. It is meant to be a companion to a computer that can do all of that. Although it may be cheaper than a laptop, with all of the accessories, and batteries that you would go through, your cost it just about the same after a couple of months. While this would make the plam able to great things, who needs those things in a business meeting, or when they are trying to find a phone number. And then what do you do if you want to plug in your ethernet card and read your email, or download a palm app, but you need your extra hd space to store it? Then put another slot in it! If you want that get a pc104 setup, and forget the palm. As for running Linux on my palm, that would be cool, until I had to type in a long command line.