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Color Palms to Debut in February?
Kevin writes "There's a story over at CNET talking about the future release of color Palms in February. Palm Computing's IPO is expected to coincide with the release. The article states that simplicity is a major part of the PalmPilot's design and that the implementation of color screens may not correspond with the '
so-called Zen of Palm principle,' keeping devices as simple as possible. "
Ya got yer III, IIIx, IIIe. The VII is based on the III form factor. Soon you'll have the IIIc which I can only presume will be like a III (if not bigger!), and there's no reason not to think that the IIIxe won't be the same as the III sizewise.
I'm reminded of a device company I used to work for. A scientist sat in our weekly meeting and announced that the device would only produce acceptable results if measurement X was within something like 10 microns. Upon which the manufacturing manager demonstrated to him that by the time you got to measurement X you had to put together measurements A,B,C, each of which had a tolerance of 15 microns in the first place, so there's no way he could get what he asked for. He shrugged, apparently oblivious to the reality of the physical universe, and said that in that case, just wouldn't work.
Seems to me like people want it to be small (PalmV sized sounds nice), with a bigger screen and bigger writing area (huh?). More memory, please (16M would sound like lots now, but I'm sure it won't in a year), but I want to stuff a few MP3s on there so I'm going to fill it up quick anyway. Please add color and voice recognition, but don't make the batteries any thicker. Make them last longer.
I like my IIIx. I am hoping that, unlike the V/Vx, the IIIx will have an upgrade for that 8meg.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
With color it will help make my meeting go faster as I play IR Battleship with another person. Although the PHB's don't like it when we yell 'You sunk my battleship you TWIT!"
GIHM -The light at the end of the tunnel is only the oncoming train.
The one thing that having a color lcd would do to confuse the "zen of Palm" would be having two different versions of programs, one color and one monochrome. Hopefully Palm would be able to figure out how to incorporate "old" app support with new color apps.
The second concern of mine, besides the fact that my Palm III will be obsolete, is that currently Palms can run for almost a month on 2 AAA batteries. That is not going to be true for Palms with color screens.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
... I love my Palm V and I could care less about color, but they have to do this to compete. Sooner or later the Wince devices are going to catch up in price, battery life and form factor/weight.
It's good that Palm is keeping up, and don't forget, this doesn't mean all new Palm models will be in color. I'm sure they'll still provide the old black & white Palms until color has been proven to be cheap enough.
- sigs are for wimps.
A full 80% of the Palm spinoff from 3Com will be going to 3Com shareholders.
That is your best way of getting some if you want to take part in Palm's IPO.
I fully expect one day to have a PDA that is the size of a hearing aid. I will talk to it, and it will talk to me. It will be completely wireless and be able to get my news and email, as well as handle an address book and date book. I will be able to always have it with me. It will use minimal battery power (heck, I might even be able to power it with a rechargeable battery in my shoe).
d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
The correct form of the KISS principle is:
Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
I think Palm is becoming too simple. Palm made a virtue out of necessity -- they are using at least three-year-old technology without any major changes (I tend to view the wireless connection as overpriced gimmick). Thus they HAVE to be simple -- they cannot manage intelligent complexity. That is OK as long as their target market is suits -- suits, after all, have never been known for the ability to deal with sophisticated devices. But for me Palm is like Microsoft's DOS -- very simple, but not necessarily up-to-date. I'd rather play with flashier toys and tinker with more complicated things.
Three years ago Palms were great. Now they look more and more older. Leaving aside the horrible user interface of WinCE, look at the latest Casio model (E-100/105) -- it is color, it plays stereo sound, its accessories include a digital camera, a hard drive (340Mb in your handheld -- how about it?) and a ton of other goodies.
I think that Palm is outdated and only the deficiencies of WinCE keep it at the top.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
... is maps. I recently downloaded a map of NY subway and they routes where coded in greyscale. It was very difficult to distinguish between them, so I think color conveys a lot of information in this particular case.
There are other minor things like charts and games but I don't think they're that important (at least not to me), but maps is kind of hard to work around right now unless you heavily edit the map.
- sigs are for wimps.
When they can do it without taking a massive hit on battery life, and when they can do it without the price jumping way up, yeah, color would be nice. Until then, it's just flash, and they risk shooting themselves in the foot.
Yeah, when they get to the point of real wireless web access, color might be useful. (Though that reflects more on the ubiquity of bad web design than it does on the usefulness of color on the web.) But I'd much rather have real wireless connectivity without color, than color without wireless connectivity.
I just had an argument (well a discussion) the other day with one of my friends. He bought I think a Casseopia that runs on WinCE and has color. He says he chose it over the Palm because he likes the color. He says it runs for 8 hours on the battery, and he sticks it in its cradle every night.
The cradle thing is the reason that I opted for a Palm IIIx (well cost was another factor) over a Palm V. I have enough problems trying to remember to take my cell phone out of my purse to plug it into the wall to charge it, and end up plugging it in at work during the day. I know that I would forget to take the Palm V out of my purse and plug it in at night, and if I did, then I'd forget to take it with me in the morning.
I think that the Palm going color is more like the Game boy phenomenon. You note that you can play the b/w games on the color one, and the color ones on the b/w Game boy. I think they'll make the programs compatible with both, as the color Palm gets more popularity.
Personally, I do think that since I can't browse the web on my Palm, there really is no need for me to have color. The batteries on my Palm last a helluva long time, and make it more convenient than the silly cradle. (stop at a gas station or keep a couple on me if I'm that paranoid).
Of course I'm usually one of the last people to upgrade (read Aug 99 when upgraded Win95B to Win98, and refused to try Win95 until around 96) so YMMV.
A number of posts here suggest that adding color will reduce battery life to that of WinCE machines. Unlikely, now that reflective color LCDs are available (and in more than the color gameboy). I know it's already in use in digital cameras, with tons of help on battery life because you don't backlight unless you're in the dark.
Palm's going to use them... I can't see them using anything else.
Overheard near Sand Hill Road :-)
"Why can't we put a little uranium inside our new FootSpring PDA prototype? We would be offering the first nuclear-powered pocket gadget that would go for three years with no batteries, could include a color screen, a flashlight and would double as a nice source of heat in your pocket when it's cold outside. We'll crush Palm!"
"Marketing told us this is exactly what consumers want, the potential market is huge..."
"Yeah, please put a little cutting laser in it, we could compete against Swiss Army knives!. I've already contacted Darth Maul for the advertising campaign..."
"Good, we have enough for our IPO. Stop writing!"
whats really important is :
[1] Memory protection for the pilot in the OS - paperclips suck, resetting sucks.
[2] Better security for the databases - one application can rewrite *all* data right now 0- that sucks.
[3] Easier API's, more access to documentation and better testing
[4] A full web browser
[5] Faster CPU, better battery, slightly larger screen (and less reflective), less scratchy screen, more rugged construction.
Adding color is just a waste of resources - improvements need to be made elsewhere.
As it stands now, the month-view is basically useless. Color would change that.
Bright red in the todo or memo list is a quick visual cue that something is important. Or, toxic yellow could indicate work-related items, without wasting screen real-estate.
And of course there's things like maps, which barely work at all in black and white. The added information conveyed by color can fix that.
(Note that UI elements shouldn't _depend_ on color, since a lot of people are color blind to one extent or another. But that doesn't mean it can't be useful to others.)
--
Color is something that is much more immediately visible and discernable than words or numbers. Consider, for instance, someone that regularly uses the task list. Perhaps this person prefers to prioritize their list by importance. With a black and white screen, she would have to look carefully at the numbers to the left to determine what priority certain items were, even if the list were sorted by priority. (Perhaps she has them sorted alphabetically, with a certain code at the beginning to categorize them differently)
In this case, color -- even 16 colors, would be very useful. She'd press her todo key on her pilot, notice that there were two red items above several blue ones, and know that those red items were of high importance immediately. She'd be able to read them quicker if they were colorized than if she had to look at the priority number assigned to each item.
Something similar could be done with categories. Assign different colors to categories in your addressbook, and now you could view your entire address book but still be able to rapidly discern between different types of contacts. This would make it easier to use your Palm's address book quickly. Instead of using two hands and tapping the corner twice to get to the right category, you can leave it set on "All". Just use one hand to press the address book button and then use the hardware buttons to scroll through your list. Green for clients, red for suppliers, purple for personal contacts.
Color web browsing on a Palm would be neatonifty, but remember, the Palm is supposed to be simple. The examples above show why adding color will keep it simple, and perhaps make it even simpler, at least for data-retrieval tasks, which is what I (and the people I know who use Palms) mainly use them for after the "wow" factor wears off.
I ordered a couple of color Visors--one yellow and one blue--when they were announced several months ago, but so far they are completely invisible.
The company did contact me last month to confirm the order and promised delivery "within a week" but I didn't think to ask which week.
d
(A friend of mine who had a similar device trained it in babble, so that people would look at her funny when she spoke to it. :))
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
One thing to remember is that Cnet and Zdnet are horribly unreliable sources for information regarding new Palms and their release dates. If it doesn't come from the mouth of 3Com, and worse, instead claims, "sources say" then pay it no mind. Remember the Razor? That only existed in the mind of ZDnet. (Well, it appeared as the PalmV, but it wasn't nearly as cool as ZDNet made it sound and they were about a year off the release date).
Granted, we now know that we have a (somewhat) color PalmOS (developer release that runs on an emulator), so we at least know Cnet is half right. There will be Color Palm. Do not rely on these online magazines to tell you when you can buy one though...
The reason is probably because the PalmOS licensees such as Sony asked for it. Sony wants to use PalmOS as the base OS for a wide range of applications, and colour is a selling point of these devices. You can bet that WinCE only sells devices because it is in colour and people do the "ooh ahh" thing over it. Psion have gone colour with the Series 7, but they are still offering the B&W version for those that only want that.
I would much rather prefer a higher resolution screen in black and white though. 160x160 works, but 240x240 or 320x320 would look really nice - much smoother characters etc. Notice I don't say that you can fit more on screen - everything stays the same physical size, but gets smoother.
Colour is only useful for highlighting things, such as importance. Since the Palm functions as an Organiser when you aren't playing SimCity, being able to see at a glance that something is important (shown in Red) or that something can be ignored (shown in Green) (or however you set up your device) is quite important. Sure, you can use bold text, or capitalised text in B&W modes - but this is limiting compared to the options provided by colour.
Battery technology is also much improved now than even a couple of years ago - and this is all helped by lower power semiconductor devices. For many people switching to colour will not impact their battery life much.
And SimCity would look so much nicer in colour wouldn't it!
~~
This may seem to be off topic, but stick with it, it applies.
The other day I walked into my bank. They had just replaced their old ATM machines with new ones. I thought "Great! now they'll be faster! and ooo, look, a pretty color touch screen!"
Well, the truth is, the new machines are slower on two counts.
1. more proccessing required for color screen == slower transactions
2. it is harder to discriminate the information that matters ( how much money do I want ) from the information I don't care about ( look, We have this new loan you can get and you only have to give us your third borne child! ) which also == slower transactions
the basic conclusion here is that there are places where color is a sensible useful thing and other situations where it is just plain harmful.
the key with the upcoming palms will be to:
1. ensure that the old, B&W apps don't run any slower on the new machines.
2. color is only used where it makes SENSE.
3. new apps still run on B&W palm pilots, without a performance/memory penalty for being compatible with the new machines.
so, the basic conclusion is that
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Since you seem to know a bit about the topic, do you know how much more the batteries are drained by color displays? I think it never was mentioned (or I overlooked it)... Thanks!
First we had the Palm III, then the IIIe, and now the IIIc? Where's the IIIgs?
(BTW, I'm a longtime Palm user, and I know there have been a ton of other names and models as well.)
For more information, click here.
Color is good. If things works out well, the other non-color Palms will get cheaper, and maybe I'll be able to afford one then...
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
(Disclaimer: I'm buying a Palmpilot pretty much when my paycheck clears. Merry Christmas.)
;-)
First of all, Palmpilots don't have a black and white screen. They have a black and light greenish screen--not "Spinach Green Color" as the old Game Gear ads chastized Gameboy for(but guess which system is still around!)--but greenish nonetheless.
You can't implement a color display without implementing the color white, and that's an readability increase.
The problem is, LCDs don't glow, they block. So most color screens have a consistent white light source behind the display, called a Backlight. Whereas Palmpilots can presently function just fine by reflecting the light surrounding the Palmpilot(with a very optional backlight for low light operation), Color WinCE machines generally need to tote around their light supply in order to meet the functionality expected by their users.
So that's where the battery problems come from. Of course, if a color screen can be developed that *also* operates based upon surrounding light levels, you're only talking about an increased memory/bus transfer load on the system, as it moves from animating and displaying 4 bit black and white color to various degrees of red, green, and blue. Nintendo's Color Gameboy--really a well executed piece of work--is quite small but is definite proof that a color display can be fabricated that operates on ambient light. (While I doubt it has anything to do with power usage, Color Gameboy restricts the color gamut--the range of addressable colors--to 56 specific colors, thus solving much of the speed problems inherent when you're throwing around much more data. Some crazy hackers managed to get a very high color display mode out of the color gameboy though--4096 colors, if I remember right.)
Regarding the usefulness of color, portable web browsing, photograph display, and most forms of advanced context are heavily assisted by the presence of color. We've developed color vision for a reason, and not just to tell whether fruits on the vine are ripe yet
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I'm willing to bet all the colour bashers I've read so far don't use a GUI on their regular boxes - they are green-screen commandline-cowboys. That's fine. If you don't want a colour Palm, don't buy one...stick to the greyscale. But don't tell me or anyone else who wishes to buy a colour version we are somehow wrong, or wasting our battery money. It's our choice. And I'd much rather have the choice of colour Palm vs colour WinCE vs LinCE with X in colour (please SANTA, please!). Humans have evolved the ability to see in colour for a reason, why shouldn't any device which offers a graphical interface take advantage of it (hell you can even do colour in curses, but I don't hear people complaining that coloured text takes up too much memory!).
Then, leave it to the market, if no-one buys colour Palms, I'm fairly certain they will stop making them.
Me, I find it intriguing and interesting that I can do my notes, appointments, scheduling, play MP3s and video games as well as view pictures on one handled device...
PS North of the 49th, that is how you spell colour.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
The Sharp Tripad has a color screen (tablet sized) and runs Windows CE. Color displays consume a lot of power I've heard. Certainly to obtain the brightness they need to be readable they suck back the batteries. Color screens aren't very readable except in the best lighting circumstances, and reading from them in the dark (though they have brightness) is actually painful (literally causes slight pain).
On the other hand, the screen of the Pilot IIIx is fantastic! I can read it in all but the most extreme bright lights. It is the best "read in the dark" screen I've encountered to date. Glare is minimized and the images are crisp and clear.
Color could be useful, but I'd rather have long battery life, and easy to read screens. Palm has already delivered this. In a tablet sized device color might be acceptable (obviously I have mixed feelings about the color screen on the Sharp Tripad).
The bottom line is that choice is a good thing. I think I'll choose to stick with what works. The great green-screen of the Palm IIIx.
| it's amazing that no one here has mentioned
| having color cases yet!!!
I did (subject Color Visors) but was moderated
down for being off topic.
I don't know about anybody else, but I'd much rather have a monochrome screen with a higher resolution (the 240x320 of WinCE devices would be good) than a new, improved 160x160 screen with full colour.
160x160 is prohibitively small; there is only so much information you can show on such a screen. Increase the resolution, and the amount you can see at once increases. You might even be able to see a whole datebook page without scrolling, or more than a short paragraph of text. And once wireless networking arrives (which it will), a bigger screen would be better for accessing web pages over WAP.
In contrast, colour would be merely a superficial gimmick. Though maybe Palm's marketing department has taken over and the new Palms are being optimised to be primarily executive status symbols with usability taking second place.
Even more offtopic. Your new Sega Dreamcast does not run on Windows CE, just as mine doesn't. Sega Rally Championship 2 is the first and just about only game to run this operating system. For all games, the choice of operating systems is left to the developers.
Notice how your Dreamcast is "Compatible with Windows CE," according to the label on the front of the console. (I'm assuming you have a non-Japanese model here.)
For more information, click here.
I'd like to see the Palm come out with one that has a USB port... so I don't have to reboot my computer to plug the huge cradle into it. Also a USB wire would be a lot lighter to lug around with my laptop. With a USB port I could plug a scanner, printer, or a host of other things into my palm too. Ahhh the possibilities... :)
DGregory wrote about wanting a Palm that used USB instead of serial ... he's right!
....
;)
...
3 months ago, I thought I would never want / need a Palm (OS / format) computer. Since then, there have been quite a few situations in my work (copy editor / proofreader / copywriter / etc) when I said "Boy, I wish I had a little Palm-type thingie!"
After that, the tempation has grown and grown, and I find myself in the bookstore wishing I could look at the notes that I scrawled to myself about a certain author the night before, but on a napkin in my other pants
Then the Happy Hacker Palm Cradle comes out, removing the other major problem I had with the design of Palms, which is lack of a keyboard interface, which for me is much faster than writing by hand.
But I too want USB and not serial interface. So I've decided to wait for a Visor, and the Visor Happy Hacking Cradle, and (I guess) Linux kernel 2.4.3 or something.
Now this color stuff comes out, clouding the mix again
But for DGregory, a (better) Palm is available, with USB, unless you've got something against Visor. Better because the price is good, because an 8MB visor is cheaper than an 8MB palm, and because of the springboard modules. I have only played with others' of either variety, so take as many grains of salt as you'd like, but
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
They're going to be using a Gameboy-like reflective color LCD. The part (from Motorola, as part of an announcement of new Dragnoball chips) went into production a couple of months ago. Battery life may not be 2 months, but it'll still be comfortably several weeks.
Again, reflective LCD. This is not going to be a bright, active-matrix, high-color, video-capabale battery guzzler like the color WinCE devices. Palm waited until the right technology was on hand, and now they're making their move.
Don't expect gorgeous thusands-of-colors displays. Not having the specs on hand, I'm taking an unnecessary gues that it will support a limited palette of 16-64 simultaneous colors from a total of maybe 256.
Spot color. Good enough for nice visual cues throughout and some stripped-down web access. More than good enough for me. They'll sell a zillion of 'em. I'd expect no size increase either.. certainly they'll be able to keep it in the form factor of the III-series, and maybe they'll get it down to the size of the VII. We'll have to see. They're not dumb.
Color is a no-brainer. With color, you get a higher resolution (in effect) screen without increased size. That's a lot more functionality just being able to display more information (in the same area) as before. No-brainer.
There is a cost: battery. I hope the software and GUI doesn't become a cost (complexity wise).
I do believe other factors could be improved, but the color screen is an obvious one which is relatively simple (people already know how to deal with color).
I actually was going to wait until color was available to get my first Palm, but I impulse bought one at JavaOne (good price) and now it's an essential organizer for me.
A color palm will be my first palm upgrade.
= Joe =
But I too want USB and not serial interface. So I've decided to wait for a Visor...
The Visor is a real neat device. The "Springboard" is one step removed from PCMCIA in a Palm Pilot, and I think that is great.
However, the Visor does have one problem, what I consider a fatal flaw: It uses regular ROM to store the OS. Not flash ROM. This means you are locked into the version of PalmOS that ships with the Visor. 3.1, I think. This really sucks.
You may not care, but it is definiately something to be aware of.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
(agravaine wrote about the frustration of having a Visor 10-weeks-on-order)
;)
...
Agravaine is right -- the idea is cool, but the company is behind on shipping. I guess I can add that to the reasons that I haven't ordered a Visor yet
But here's hoping that a) you get yours in particular soon and b) that Handspring gets their gears ungummed. They ought to have expected the avalanche of orders when they came out with a cheaper, fuller-featured palm! (I'm glad they actually did come out with a cheaper, fuller-featured palm, though!)
Of course, similarly, if someone came out with a ultra-safe, ultra-roomy, ultra-beautiful, ultra-efficient, reasonably-priced automobile, you'd expect demand to outstrip supply, wouldn't you?
And on that front, can someone explain the licensing deal that lets Handspring make Palm OS machines? Is there anything preventing me and a few millionaire friends from forming WannHoldYourPalm Computing? What's to explain that *more* companies aren't (yet?) following HandSpring's lead? I guess the fact that so many ex-Palm brains are at HandSpring is one good reason, but
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Both of my regular boxes run full GUIs. I still don't think a color Palm Pilot is useful & that's just based on batter life. One of the nicest things about the Palm pilot, and the reason why those color PDAs are basically flops in comparison, is that it just works. You change batteries every month or two and it's there when you need it. The color devices have much shorter battery life because of the displays. Color is nice and as soon as color devices perform as well as greyscale, I'll buy one (Not Wince unless they realize it's not a desktop & design a PDA GUI). The concern is that color will be used as a gimmick. I don't want color if it comes at the expense of making the device less useful than my current Visor and Palm IIIe. Personally, I find wireless networking far more useful, even if it is (to some) less cool. That said, I quite agree with your last point - let them make whatever they want. If it's worth the money, I'll buy it...
Of course, the notorious answer for this is the simple: "Ever try to use your PC from the can?"
I don't know about other devices, but I know that for my camera (a Leica Digilux, same as a Fuji MX700), you can use the Rio's flash memory, but only BEFORE you intialize it in a Rio, after which it is impossible to use in the camera.
So, please for your sake make sure you don't count on automatically being able to exhange SmartMedia. They're my favorite, too -- cool form factor.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5