Comments on: Palm OS Continues Domination of Retail

The dude's a troll because he likes Handera? I like the 330; I'm not a troll.
I don't think there is "a best". The 330 sucks ass for gaming; that's bad. It's great if you want the voice-mem-virt.graff, etc etc; that's good.
I like the Clie, too. That thing is tits!
I like the m505 form. I wish everything was as small.

I think its okay for everyone to like what they like without broad sweeping accusations of company affiliation and message board pollution.

And if that makes me a troll, then I'm going to hide under my PDA and collect money from all those who pass!!!

http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/troll.htm

Be sure to read the section 'Dealing with trolls'.

The point of trolling is the same one as vandalism or sabotage - Use simple techniques to make complex systems work against themselves.

Popular tactics:
- Dictionary/grammar attacks. ('You spell it "Attack", idiot!)
- Playing sides against each other.('X Sucks. Y Rocks.' 'Y rocks. X sucks' Lather. Rinse. Repeat.)
- Personal insults, to generate quicker response. ('Geeks' 'Babies' 'Losers')

Why do people do this kind of stuff? Beats me. Maybe they get paid by certain Washington State companies that have already been caught doing numerous dubious advertising/antico/ampractices.

See: Astroturfing - http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/astroturfing.html
Also: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21245.html

If they're willing to pay $x0,000 for full-page ads in just about every magazine on the planet, how much more would this cost them?

Second, it seems pretty foolish to try to call someone a liar here. You have no proof that I'm making it up, and I don't care so much to go find and quote the posting back for your benefit.

The fact is, I saw that comment. I was curious about how handhelds rank in usage or units. I asked a question in what, I had assumed, is a mature forum for such questions. Unfortunately, your response disproves my last assumption.

By the way, I'm a Clie user - neither pro-Palm nor anti-Handera. I think the market will bear what it can bear, and only time will tell.

In my response I clearly state "I don't care so much to go find and quote the posting back for your benefit" - and that still stands. I know what I read, and you calling me names and insinuating that I am lying means little to me.

"Go away troll"? Keep baiting if you wish, but this is my last response. I'd hope to see an intelligent one at some point that addresses my question about a ranking.

Also, today was the very first time I've ever posted on Palm Infocenter (although I read the postings daily), so your baseless accusation that I have to "post this junk in every thread" once again shows your lack of maturity.

Given how quickly Palm has fallen in the past 12 months, the LAST thing Palm fans should be is overconfident about the platform's viability. Palm could easily be bankrupt by Christmas. The only reason we may have a guaranteed future for the OS is the major investment Sony is making in their PDAs. I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony controlling over 20 %of the market within a few months.

• Worldwide PDA market declined 21% overall in Q2, 2001
• Excluding Palm, the worldwide market grew by 8% (translation: people are not buying Palms)
• Q2 2000 to Q2 2001: Palm 54% down to 32%
• Worldwide 2001 Q2: Pocket PC is at 35%, Palm at 65%
• Q2 2001 Palm Europe sales: 40.5%
• Q2 2001 Pocket PC Europe sales: 40.6%

This is classic example of marketing hocus pocus that are suppose to mislead people to believe that something may have an advantage over the other. To the untrained eye these numbers might be telling, but to anyone who has any marketing background you can see that these stats are handpicked. individual stats like the one presented above when presented by themselves certainly look convincing, but once you compare them agains something, they will most definately look much different.
Example:

• Excluding Palm, the worldwide market grew by 8% (translation: people are not buying Palms)

This doesnt say anything. Other then the fact that the translation is a unbased conclusion there is no time basis to confirm or deny this presumtion. Also people may not be buying Palms, but they may be buying handsprings, sony's, and handeras.

• Q2 2000 to Q2 2001: Palm 54% down to 32%

Again these numbers dont say anything. Are these units sold, market share, revenue? Everyone pretty much knows why Q2 of 2001 was a bad time for palm. The first stat clearly stated that the overall PDA market was down in this quarter. The slowdown in the industry plus the fact that Palm preannounced the m500's too soon lead to this dip in whatever number this is. Again this is not compared to anything. What are the numbers of the other manufacturers?

• Worldwide 2001 Q2: Pocket PC is at 35%, Palm at 65%

There is something clearly wrong with these numbers. What do these numbers represent? The percentage totals to 100% so i guess psion's, rex'es and other PDA's are not included in these numbers.

• Q2 2001 Palm Europe sales: 40.5%
• Q2 2001 Pocket PC Europe sales: 40.6%

Again we all know how Q2 was Palm. But dispite this enormous advantage of 0.1 percentage point by PPC in europe compared to numbers in the US market, and Asian Market they certainly would look different.

Finally these are merely trends and it says nothing about the general overview of the PDA industry. I am not saying these numbers are false. They just cant be taken at face value.

>The PPC's today are the Palms of tomorrow.

I think you've got this one backwards. As far as add-ons go and extras, I think everyone's playing catch-up to Handspring, including PocketPCs. Yeah, you guys have GPS, MP3 players, and (CF) memory extensions, but who had em first? Handspring. Who has more (different) memory extensions available now than any other PDA manufacturer, Pocket PC included? Handspring(CF, SM, Mem Sticks, and MMC).

>Even the OS as you know it will not be the same.

This is a half-truth. Yes, I expect the OS to evolve and become more refined over time. No, I don't expect for Palm to become so relaxed in their OS development that it becomes as sloppy and memory hungry as the Pocket PC is.

This is exactly the kind of bigot I was talking about. The kind that says, "Mine's better than yours, but I don't care that yours does this, and has that, and that... I wouldn't use that anyway... here look at these numbers I found on the PPC Site... see Big Brother tells me I'm winning..."

Someone else has mentioned that we should not underestimate Microsoft, sitting what happened to Netscape. Microsoft had an advantage over Netscape because I could just start bundling IE with Windows, make it undeletable, and it would be easier for people to use than Netscape. What's Microsoft going to do to force people to use their PPCs? Bundle them with their desktop OS. Not likely. What are they going to do to make it harder for PalmOS users to do their backups with their OS? Make it harder for the USB and Serial ports to be used by the Palm Desktop? Not likely.

PalmOS is going to be around for a long time. PalmOS users, our investment is safe. In the unlikely event that the economy stays bad for the next 5-6 years, Handspring and Palm might fold because their pockets aren't that deep. Sony will stay. PalmOS development will continue. The PalmOS will not follow the likes of Apple and Netscape lying dead in the wake of Microsoft. Rest assured PalmOS users, it's here to stay.

I've pretty much stopped posting on the articles. occasionally i'll have something fairly important to say that is relavent to an article, but i find the flames to be a bit annoying.

my solution was to go to the forums. lotsa nice people there and i rarely get flamed (and normally i deserve it if i am). its a great way to actually discuss issues without flames

-Pepper

I love my Palm . . . do you?

Besides, it's good for a laugh.

If you don't like 'em, don't answer them. If a troll gets no attention, they lose interest and go away.

I'm pretty used to Slashdot.org, where there are 100 troll posts about 5 seconds after a story goes up, so it seems pretty tame over here.

Trolls == Other Irritated readers
Other Irritated readers != long-term pageviews

therefore
Trolls != long-term pageviews

I have no problem with differing opinions. It is the pointless trash-talk that I can't stand. I'm all for posts with different points of view, but when the poster's *only* function is to bash, then it drags down the whole idea of an open discussion forum.

Like everything else in life, it is the 1% that causes all the problems for the rest of us. All I ask is that people be respectful of the thoughts, ideas and opinions of others.