Comments on: palmOne Back to Palm Inc

Now, that I know it is Palm, I am in big time. I am going out today and buying one of each.....No, I'm headed to the Palm website right now to buy a Palm 31, 21, 72, TE2, T5 AND a brand new Palm LifeDrive.

I am so relieved. I now know what to buy.

Decisions, decisions!

But it other news, the next handheld to be released will once again be graced with the words, "PalmPilot" !

he he he

I've lived in Tennessee all my life, you can't tell me anything about the Big Orange that I don't already know. I was in Knoxville Tuesday.

That said, there are 49 other states in the union as well as Canada, Great Britain, and even Europe that don't bleed Tennessee Orange. Go figure. I think the previous "palm" logo had it right.

Wow... so the world stops at Europe now? How international of you... ... short-sighted americans.

JLM.

There was nothing wrong with the old blue palm logo - in fact most us would recognize it instantly. You could argue the orange logo is fresh and more up to date and reflects the new Palm. However these are false reasons to change. The brand should never change - make the brand mean fresh and contemporary through the products, the advertising and the promotions - not the brand.

The pity of it is they will waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on a rebrand rather than spend that on product development and actually delvering the next product.

Oh well - I like orange - my favourite colour - lets hope they stick with it now forever.

I wonder where I can get replacement badges to stoick on my old Palms, not to mention cover up that horrid palmOne logo on my Treo?

dave the rave

Dear Palm, Help I'm trapped in front of a box of wires and silicon. Please give me back my life.

At least it isn't spilling over into Apple's style of fashion

Ummm, yeah Duckworth... Coca-Cola has needed to change their logo around every year or two also.. Anyone else here remember that snappy "coke" logo of 1995? Man, it was sooooo non-digital. I love the 2005 Coke logo, I'd probably not even RECOGNIZE a Coke product from 15 years ago.

This "brand identity" stuff is so very important, thank gawd Palm recognized that it wasn't the devices that were buggy, their whole problem was that the logo wasn't the right shade and shape of orange...

Coke is a classic example of why you DON'T screw around with a solid brand. PERHAPS there are reasons other than the obvious to take control over the Palm name. Perhaps. But to flippantly and radically redesign your corporate logo nearly every other year just reeks of foolish trendiness and poor asset management.

OK Palm, you've spent your $30-40 Million, got your name and silly orange spot logo. Now get back to building handhelds.

... like giving PalmSource that $30m they needed to survive?

... like giving PalmSource that $30m they needed to survive?

Shhhhhhh!


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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
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The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

Oh my God.

This can only mean one thing: the next LifeDrive will have a hard DISCO in it!

And can it be? -- yes, the newest handheld is code-named Nixon!

Why do I have the feeling that you have already printed the picture above and pasted it on a dart board?

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Remember though that the WinMob division has been reorganised several times in the last few years (change of management, new marketing spin, etc). How much longer before the beancounters at M$ get tired of that illusion and consign WinMob to its grave?

M$ is a business. They did not get to where they are by throwing moneys at loss-making ventures. The WinMob division has been bleeding money for many years. Even with the cut-backs to head count (and the delays in the timetable for release of WinMob 5.0), they did not manage to break even last year.

If 'winning' means working for years and years without ever making a profit (as is the case with the WinMob division), then I'm a monkey's uncle.

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever has been struggling since its inception. It has been bleeding money from day 1. It has been restructured again and again, but the read ink still flows.

The latest spin from the restructured WinMob division is to focus on smartphones. But all the devices produced by the OEMs to date have been underwhelming (to say the least).

The latest 'great white hope' is the HP 6550 - but reviews of pre-production models have not been good. I have no idea what the carriers think of it, but Sprint (for one) will likely be very cautious given the problems they had with earlier HP models.

Will HP proceed to launch this model given their own financial problems? Probably (I guess), but they may not be able to throw enough money at on-going R&D for this unit - enough, that is, to get it right.

There is, of course, the rumour about Motorola's RAZR-type model. Whether this ever goes beyong the drawing board is open to doubt, particularly given Moto's chequered history of announcing a new unit and not following through with it.

This is all against the background of RIM's improving performance. They seem to be going from strength to strength. While they are a niche player, their little niche is doing very well. (Eg, over the last six months, the geeks in our IT department have been dumping their cell phones / palmpilots and adopting Blackberry's instead.) The Blackberry is (in so many ways) a crude device, but it has struck a chord with customers. RIM are slowly strangling the handheld computer market (and the smartphone sub-set of that market).

Anyway, the bottom line is this: Forget all the nice video presentations, power-point slides and press releases which are conjured-up by the marketing department as part of the launch of a new product. If the product losses money it WILL be terminated - terminated, with extreme prejudice, and regardless of how many upward-sloping charts marketing can dream up. It would be naive to believe otherwise.

You can pray to your god that MSFT pack up their tent in this space, but I can assure you that they will not. This is a war of attrition. The trend is clear, Palm is screwed. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Company X is already running Microsoft Exchange Server http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/default.mspx along with a dozen other Microsoft apps.

Suddenly, along comes Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) featuring the functional equivalent of "push" email, remote device deletion, etc.

Company X decides to give mobile email service to its employees.

Which will it choose?

a) Microsoft Exchange-ready Windows Mobile phones
b) Proprietary RIM hardware + software (expensive and potentially difficult to scale up to support large companies)
c) PalmOS phones with Good's or a few other companies' cobbled-together packages
d) Gamble and roll their own solution with any combination of phones + commercial software (ChatterEmail, SnapperMail, VersaMail, etc., etc.) hoping no tech support nightmares will ensue.

Most people will pick "a". A smash hit with a design like the HTC-Universal could rapidly catalyze the adoption of the Microsoft platform.

Feel free to bet against Microsoft ultimately winning this one. No doubt sue-happy RIM (AKA "Lawsuits In Motion") and Palm are already preparing their "We got our a$$es kicked by Microsoft so we're demanding compensation for our inability to compete" lawsuit.

Can't wait. Yawn.

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

The Palm Economy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

There is a huge amount of denial in the POS community. When you try and make things as clear as possible (e.g. POS shipped 1.8 million units in q1 2002, and 1.1 million in q1 2005) you never get a straight answer from them.

Like svrontis, they all just hope that WM goes away. This is also Kirvin's fantasy (MS will abandon WM in favour of longhorn mini-tablets)

http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91845&page=6&pp=15

If I was in a business and my sales decreased by nearly 50% in 3 years I would be very very worried. Forget WM (as you clearly want to) but why is POS not selling well?

Surur

Nothing could make less sense than the bottom line on both statements.

1. MS kept changing the name of their product when it was not getting anywhere. Now, that it has cut off Palm, I expect it to stop trying to sound like a Palm competitor. On the other hand, as you point out, RIM IS getting somewhere and may become MS's next target.

2. MS couldn't care less about losing money or about innovating in any area except its cash cow. The desktop OS. MS has never, ever produced a successful, innovative product. From mice, to mounded keyboards, from word processors, to browsers. The words innovative and successful are not in their vocabulary. Even that cash cow desktop OS was a copy of CPM, later Apple, and now Unix. No innovation, none of the time. The only reason MS is in the mobile OS area at all is because people were offered the Palm/US Robotics Aubry and MS was afraid customers might use it to get to the WWW instead of a WinTel system. They are now on to the phone OS deal for the same reason. If people got all their information processing work done on a Nokia/Symbian model, they might stop putting up with all the grief they get from their desktop/laptop.

Nope, sorry, Palm changing names on the way down in its one and only market vs. MS changing names to go up in a market it may no longer need anyway are not the same things at all.

No one believed MS would ever succeed in the mobile device space, and yet here we are. Microsoft has beaten Palm. WinMob now outsells PalmOS. In fact, Microsoft no longer has PalmOS in its sights..it is irrelevant. Their real target now is Symbian, or rather Nokia. RIM to a lesser extent. The next "big thing" is downloadable audio and video content on phones, and guess who is poised to win that fight? Microsoft of course. PalmOS is going be left out of this space because it has ZERO support from content services. There is no Napster client for PalmOS, no Windows Media Player for PalmOS, no support from Sony, Apple, etc. PalmOS can't playback DRM encrypted Windows Media audio, which means you can't download music from any online music service onto your phone. There is some minor support from Real's Rhapsody, but that's going nowhere.

So that means the only media rich mobile platforms will be Windows Mobile and Symbian. If this industry takes off, a lot of future Treo users will be greatly pissed off that their $400-600 device can't access music/content services, while kids with el cheapo Nokia phones can download audio and video onto their phones.

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

Dear Whiners, the recently announced restructuring/lay-offs mean that HP is now dead-in-the-water. (And judging by the performance of HP's CEO while he was at NCR, these lay-offs will be the first of a series.) WinMob has effectively lost its largest licensee. How are you going to explain that away?

http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2126742/blackberry-growth-fuels-pda-bonanza

So you expect them to give up a cash cow and not to be able to tender a full solution (server, desktop, notebook, PDA, PDA-phone)? Svrontis, keep dreaming please. It must be nice over there.

Surur

Ouch! That one stung all the way over here, and I was not even on Svrontis' side of the point.

Did you know Palm's average selling price is only around $285 (including the Treo)?

http://biz.yahoo.com/e/050405/plmo10-q.html

Surur

So, Palm is down to $285? Does that include the now sub-$100 Zires? My bet is that Palm pays about $35-40 for the average mono Zire. They wholesale them quite profitably for $70-80. But, it sure is not like it was when Palm Vx cost them about $200, wholesaled for $280 and retailed for anywhere from $300 to $450.

Personally, I don't see myself ever paying more than $200 for a PDA again. They all come down to that price and there are no real essential features even a Zire 72 lacks. I suppose I could go $300 for a really perfect model, but I don't see it. They always miss something. Right now, my fav would be an Axim X50v. And I would pay the $360 lowball price. But, not without a camera. So, I am in the sub-$200 market. I think most consumers are. But, that also puts me in Treo phone territory these days. I saw an ad for one at $175 with two year contract this week. Then again, I can't talk the SSS anymore.

The bottom line is that Palm is not making enough money to survive even one really bomb model. That will kill them. They survived the Palm M500 debacle when it was introduced before they were ready and they had a bunch of leftovers they had to lose money on. They don't have enough money to do that again.

As you point out, HP does. With what they are charging for their craptacular current PDA lineup, I would expect them to make money. But, will their customers put up with it? Will another maker with real brick outlets sneak in and bleed off that profit? Or will some phone maker take it all with a model that makes every Palm or WM model pointless?

http://www.blackberrycool.com/2005/05/05/00415/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=7133

Even Palm is up. That $285 is up from $225, which is up from $175 the year earlier.

Its a major illusion to think people are not willing to pay big bucks for PDA's. They are just willing to pay more for PocketPC's, which new OEM's really should take notice of.

Surur

* Durability
* Ruggability
* Efficient Cooling of the Handheld

Plastic Cases, what I have found out, when I owned the Tungsten T5, doesn't handle heat that well, and I felt that Plastic Cases, as handhelds become faster, will cause handhelds to be destroyed due to ambient heat--therefore it is extremely important that Palm considers using Smooth, Brushed, Heat-Sinking Anodized Aluminum not just for durability, but to cool the circuit boards, memory and processor chips of the handhelds.

I think Metal cases tend to cool the insides of the handheld much better than plastic, but I'm hoping that Palm will use Anodized Aluminum Casings for the Tungsten and LifeDrive line of Handhelds from this point on (as I'm getting tired of Plastic Casings, not for durability issues, but for heat problems that needs to be rectified in the future).

I think that there should be Copper Basing aimed at the memory and processor chips of the circuit board and the case to be all-anodized aluminum for efficient heat dissipation.

Those of you who favor metal cases should think about Anodized Aluminum instead--Heat inside the Handheld should also be an issue, not just durability.

Powered by Palm OS since March 2002

Have fun swapping SD cards... memory/WiFi.

As for metal shells and wifi, the LD has WiFi in a metal shell doesn't it?

Zodiac2/T616/WiFi'd

"Ruggability" is not a real word.

The corporate market (as well as some individuals and poor Georg) has been screaming for a ruggedized, industrial-spec "ToughPalm" device for ages now. Right now the Symbol units are available and pretty dang robust but they use stone-age m500-or-lower technology.

Matsu****a, bring 'em on!

The new logo looks like something I'd expect to see teenagers and college students carrying. It seems like they're struggling to be "hip and trendy" rather than designing products for professionals.

Of course, orange has never been high on my list of "favorite colors", so that might be part of my disdain, too.

--
PalmPilot Pro (1997) -> III (1998) -> Vx (1999) -> m500 (2001) -> m515 (2002) -> ???

GREAT
-Springboard modules were a unique experience. A Visor could potentially be more than any Clie or Palm Inc device with all the right modules. Adding stuff like voice recorder, video recorder, modem, etc. does the trick. It was also fun to show ppl that a PDA could also be used to make phone calls or even give yourself a nice relaxing massage (that's right, massage with 2 A's, as in a beauty palor and NOT AOL IM)
-sw extras were nice. Advanced Calc (better than Parens Lite, but lower than Parens itself), Datebook+ (stripped down version of Datebook3), and CityTime (stripped down version of the retail one) were 3 apps right there that i found VERY useful.
-other extras.... Visor Deluxe and later came with styli with reset pins and screwdrivers, snap cover, stylish 'ice' cradles
-GREAT tech support.
-nice, tactile, responsive buttons

BEHIND
-I like SD cards better in the end quite honestly. WIDELY supported, in PDAs, PCs, digicams, and beyond
-no hi-res, altho in all fairness, neither did Palm Inc... hi-res was a Sony only territory at the time.
-more integration would've been nice. Even tho my Visor could potentially surpass newer models, I liked how my z71, my next PDA had digicam and MP3 player intergrated. No extra modules/physical add-ons to lug around at no extra cost. And that's not even crossing into the hi-res, color screen
-abandoned the PDA only devices bef jumping ship completely

As for the remark to bury the Tungsten line.... no No NO!!!

Zires are either too low end or multimedia oriented to offer high end specs and features, Lifedrive is still in its infancy, especially at that price and amt of bugs. Tungstens are the last alternative. Sure, the T5 may have been a letdown, but I still consider the T|T3 to be one superb device (with bad points, like the obvious battery life). It's still a great value for the average price of $325 now.

They spent $14 million on CEOs for two companies last year:)

... one may switch to the darkside for a variety of reasons ... but PIMs!?!? Never heard that one yet.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

As for your other comment towards the designers needing to put effort towards R&D and not a new logo. Again, you are misfounded. People who design the logo rarely deal with design and implementation of the product until teh prodcut is finished. So, speaking on this end, you need to complain about the items that will come out in two years, as the ones that will come out next Spring are being finalized now. That an we know that Palm/palmOne/Palm releases twice a year Spring and Fall (only once happened during the summer if I recall correctly). Looking for more than patches now is asking for something that wont happen. Come to think of it, besides HP (which has a Summer/Fall release schedule) you wont see ANY new products until the fall.

As for more robust PIM, you probably came from a before palmOne PDA where the enhanced PIM apps werent there. Not that Pocket Outlook is any better really, but to move to a WinMob device on PIMs alone, you are probably more interested in your desktop being in your hand than you are in understanding efficiency. Since palmOne, the PIM offerings on Palm/palmOne handhelds has been much better out of the box. Before that, well...Lets just say I used a third party program to help things out too. If you can get by with the basic PIM on WinMob devices, and not on palmOne (not Palm, not the new Palm either) then you are doing better than a ton of WinMob folks who swear by SPB and Agendus :)

mobileministrymagazine.blogspot.com
antoinerjwright.com

Palm has done a wonderful job over the years of adding mimimal features and repackaging the same device (i.e., m500, m515, t2, t3, e and e2). However, they sold at a premium. So, I refused to be bamboozled, lied to, deceived, misled, lead astry, tricked, punked by a change in the company name and logo. However, I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the rumoured Tungsten XX (the T5 with added Wi-fi)....SIKE!!

JLM.

I have just about every release of Palm's high-end product up until the Tungsten T3. I've spent thousands of dollars in hardware, software and accessories. However, I lost interest simply because Palm just wasn't doing it for me anymore. They became boring.

My requirements aren't that complex (at least I don't think so) based on the technology available today. However, wouldn't you find a device about the 1/4th the size of the LifeDrive with celluar (GSM), Wi-fi, and Bluetooth functionality attractive? Especially, if it was built on the m500-series or simular platform. I realize they would never release something like that because it would be in direct competition with the Treo devices.

Let's see what will happen upon the release of upcoming Palm device. With rumored devices (i.e., Motorola's PocketPC Razor Blackberry knockoff) over the horizon, I hope Palm has a few tricks up their sleeve.

The purpose of your post is?? Obviously, my comment grabbed your attention since you posted such a meaningless response. I hope you enjoy the rest of our day!! :)

I too changed to PPC (Dell X50v), but I don't post about all the 'great' things PPC has. Yes, I gave up on Palm after the T5, but I still watch (and hope) for a Palm device to use again. Some people here might think of your post(s) as someone who is trolling. Just a thought...

All good things...

The bottom line is this, if Palm does focus on the market and watch the success of their competitors, then they won't have to worry about the name change or explaining to their faithful customers why they are closing shop.

Ask yourself, what type of product(s) can Palm produce to make you want to buy one? I have already described what I would like to see in previous posts. I don't think $500 handhelds, new headquarters or a new logo is the answer. In today's market, no device should be produced without a removable battery, bluetooth & wi-fi, and a high resolution color screen.

As far as I'm concerned we, the customers, are the big joke. We continue to pay premium dollars for Palm technology that is years behind. So, do you think I should be excited and ready to ante up my dollars to Palm for old technology the consider to be new?

Obviously, the have a helluva marketing team since the have been able to repackage and sell the same concept for the past 2 or 3 years. As it stands for now, it's the R&D and Design team that seems to be the weakest link. I'm not in favor of their latest product line because it is the same as last year or the year before. In fact, their products have gone from the "coolest of the cool" to an expensive paper weight...a brick. Remember when Palm would fit in your shirt pocket? Or you could keep the thing going for two-weeks on "AAA" batteries, you could always find batteries when you needed them. How bout the chip you could add to your Palm for paging, e-mail or get the news before the RIM Blackberry? I feel for all the i705 users. What about the cool cases that allowed you have Palm, pencil and paper (for emergency use) all together. Nevermind, anxiously waiting for weeks for the release of new devices was like salivating over Janet's SuperBowl mishap.

So, before you decide to take a swipe or jab at my comments, please understand, my comments are not here to promte the PPC but, to generate thoughts on how a company that dominated the PDA industry for years seems to be concerned about a new logo, letterhead, and corporate headquarters. After all, we (the consumer) already paid for new logo years ago.

-Dual wireless
-Decent battery life
-320*480 screen of good quality (OLED is *not* a necessity at this point)
-Voice recorder
-Charging LED
-Good hardware buttons
-Reset button not requiring unscrewing stylus cap
-User-selectable Graffiti 1/2
-OS STABILITY
-Solid build quality
-At least 64mb of RAM, NVFS or otherwise.

Nice secondary items to have:

-Vibrating alarm
-Dual SDIO or single SDIO w/ internal flash drive
-Metal body or at least metal-trim on bezel
-Loud alarms
-Slim formfactor with rail on left side of unit for case attachments (Palm V, m500, T5)
-T|T/LD style boing boing stylus
-Good software bundle
-Cradle included

The vast majority of the above is not leading edge tech!!!
It comes down to Palm/P1 being penny wise & dollar foolish! I can live without 802.11g, OLED screen, built-in 2mp digicam w/ video capture, a built-in HD etc. ID the core PDA is at least capable of decent multimedia, doesn't craap out on me after 6 months of daily usage, and has a battery that can get me through a few continuous workdays without recharging.

All of the above points have been available one at least one OS5 Palm/PalmOne device over the past 2.5 years. In fact, the LifeDrive has many of the above points addressed with the glaring omissions of slim formfactor, good battery life, and OS STABILITY. Palm HAS the resources and know-how to assemble a solid handheld with at least 3/4 of the above features.

Basically, give us a slimmer LD without the HD & the bugs and with a removable battery. The Palm faithful have been crying for such a device since 2002 (at least). It's not a matter of R&D (well, it IS at the OS level of things) it's a matter of cost cutting and making the bean counters stop skimping on RAM etc.

If the hkklife's list is truly "for today" and not forward thinking, then where is the device right now? And what would be wrong with going ahead and building it now and selling it as the mid-range device while they spend the big bucks on r&d for the "two year from now" hardware? [exasperation] No, I know that simply isn't going to happen.[/exasperation]

Personally, I've quit adding to my "dream list" in the hopes that Palm will finally deliver. It's called "lowered expectations."

(And just to clarify, Palm, if you somehow think my lowered expectations are a good thing, think again.)

I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra."

MOST typical Palm users aren't looking for something with the LD's HD or the VZ90's OLED scren (right now, at least).

The "average" power user just wants the usual features clamored for long ago---dual wireless, 320*480, choice of Graffiti variants, good audio playback, OS stability, good formfactor and a removable battery. That's NOT AT ALL too much to ask given today's tech and falling component prices. The T7 looks to be a step in that direction but it'll (likely) have the usual shortcomings--fixed internal battery, no voice recorder, no vibrating alarm, no charging LED, Graffiti 2, no cradle etc.

So, they lose sales. If my Zire 72 breaks today, I am in the market for an Axim, not a Palm. And to point back to the top of this thread/topic; It has nothing to do with the name or logo.

I do not expect Palm-powered units to be feature poor but I certainly don't expect them to ever compete head to head with WinMob. Palm is too small and cash poor to be aggressive with the latest & greatest hardware so they need to shore up the low and middle ends of the marketplace and (for the time being) use Treos to dabble in the higher margin devices. I'm fine with Palm staying mid-market feature wise while simultaneously focusing on maintaining/perfecting what made them grow by leaps & bounds in the late 90s--battery life, UI, speed, stability, software base etc.

I have a suspicion that the Growth and Peak of Palm was due to irrational exuberance at the turn of the century. When the bubble burst, so did Palm, and device shipments never really recovered. Now they DID ship a pile of devices, but obviously people were as much caught up in the high tech go-go atmosphere as the companies. Obviously after investing $1000's in high-tech companies whats $300-500 on a PDA to keep track of it all. I suspect most of these devices are in drawers somewhere.

Did you know in 2002 Gartner still predicted $17 billion PDA's would be shipped by 2007?
http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/hardware/article.php/1472941

This 1999 article from CNN (which is actually quite good) really gives a feeling of the optimisms of the time. It talks of PDA's outshipping desktops by 2003, selling more than 21 million.
http://cgi.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/14/handheld.idg/

Win CE has grown more slowly and rationally, and will hopefully be more resilient to change in market conditions.

Surur

I see Palm Vs and Visor Pros fairly often. In fact, the most "common" new device I see would be T|Es, Treos 600/650s or the previous-gen Axims & iPaqs. I've never seen a LifeDrive, T5 etc from Palm out in "the wild" so to speak.

WinMob has grown more slowly and rationally, yes, but I still maintain that Palm needs to keep their focus on the low and midrange of the market ($250 and below). In fact, I'd advise all future Palm models (non-Treos that is) to launch at $300 or below, with a very strong emphasis on the key $200 price point.

Yep, and it irks me to no end that I can't get that hardware without moving to WinMob. Or, I have to pay twice as much for a LD and get the "hard drive feature" that I so desparately don't want. (No offense to you LD owners who love your "gigs of storage", but I'd rather have the size/weight/battery-usage reduction and choose my own storage size in the form of "non-moving" flash memory which I will likely still be using long after your hard drive grinds to a halt.)

T5 body, T3 feature set, + Wifi, + a second card slot. How hard can that be? And if I can get that on a PPC for <$300, why can't Palm do it?

My T2's digitizer is dying. I'm in the market for a replacement. If the rumored T7 doesn't show up soon or shows up with the "dumbed-down" T5 feature set, I am seriously going to have to consider another platform. And..., It has nothing to do with the name or logo.

I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra."

this seems the most random post ever otherwise

Thank you for your help, John Berger.

http://home.ingdirect.com/products/products.html

It seems like an exact 'cut and paste' job from the ING corporate identity. Just add some strange futuristic font for the "Palm" part.

So maybe the designer was bored redesigning the logo every other year and just outsourced the thing this time to some high school kid for a hundred bucks and an E2. If they paid more, they paid too much.

Now when I log onto ING direct from my Treo 700 (with 256MB Real RAM) I will see TWO orange logos. Radical, dude.

Palm, formerly known as PalmOne, formerly known as Palm.

You've come a long way, baby...

"Welcome to palmOne, formerly Palm, Inc."

and in the middle of the page it says

"Palm, Inc. (formerly palmOne, Inc.)"

but it should say -

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshiit." - W. C. Fields

I bought the slanders against 6.0, but I still maintain that 6.1 *is* ready for prime time.

Make it so, Ed!

This falls right in line with my previous thoughts---PalmOne "nudged" PalmSource to get Cobalt 6.1 to a working,shipping level. Then during the "Palm" acquisition, some secret treaty was signed to let P1 buy up Cobalt and all its related IP this fall for pennies on the dollar. That'll ensure three things:

-P1/Palm can field a decent line of Cobalt-equippied handhelds & Treos in 2006
-PalmSource gets a badly needed cash injection (past the $30 mil they already got) to hang in there a while longer to develop PoL
-No other licensees can get their hands on a Cobalt unless they can pry it out of Palm's hands and/or struck a deal earlier with PalmSource (GSPDA etc).

All of this adds up to what will basically be Palm releasing at least two or three Cobalt units in '06, buying up the pieces of PalmSource at firesale pricing in fall '06, and getting a Treo running PoL by fall '07.

Properly tweaked/patched, Garnet IS still srvicable for low to midrange handhelds for the next year (think T|E2 and below). It's the LifeDrives/T7/Treos that so desperately need Cobalt. Like Mike, I've still be maintaining that all of that time, man-hours, and $ thrown at Cobalt is going to pay off EVENTUALLY for SOMEONE.

He actually sounds fun to me. I mean, how much more fun can it be. Posting the exact rumors that everyone who is still stupid enough to believe anything Palm says believed the last 5 times. Fun, and interesting in an annoying and boring kind of way.

Along about Christmas we'll hear someone calling himself "M Mace" revealing exactly the same rumors about the new Treo/DeathStar/Dire model that runs Lipalm.

FrankenGarnet and FrankenCobalt! Back from the dead!!!

http://x3.putfile.com/7/18915252740.jpg

Why would it take so long for Palm to spit it out?

1) This is the way they are
2) PalmSource dropped Mac syncing
3) Palm would have to write a new Desktop/HotSync software for Cobalt anyway -- including the *Mac* version.
4) Having gotten the Treo established, they can now risk amping the OS

Numbers are illustrative, not time-sequential...

And I'd REALLY like it to be true. The bump in RAM/FRAM/whatever makes sense, although I'd like to see 128MB, not 64MB.

For the naysayers -- why would WANT it to be UNTRUE?

If Apple is going to do that why should Palm spend their money on it?

I think PalmSource dumped the Mac syncing simply in order to cut costs in order to survive! There's no point having Mac syncing when there's no Palm OS to provide!

PalmSource has sunk to the same level of desperation as a man with gangrene in his leg: He may not like hopping along but he's got to chop off his leg if he's to save himself. The question we're all asking here is whether PalmSource has cut away enough of the infection or worse still, cut his head off by mistake in the effort to save himself?
Palm (formerly PalmOne) has been donating blood (dollars) for the operation but that's so it can be first in line for PalmSource's organs (PalmLinux) should it croak on the table.

It did surprise me to find out that the Mac sync was different to the Windows sync. I still don't understand why the Mac can't speak to Palm OS the same way Windows can. After all, we use different browsers on different platforms (XP, OS X, Linux, Symbian) yet they all (by and by) interpret HTML in the same way.

Perhaps this is something Mark/Space have achieved with their Palm syncing software for Mac OS X.

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"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight � it�s the size of the fight in the dog" - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Apple recently announced making a profit of 330 million dollars in their last quarter.

This suggests:
a) with rising sales of BOTH iPods AND Apple Macs there's something Apple is doing right which PalmSource and Palm are doing wrong.
b) at this rate PalmSource and Palm will be long dead and buried by the time Apple "fails" with the iPod.

Apple uses iTunes as a loss leader to sell iPods, just as Microsoft uses Windows as a loss leader to sell Office and other expensive Microsoft software. Therefore Apple won't allow other players to connect to iTunes any more than Microsoft will allow PC makers to install another OS next to Windows. It's not dumb, it's business.

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"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight � it�s the size of the fight in the dog" - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Yeah, you are probably right. I was actually just digging for a response with the comment that iPod will fail. They seem to be playing against their competitors, both hardware and software, much better than Palm is. We'll see.

"I would hire a few Palm geeks, prominent members of the user community with established name recognition, to work for Palm and surf the various discussion boards all day. They'll be given full access to what's coming up at Palm, new products, and access to the developers."

OK, Kirvin. Pick seven from this list:

Foo Fighter (K