Comments on: No New Palm Handhelds This Spring?
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RE: 'the Treo 650 (released Oct '04)'
Seriously, joad, all good points and all reasons I've avoided Treos like the plague thus far.
I personally think the dormant formfactor of the Treo is worth criticizing as much as the paltry 32mb of RAM the 600 & 650 were saddled with. Ugly protruding antennae are SO last millennium (or at least 2004!) and are the hallmarks of oversized, under spec'd American CDMA handsets. I know we are just one into the four new Treos promised for this year so a lot can change over the next six months.
As far as the handheld market goes I think Palm would be making a grievous mistake to can the PDA line. Sure it's an area of no growth but the Palm name is synonomyous with PDAs/handhelds. The margins are still relatively decent on the better PDAs and it always gives Palm a nice fallback plan if things get nasty with the carriers. PDAs are also a good introduction to the OS & the company for people who cannot afford or are unwilling to plop down $ to a stifling 2 year contract to the carriers.
I'd recommend Palm stick with FrankenGarnet for the immediate future (through '07) and keep tweaking & refining the core PDA lineup at the major "value" price points--$100, $200 and $300. Give the Z22 an SD slot & mp3 capabilities. Give the E2 more RAM & a camera. Give the TX an internal flash drive, more DBCache, a charging LED and a larger battery. There are plenty of cheap & inexpensive tweaks Palm can keep pulling off to keep the PDA bumping along for at least another year, regardless of Garnet's limitations.
With HP basically throwing in the towel in regards to new iPaqs and Dell liable to can the whole Axim line any day now, Palm would be VERY unwise to try and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by totally giving up on the type of device that brought them to prominence in the 90s.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX
RE: 'the Treo 650 (released Oct '04)'
RE: 'the Treo 650 (released Oct '04)'
May You Live in Interesting Times
RE: 'the Treo 650 (released Oct '04)'
Palm's gotta be throwing $$$ at something and it aint PDA's or the 700P.
Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: 'the Treo 650 (released Oct '04)'
The real ticket is gonna be pricing & carrier availability AND what Palm has up their collective sleeves for later in '06 and in '07. I'd personally like to see a repackaged slimmer/antenna-less CDMA Treo (even running FrankenGarnet) later this year or early next year. No major hardware changes, just a much more stylish and slightly smaller package.
The T3's main problem were a flaky digitizer, iffy slider reliability, and horrendously short battery life. At $399 we expected a bit more.
The T5's main problems were glaring issues with NVFS/lag, randon resets, and poor build quality. At $399 we expected a LOT more from this one.
The TX's main problems are a lack of DBCache and the usual Palm cost-cutting. Battery life could still be better as well. At $299 or less we CAN be a bit more forgiving with some of the penny pinching.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX
Careful what you wish for...
Palm will chuck their OS in favour of a UMPC-killer Linux version or simply give up the fight and build all their devices with the UMPC Windows OS.
Hey, if this sort of fundemental rethink seems to be working for Apple....
;)
Then again, I can't see WinMobile being all that far behind. Microsoft would do well to have a limited use smartphoneOS and scrap the rest in favour of just one OS. WinMobile 5 has proven to be a disaster for them so far....
Your replacement TX may look like nothing Palm has produced before
RE: Careful what you wish for...
The only way around that is to build a device with full laptop specs, ala a UMPC, but the whole developing UMPC boondoggle is showing that to do such a thing with acceptable performance and specs, at a price and at a size people will actually buy, is considerable more difficult than saying it.
RE: Careful what you wish for...
Hey, if this sort of fundemental rethink seems to be working for Apple
If anything Palm has made the more fundamental rethink - using more than one mobile OS for the devices it currently sells.
Every single version of Mac OS X was made by Apple to run on either PowerPC or x86 chips. The only change made by Apple was their decision last year to actually create and sell products which use the x86 version. Unlike Palm, Apple is using the same OS, just on a different processor. Coincidentally Microsoft did the same thing with Windows Mobile when they moved to StrongArm/XScale processors.
Let's face it, Palm doesn't own Palm OS Garnet or Cobalt, so its selling Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices is just like Dell or HP selling Windows and Linux computers. They have a choice of OS to sell.
"...this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it."
GK Chesterton - Utopia of Usurers, 1917
RE: Careful what you wish for...
- Economist John Kenneth Galbraith
RE: Careful what you wish for...
So Long Palm
1.The OS gets buggier with every model. I would have a new TX except that Fitaly won't run because Palm broke it.
2. Crucial features are left off every new model and have been so for years. The TX lacks a microphone. The T5 wireless. The Z22 a memory slot. The TE a full screen. etc. etc. etc.
3.They have apparently abandoned the camera model market and though no WinMob maker has a current camera model out either the phone makers all have them by the billions and the technology is just the same. It would cost Palm practically nothing to offer a camera model of the TX.
4.There is no new software pushing the platform because the software developers know there won't be new hardware to enpower it. Why develop a video editing or photo editing program for a maker/platform that won't even keep up with cameraphone specs?
Sorry Palm. It would take a complete change in your way of making PDAs to get me to buy another of your products now.
RE: So Long Palm
How have you found swapping over to the Toshiba? Have you been able to move all your data? Get apps on the Toshiba which do everything you do on the Palm? Do you find it easier to do what you need to do on the Toshiba than on the Palm?
"All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it."
GK Chesterton - Utopia of Usurers, 1917
RE: So Long Palm
I think if you go to the Toshiba website and try to purchase a Toshiba PDA, you won't find any! If the Toshiba was such a great PDA, how come they aint made any more? The PDA market is in the doldrums right now, but I suspect that the only PDA maker left standing will be Palm. It's clear that Palm is waiting for the LinuxOS to delivered by Access/Palm Source and that's fine with me. WinMob is so successful at producing a PDA phone that they had to get Palm to produce a good one for them. Nuff Said...
"WinMob users are a bunch of follow-the-herd weanies who cannot think for themselves."
RE: So Long Palm
I rather disagree with your first assertion.
True, the Treo 650 (at launch) and T|T5 were the nadir as far as Palm stability was concerned. The LifeDrive was equally bad. But the TX is a solid, stable model that improves in nearly every way from the T5 all while coming in at a much lower MSRP.
I'd rather see Palm offering 2-3 SOLID, stable and reasonably priced PDAs going forward than the motley bunch of ragtag models with any number of "issues".....ever since the m505 reliability and Palm have not co-existed peacefully within the same sentence.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX
RE: So Long Palm
As a Palm TX user I gotta tell ya, I don't need no stinking Fitaly! Virtual Graffit pad and the ability to switch from keyboard to Graffiti input eliminates any need for Fitaly. The silkscreen buttons can be switched readily to launch other applications as needed giving me the ability to "multitask". Something that has existed from the Tungsten T3 on. Any advantages WinMob might have are nill at best. The TX is extremely stable and the battery life is far better than any previous model with wifi. The TX is just about a stand-alone model if you include networking applications such as Wifilepro.
RE: So Long Palm
That said, Palm went to Microsoft to make a WinMob Treo, not the other way around. HTC has worked perfectly fine for WinMob. Why? Because Palm needed a Treo that enterprise customers would take seriously.
My experiences with the TX were rather negative; it hard reset on me without any third-party software installed a few times and the CDMA stack is broken. But it is an improvement over the Lifedrive and the Treo 650 (at launch). Palm would be wise to go back to an earlier OS5 version (when it was still stable, around 5.2) and work their way up from there.
But of course, we'll see what happens. My money's on Palm creating their own Linux OS and not waiting for Access.
RE: So Long Palm
I am not really happy with the WinMob Toshiba, but I simply won't use another Palm without a full screen and Fitaly. 80% of my PDA usage is typing so the 40 WPM I get from Fitaly with 1 mistake per sentence to correct is not going to go down to 10 WPM with 5 mistakes to correct per sentence with Grafitti. No way. I get even better entry marks with the Toshiba. I suspect it has a higher res digitizer.
I have written in the forum at PPC Thoughts about my Toshiba and Palm Zire. The following might answer some of the above question.:
Keep both? Should I really keep both my Palm Zire 72 AND my new Toshiba e800 in my pockets all the time?
I know this may sound crazy, but I just got a new Toshiba E800 Windows Mobile. I was surprised by how painless it was to upgrade the OS to WM 2003 SE, load the drivers for my Palm Infrared keyboard, and install software.
BUT, the internal speaker is simply not up to alarms. At its loudest I can hear it OK inside, but as a letter carrier I am outside 75% of my day. I use Diddlebug on my Palm Zire 72 3-4 times a day. I can't miss alarms.
Now, the good part of the Toshiba is its word processing and that is what I am doing with my handheld 80% of the time. This is why I am trying to move on from my Zire 72. I was really looking forward to a Zire 73 that would offer a version of Docs to Go with support for native files that works. I have tried several times and DtG simply won't run reliably on my 72. I also want the full screen.
The e800 I am typing this on has that for sure. I have never, ever seen such a beautiful screen on any device.
I also want the file and picture handling capabilities of Windows Mobile. With literally hundreds and hundreds of documents I have just grown completely out of using a Palm OS model for word processing.
So, I have been carrying both all weekend since I still needed my old alarms, files, and addresses until they were all up and running on the Toshiba. Now it looks like those alarms will never be up and running on the Toshiba. I haven't bought Apmemo. The program looks fine, but the Toshiba OS or hardware or something won't let it replace DiddleBug on my Palm.
What has surprised me is how little bother it is to carry both. I have four pants pockets and my Summer shirts have two big lower pockets and one big top pocket. That even makes room for my folding keyboard.
Here is another silly conundrum. The Palm will pop up the time and date quickly and easily when it is off by just pressing the center button. But, when running a program the top menu line doesn’t display the time at all. The Toshiba displays the time at the top, but not the date. The Palm has the battery status icon up there. The Toshiba does not. The full-screen Palms have a screen rotation icon, the WinMob models need you to go through all these clicking steps to rotate the screen. Why can’t they just put battery, time, date, and screen rotation icons at the top or bottom of the display all the time? There is room for them.
So, I now have the very best of both worlds--and the worst. Of course, what I really want is a single model that would have it all. There is none. I hold out money all day long for the manufacturer that puts one out. I could do most all of it on the PPC if there were a camera model with VGA and the alarms worked. In fact, if HP offered the discontinued RX3715 with a VGA screen and PPC 2002 OS I would be in heaven. Or if Dell added a camera to the x51v and went back to the PPC 2002 OS...Oh, who am I kidding. It’s a mess and it isn’t ever going to get done right. I am hoping that the newer Loox or Fujitsu models come to the US for fully supported sales. Then again, I would need to know that they have louder more reliable alarms than this Toshiba. Another odd thing here is that the Zire won't play music loud enough through the internal speaker for me to listen to outside, but the Toshiba will. Yet, the Zire alarms are louder by far.
I LOVE the Toshiba for: file handling, photo viewing, word processing, big storage options, CAPACIOUS fat battery, 128 MB Ram, easy installation of programs, multi-tasking, standard real fonts, standard real graphics, Aidem Pocket Painter, OliveTree Bible, Resco photo and file, Fitaly, Apmemo.
I LOVE the Palm for: camera, zippiness, reliable Diddlebug alarms, the popup time display, Fitaly Stamp.
I hate the Toshiba for: generally buggy OS, alarms don’t work, programs launch like they are stuck in mud, capacious FAT battery, no flip screen cover.
(One final note on the e800. It is stuck in some kind of mode that makes it fall asleep. After 15-30 minutes of inactivity it automatically acts exactly as if the hold button were slid up. Nothing turns it on except the power button and alarms don’t sound. The alarm screen will be up when turned on, but by then the alarm time is long passed. Anyone know how to fix this? I could almost use the Toshiba alone if I could get this to work.)
I hate the Palm for: generally buggy OS, no real files, no real fonts, small square screen, no software version of Fitaly, 32 MB Ram, dinky battery, generally weaker software, no flip screen cover.
The biggest problems for both are the OS bugginess and the lacking hardware set. The HTC Universal has every single hardware feature I could want and more. The old OLD Psion RevoPlus had practically the perfect OS. I carried one for three months before a hardware failure and it never ever not even once in all that time needed a reboot or had any other OS messup whatsoever. So I know it is possible to do a mobile OS properly. I am pretty sure no one is going to do it.
:
Perhaps this isn't the place to present all that, but since some seemed they might be interested there it is.
RE: So Long Palm
1.The OS gets buggier with every model. I would have a new TX except that Fitaly won't run because Palm broke it.
The exact same thing can be said about Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile 5 is one of the buggiest operating systems I have ever encounted on any platform. Not only does it run very slow but simple things don't work reliably such as the alarms (you can set them but that doesn't mean they are actually going to go off at the set time).
Although Palm OS 5 is getting buggier with each new device at least it still performs it's basic functions well where as Windows Mobile 5 seems to have issues with such things.
2. Crucial features are left off every new model and have been so for years. The TX lacks a microphone. The T5 wireless. The Z22 a memory slot. The TE a full screen. etc. etc. etc.
I agree with you here. It seems like Palm likes the idea of leaving out key features that are very simple to imlement. For instance, as you said, the T|X lacks a microphone. the Treo line lacks Wi-Fi, the Z22 has no expansion slot, and so on. I have no idea why Palm does this because it hurts them in the long run.
3.They have apparently abandoned the camera model market and though no WinMob maker has a current camera model out either the phone makers all have them by the billions and the technology is just the same. It would cost Palm practically nothing to offer a camera model of the TX.
Personally I like not having a camera on my PDA or cell phone. But this is due to my personal preference and I can understand why people would want cameras on their devices. It seems rather trivial to offer a model with a camera and one sans camera.
4.There is no new software pushing the platform because the software developers know there won't be new hardware to enpower it. Why develop a video editing or photo editing program for a maker/platform that won't even keep up with cameraphone specs?
This is another area where I can't agree with you. I do agree with the fact that their isn't a lot of software that pushes the platform but on the other hand there is no real need for a video editing program on a PDA. PDAs are suppose to be sub computers mostly used for personal organizing tasks and other things suited for small devices.
The original idea was that these devices were suppose to be small light weight personal organizers which have battery life measured in weeks and did the task they were designed to do very well. Now people want the same power out of these little devices as they get out of their laptops which really isn't possible to do since laptops are larger and are able to have much faster components (for instance a gigahertz processor in a PDA would slaughter the battery life).
In the end I believe Palm isn't doing the greatest job in the world but as far as PDAs go they have the only ones out there that I still like (mostly because they are the only ones besides Garmin who provide Palm OS systems). I just wish they would get a little more motivated and create some new and original devices (for instance the LiveDrive, however flawed, was a neat overall idea but poorly implemented).
RE: So Long Palm
RE: So Long Palm
As for the other issues, is your e800 running WM2003 or 2003 Second Edition? It should be under Start > Settings > About.
RE: So Long Palm
Timothy, to get the date and time in the title bar, look here.
Show Date and Time in Title Bar
The Pocket PC display the time in the title bar, the user can select Analog or Digital using tap&hold on the time. But some people also want the date to be easily available, this was actually available on Palm-size PC devices. Fortunately there is a tweak to display both the date and time instead of time only in the Pocket PC title bar :
Browse to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ShellCreate a binary value named "TBOpt" and set its value to "13 00 00 00".
Save any unsaved document and reset your Pocket PC.
http://www.pocketpctweaks.com/pocketpc_tweaks/show_date_time_title_bar
Surur
They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...
RE: So Long Palm
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their profits.
RE: So Long Palm
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ShellCreate a binary value named "TBOpt" and set its value to "13 00 00 00".
Save any unsaved document and reset your Pocket PC.
Okaaay... OR you could just install WISbar which happens to be a cool program anyway, and does a lot more than just show the date.
RE: So Long Palm
* Magic Button - quick switching between programs, really closes them when you click on the X button, and provides a "Home" button in the top bar to minimize all applications and take you directly to your Today screen. Also provides a small but useful battery status meter at the top of the screen.
* DogFood's Registry Tweaks - among other things, it provides the Date with the Time, without having to resort to doing the reghack yourself, or getting the WisBar "experience". Also allows you to assign screen rotation to a hard button if you like.
* WakeUp Tweak by Burr Oak Software. Fixes the alarm issues you described. Very handy and I have NEVER experience alarm issues since installing it on my X50v (which runs WM2003SE like you have on your Toshiba). Get it here:
http://www.burroak.on.ca/ptafaq.html#wakeuptweak
* HandyMenu, which offers many common functions in a popup menu such as:
- Soft Reset
- Power Off
- Hard Reset
- Screen Brightness applet (from Ctrl Panel)
- Memory control panel applet
- Screen rotation (to right, to left, or flip)
- A screen capture feature
- Many others
Combined with HandySwitcher, the button for HandyMenu can be placed in the top bar of the screen, so it is available no matter what application you are using (rather than just from the Today screen. But if you don't want to purchase HandySwitcher just for that feature, then the Home Button in MagicButton allows you to quickly get to the Today screen to use HandyMenu.
With the exception of HandyMeny/HandySwitcher, all of the above are freeware. HandyMenu is very reaonably priced.
You can find even more information at Tanker Bob's website. He's been on both sides of the Palm/PPC world just like you and I.
http://www.tankerbob.com/palm/software_ppc.htm
I still have my Palm(s), but I am pretty happy with my Axim, and Palm has a long way to go to beat the functionality and stability I have on my Axim (and I NEVER thought I'd say that about a Windows device).
I long for the day when Palm releases something that compels me to make a PalmOS device my primary again. There are strengths of the PalmOS that PPC has yet to match (and likely never will), but overall I'm finding my Axim the better device at the moment, and have no fear using it w/out carrying other devices along.
_________________
Sean
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
RE: So Long Palm
Top kudos to you friend. The alarms tweak you perscribed seems to have fixed several problems on my Toshiba. I am still gasping at the ludicrous fact that two companies as big as Toshiba and Microsoft need some hacker from Hoboken to write a 7k patch that fixes my alarms and got my buttons to work.
It still seems a little slow when starting up, (I suspect the graphics being handed over to the special chip make it redraw the screen so deliberately.....but WOW do the huge picture files display fast in Resco picture viewer once it gets going!) but once running it is OK.
I am going to buy Apmemo to replace Diddlebug and try it without the Zire for a few days. If it works, I will likely be off the Palm for good.
THANK YOU!
RE: So Long Palm
*urp*
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
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'the Treo 650 (released Oct '04)'
So we're quickly coming up on 3 years since a major improvement to the Treo line has been released. In technology years, that's a looooong time to sit dormant. They blew the chance to at least increase the NVFS chip size after finally all but admitting that 32MB chips was a poor decision, instead endlessly tweaking the firmware and continuing to manufacture 32MB doorstops.
Hopefully Palm is taking all this additional time to really create a worthy successor to the Treo 600 that doesn't have the $600-700 purchasers performing endless beta testing for them. Maybe it'll have 128MB of NVFS including a 32MB dbcache just to prove that Palm wants to be the leader in handheld innovation again.
But likely, all we'll get is a small, incremental boost to a 64MB chip, and a monsterous price increase - locking us into more 2-year contracts so we can avoid thinking we spent so much for so little that could have been so much more....