Quickies: TreoCentral, OS 5, NR70V

TreoCentral, a new spin-off from VisorCentral, is devoted to Handspring's new Treo line of smartphones.

Cnet has a article on Palm OS 5. Little in it is new but it's a good overview of what is and isn't in the new operating system for those who haven't been following its development.

Sony is running a contest on AvantGo under the title, "Let the Handheld Revolution Begin." The prize is a new NR70V.

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Wow

I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 11:30:47 AM #
Read the CNET article.

I am looking forward to having my datebook and memo applications running at full ARM speed.

We don't need no stinking upgrade to icons either. The icons look fine in color. What are we using? A Gameboy or something?

As for multimedia, who needs it? MP3 and video playback is for teenyboppers. If I want to watch a video, I'll take my portable DVD player with me. And I'll take my iPod for tunes.

In any case, Palm is doing the right thing. I don't want to re-buy all of my applications. Running in emulation is fine.

Bottomline: I don't see any reasons to upgrade to OS 5 at all. My next hardware upgrade will probably be OS 6.


RE: Wow
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 12:04:01 PM #
"As for multimedia, who needs it? MP3 and video playback is for teenyboppers."

That would include yourself, since:

"If I want to watch a video, I'll take my portable DVD player with me. And I'll take my iPod for tunes."

Well, I want playback of DivX movies. That way, you have 1 portable device instead of 2 (or 3 if you add the mp3 player). It is possible, since the DivX people have already made a codec for the PocketPC platform. Not sure how it performs though.

RE: Wow
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 12:26:18 PM #
I think you missed the fact that his comment contained this nifty thing called sarcasm. Why don't you go have a cup of coffee, come back and reread it?

RE: Wow
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 1:03:23 PM #
OS 5.0 doesn't seem to be the savior promised.
RE: Wow
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 1:45:21 PM #
PalmSource has never said OS 5 will be a savior OS! They have always maintained that OS 5 will be the OS to bridge 68k with ARM processors, OS X will be the big change.
RE: Wow
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 2:13:57 PM #
Hi, I don't think Palm needs a savior anyway. This fatalistic mentality has to stop. Palm is doing very well, and has recaptured most of any market share they lost to PocketPC with the newer stats.

I think Palm has found a very good balance of price, feature, size, battery life, power and ease of use. It will not fit everyone, but it fit a majority of users' majority needs. That is something that everyone else including MS seems to be struggling to get.

I tend to agree that OS5 doesn't seem too interesting. Partly because I still use Palm OS 3.1 (Visor Deluxe) and it works well enough for almost everything. I hope Palm doesn't run itself to the ground by taking the MS bait to introduce overly burdensome hardware/software combinations. It is a fatalistic view many non-MS companies got baited into and died trying to fight MS by their rules. And as users, we should stop thinking the way MS wants us to think: we need features, we need power, we need color, we need a super-computer (to use notepad? :)), we need high-speed wireless (to view movies on a 2x2inch screen? With 320x200 pixels?), etc. etc... True, those features are appealing to some, but those are really a minority of the population. Despite having many gadgets myself, I think those are too geeky even for me :). I know my father has 3 WinCE/PocketPC devices... but guess what, he barely knows how to use the address book, and has added zero programs to it, never used any of the PocketExcel/Word stuff, never watched movies (of course). That's quite some bit of money paid to the evil empire for lack of information. That... though... is the general population... even in Asia.

Ok. Off soap box.

RE: Wow
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 2:26:03 PM #
"Palm is doing very well, and has recaptured most of any market share they lost to PocketPC with the newer stats"

You mean Palm Inc. is back at 90% market share again? Last worldwide sale we have Palm just nudge little more than 35%.

RE: Wow - yes!
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 5:40:32 PM #
>> I tend to agree that OS5 doesn't seem too interesting.

Depends on who you are.... If one is in the market for a new device (whatever the reason - e.g., dropped mine...), I think it is huge.

If it delivers on it's promises, we'll see a broader range of devices, from sub-$100 to higher end machines than are possible today with PalmOS. Wider range of possible applications & uses = more market share = even more apps/innovation....

For example, would be interesting to have an iPod that included PalmOS, for example (why carry two devices? 1,000 songs or 1 Million contacts? Inkwell input, Low res digital camera.... That would be cool, and no, I have no inside sources, just thinking about potential synergy between two non-MS companies with the aboce iPod comment -)

Also, I would hope/expect compatibility with OS 6. Won't have that with non-ARM based products.

Treo Only Message Board

fkclo @ 5/22/2002 11:46:36 AM #
Great to learn about Treo Central. As a matter of fact, Treo users can also visit Treo Message Board, a user forum for Treo only.

Here is the link :

www.treomb.com

Hard work

I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 1:59:27 PM #
Not acting as an apologist to Palm, but OS work is quite hard. The adage "Cheap, fast, or good, pick any two" applies here. Palm originally chose cheap and fast for PalmOS, but the implementation wasn't any good. They've been trying to evolve the code rather than a complete rewrite for some time. Could a complete rewrite have been faster? Maybe, maybe not. By the time they realized that they needed a rewrite it would have taken too long. What people seem to be forgetting is that there will be some compelling devices built upon the ARM architecture that will provide added value to OS5 and later. Besides, if they make it flash upgradeable, I'm sure you can get OS upgrades later that will leverage the new functions. Let's wait until PalmSource, together with Palm, Sony, Handspring, and other licensees come up with before we damn their plan.
RE: Hard work
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 2:28:28 PM #
Gimme a break, is not like they don't have enough time to do upgrade. Look at the competition, PPC already have 2-3 major upgrade, Linux has 2-3 major versions. All that happen while Palm was making boat load of money, with more than enough fund to do R&D. Now they are scrambling to do the OS 5.0.


RE: Hard work
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 2:43:19 PM #
> PPC already have 2-3 major upgrade

Just because Microsoft CALLS it a major upgrade, doesn't mean it is one. All PPC 2002 did was drop MIPS support and add a few bells and whistles stolen from the Palm OS. It was mostly a bug fix. And there sure were a lot of bugs to fix. They didn't do anything about the unusable UI.

That said, the Palm OS is about a year behind where it ought to be. Good thing the competition has no idea how to make a decent OS so PalmSource has time.

Also, PalmSource is going to ARM chips at exactly the right time. Microsoft made a big mistake using them when they were battery hogs. With the next generation chips, OS 5 models will have 5x the performance for the same power.

RE: Hard work
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 2:46:57 PM #
"All that happen while Palm was making boat load of money..."

You're kidding, right?

Apparently, you haven't been paying too much attention to the news over the last year talking about how much Palm, Inc has screwed up, and the financial troubles they've endured as a result. I'm sure the having to work with a backlog of old Vx devices after announcing the m5XX series too early, and dealing with the issues surrounding the m515 wasn't done just for the fun of it.

Comparing Palm and their OS development against Linux or Microsoft is way off base. Linux is open source, hence it's always being "upgraded" by anyone willing to tinker with it. As for Microsoft, their company is a big large and is able to place revenues from other sources (such as PC operating systems and a certain suite of "office" applications) that it can throw behind other areas (like PPC, or even the recent $2 million they've sunk behind XBox). Palm has handhelds and the OS. That's it.

If you still think they're comparable, I'd be happy to trade a few shares of Palm stock for Microsoft on a 1-to-1 ratio.

Steal

I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 3:59:51 PM #
Pay $ for a ringtone?? Give me a break!
RE: Steal
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/22/2002 4:36:50 PM #
Unfortunently TreoCentral has to charge for the ringtones since RIAA (and all the other licensing companies) charge sites that want to provides rintones legally a licensing fee per tone sale.
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