Reminder: 20% Off All Software

I sat next to a Palm executive this past week and, after filling him with a few martinis, this is what I found out. He was still tight lipped but I was able to observe some of the features since he was playing with it after I pretended to be asleep. The only thing he would confirm was the release date which is 2 months, 1 week and 1 day from today (01-24-06):

Most Interresting fact - Palm is not exactly happy with the 700w release (expected bigger splash) and wants to differentiate the new Palm OS version from the 700.....they haven't selected a model designation yat but are leaning towards something that will show what a "monster" it is. When I suggested 666, he smiled and winked.

The new Treo comes with small hinge pins at the bottom corners which allows little curved legs to open and allow the Treo to stand upright on a table. To watch some video sales presentations, he stood the Treo upright at the front edge of the folding airline tray and the Treo projected the image on the back of the seat where he had hung a large napkin. Resolution of the built in LCD projector is 1920 x 1280. The new Treo is apparently HDTV ready.

After viewing the video's he typed up some comments and typed up an e-mail by pushing the still standing Treo to the back of the tray and having it project an infrared keyboard on the tray. When we landed for a short layover, since he didn't leave the plane, I also stayed on to to observe.

To send the e-mails, he tried the unit's WiFi but apparently the airport signal didn't extend outside the plane. He then did something that I didn't quite understand at first. He opened up the battery cover and took the battery out. Then he took a smaller module out and out, placed another one in and made some calls. After each call, he opened up a spreadsheet and recorded location, signal strength, voice quality and other parameters and CARRIER. He then switched modules and did it again. I got a peek at the modules this time and the first one said Sprint....saw one that said Verizon, one Cingular and 2 others that I didn't get a peek at. Apparently all Treo 666's will be the same with the radio / phone / ROM module switchable. I got my best look at the Cingular one and it had two slots for SIM cards, one of which was filled, the other empty.

He went potty just about then and packed up his goodies in one of those European carryalls (man purse). In it I was astounded to recognize the following among other things that I have no idea about....one of which I found out about later.

First thing was a 9" LCD screen which can apparently be used in a vehicle with the itty bitty slide in Garmin GPS unit. A switch on the GPS allows BT or wired configuration. There was also a small ipod dock like thing with two Bose flat panel speakers, a cordess stereo headset w/ mike boom and several SD cards. One thing I was astounded to notice was that 1 SD card said WM5, another PalmOS and another Symbian.

My guess is like Toshiba did some years ago in the early days of Windows 95. Windows 95 was the latest and greatest suppossedly but those who bothered to test and benchmark it soon found that it was 40% slower than Windows 4 Workgroups. So Toshiba shiped their laptops with a boot loader program that upon first starting the machine, it asks what OS you want and then at some point after installing the basic OS it would ask for you to insert a CD to load the appropriate drivers, programs , utilities etc.

We were sitting in a hot cabin as the AC wasn't working on ground and suddenly this guy a few rows up started having symptoms of a heart attack. Mr. Palm guy leaps up, opens his man purse and pulls out some wires and patches and sticking them on this guy's chest. After the stewardess called emergency services, and got an ftp address, he hooked up with the local hospital's computer and uploaded an electro cardiogram. A few minutes later, the guy on the floor stoped breathing and the steady beep beep beep that was coming outta the Palm stopped.

Palm guy opens his man purse again and pulls out another set of cables and yells "stand back"......After 3 shots from the built in defribulator, the guy started breathing again. The emergency medical team arrived along with some police and another guy who I hadn't noticed before stands up and starts screaming in a foreign tongue, The police can't get to him as the heart attack guy is lying on the floor between so Palm guy stands up, holds the space bar down for 3 seconds and two prongs pop up like twin antenaes (did I say it had no phone antenae ?). Palm guy presses the Palm's "antennae" to fanatic guy's neck and the built in taser renders the guy harmless.

Back in our seats and getting ready for takeoff the palm guy fires up Trillian Pro for Palm OS and starts IM'ing all his exec buddies about all the features he got to test. After that he puts on the projector again and starts playing Duke Nukem Forever. The lady in front of him complained about the noise and he switched to MS Flight Simulator fo the Palm OS.

We were scheduled to land about then but here was heavy cloud cover and the landing schedule was backed up. The pilot came on and said we were diverting to another airport because the storm had knocked out the airport's navigational beacons. Palm dude spoke to the stewardess and shortly therefater was called up to the ****pit. Palm dude asked me to hold his man purse and come with him. The pilot explained that he didn't think he had enough fuel left to reach the other airport. Palm guy used the GPS and MS Flight Simulator to calculate a landing pattern, beamed it to the plane's instrument panel and we landed safely.

Palm guy asked me were I was going and offered to give me a ride to the hotel as he was staying there also. I began to regret saying yes as there was a problem with one piece of his luggage missing. I accompanied him to the baggage counter where they said, that the luggage came of the plane and was somewhere in the baggage handling system. He fired up his palm and scanned for RFID frequencies. The palm located his luggage and we followed a baggage clerk into a room with all the conveyors and found his luggage had fallen off a belt and got kicked under a luggage trailer.

I thought I had seen it all but he had one more trick up his sleeve. The cabbie's meter said we had traveled 21.6 mile sand the fare was $45. Palm guy, who I now knew as "Bill" said that the cab had only traveled 17.4 miles according to his GPS and he threatened to report the guy to the transportation commission....they cabbie said something in a language I didn't understand, told us to get out of his cab and pay him whatever we wanted. Palm guy said fine and gave him nothing.

We had a few drinks at the hotel bar and the waitress was admiring his phone. So he opens his luggage and gave the cutie a brand new Palm 700w in the box. He smiled and said, we gotta get rid of these things fast with the "monster" hitting the shelves. After reciving the check, he used the palm's camera to take a picture of the bill. The Palm then OCR's the bill and entered the data into his pocket quicken expense program. We sat there talking for a bit and he took out another box containing a 700w and laid it on the table. Occasionally a person would come buy and ask about it and he joyfully sold the 700, popping a new one out of his bag each time. To accept payment, he'd swipe the person's credit card through a slot along the side of his Palm that I hadn't noticed before, and used the hotel's wifi to process the payments. At this time I saw yet another feature.....the whole back of the case has like a thin false cover which fits like a skin over the regular case. You fold this down and pop in a piece of coated infrared light sensitive paper and the Palm use the LCD projector to print a receipt.

He aked what I thought would be a good launch idea to promote sales of the "monster". I suggested they use the old song "Monster in my Pants" and have people walking around Treo's in their pants pocket. When the phone rings, using an mp3 tune, the Treo starts "dancing" to the "Monster in pants" song, wiggling around in the pants pocket....the treo owner takes out, places upright on table and the little lags fan out and it dances while the person uses the phone and maybe another feature or two. He liked the idea so he asked what about some promotional campaigns to get word of mouth going.

That was easy I said....no better place than TreoCentral. So everyone go to your calender program and look at today's data......add a day, add a week, add two months. From 12:00:01 thru 12:05.00....on that day place a post in the "I want a monster in my pants" thread and if you post is logged between 12:00:01 thru 12:05.00 you will win a Treo Monster on the carrier of your choice.

Brilliant insider info!! Wow!!! Even I want one!!!!!

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...