Comments on: Palm Potentially Open for Buyout or Merger

Yet another ignorant post about Memory Sticks. This is capitalism, companies produce standards in order to make money; Palm's 'universal' connector is proprietary technology, does that mean you'll stop using Palm PDAs?

At least Sony licenses its Memory Stick to other parties; this list is complete with the world's leading technology brands, both from West and East (note, none of them were forced to join the Memory Stick Forum):
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D1BB21C61

So what if you had to use Memory Sticks for everything? Quite frankly, the sooner that happens the better. Companies worldwide (listed above) can develop technologies based around the same standard, so we don't have to have incompatible devices, and since there is competition (noticed how there are different Memory Stick brands with varying prices?) consumers can only benefit.

For reasons too long to go into, I totally hate Sony. However, I will defend the right of companies like Sony to make money in free markets.

If you like, you should go back to your communistic Linux village where the right to profit from innovation is taboo and anyone who shows initative is an outcast. As history has shown us in a brutal fashion, innovation only arises through competition and thus the only thing the Linux model will do is take us a step backwards. Society cannot function through free distribution. Equally, technology will remain *relatively* static.

So wake up, the Linux model does not work - you know it doesn't when the movement gets eaten up by private companies and is backed by folks like AOL (the biggest financial rapist of consumers in history).

Sure the installers are better and KDE/Gnome have much prettier icons than they used to, but installing/removing software, system maintenance, etc. is still way beyond the capabilities of most users.

If you want the future of UNIX for the masses, go look at OSX. It ain't perfect, but it is the first OS that is usable by virtually anyone but still has real UNIX (with all that entails) hiding underneath.

OK - everbody, back to the mud slinging.

I absolutely agree :) I have never owned a Mac, but i have seen the superiority in the OS.
Unfortunately, the average user doesn't even know there is an alternative OS.
I tell my friends how unreliable windows is, and they will laugh and say, go buy a Mac.
I explain Linux and they are interested, and even try it. The problem is that the nerds of today have been brought up in a MS world, and most of us teens were weened on DOS ;)

Because Linux has virtually no corporate entity, it cannot market its product.

Linux is made for nerds, by nerds. It is a great OS but it needs to be brought to the masses.

Bill Gates did a great job in bringing computers to the average Joe, but he made computing unreliable and frustrating as well. MOst people think that the constant crashing of Windows is an unavoidable problem.

While the masses are uneducated about LInux and its advantages, we will be stuck with the blue screen of death :)

What we really need is schools to use Linux



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 13yrs Old, Flat Broke
Odds of ever affording a palm without resorting to crime: 1765:1

This is not correct. Benhamou is both Chairman and CEO. I don't know who Bruce Claflin is but he isn't a top executive at Palm.

Palm's Top Managers:
www.palm.com/about/corporate/executive.html

Benhamou will continue to be CEO until PalmSource is spun off. Todd Bradley, who is currently the CEO of just the Solutions Group, will then assume the position, as the Solutions Group be be all that is left of Palm.

---
News Editor

Well, he may not be a top executive at Palm, but your
article says:

> However, Benhamou is also CEO of 3Com, so it
> seems unlikely Palm would be sold without his
> blessing.

That is factually wrong -- Benhamou is Chairman of the
Board of 3COM:

http://www.3com.com/corpinfo/en_US/investor/resources/executivebios.html

Also, I do not think that 3COM still owns a majority
of the shares of Palm.

Oliver

This information is public.
You talked to the wrong people I believe.
3com should have 0 share of Palm now.

I was a 3com stock holder and still is a Palm
stock holder.

People who has money can buy out Palm. It is not up to
Eric. But that will be a hostile takeover.
Most companies don't want to do that.

Better get more reliable and knowledgable sources --
I think it's a bit embarrasing for a site called
"Palm Infocenter" to not know who OWNS Palm (or
rather, who doesn't).

Here's a 3COM Press Release snippet:

http://www.3com.com/corpinfo/en_US/pressbox/press_release.jsp?INFO_ID=7535

-------------------

Santa Clara, Calif., July 28, 2000-- 3Com Corporation (Nasdaq: COMS) announced today it has completed the separation of Palm, Inc. through the distribution of all of its 532 million shares of Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq:PALM). After the close of market yesterday, July 27, 3Com shareholders were issued 1.4832 shares of Palm, Inc. common stock for each share of 3Com common stock held. Cash will be issued in lieu of fractional shares. As a result of the distribution of shares of Palm, Inc. common stock, Palm is now a fully independent company.

-------------------

It really didn't take THAT much effort to find it...

> In any case, what is most important is Benhamou
> is showing no interest in selling Palm, which
> means such a deal is unlikely.

Then what's the whole point of this story that we're
commenting on? Slow "news" day??

BTW, I may not have signed *in*, but I did sign my
posting, so I wasn't actually an anonymous poster.

Oliver

With respect to this article, there is a real confusion between reporting facts and presenting his opinions. I doubt Ed is seriously offended that people point out mistakes in what he has publically posted. What exactly are the rest of you jumping in to defend? His incorrect assertions? The fact that people find it reasonable to correct him? Kudos to accuracy and Oliver.

No, it was predictable (or rather, known to happen)
for the past two years.

To me the only thing that was "news" in the story was the
Benhamou is CEO of 3COM and that 3COM owns a majority
of the Palm shares. Unfortunately -- or rather
fortunately -- both was also not true ;-)

> Oliver, do us all a favor and silence
> yourself. Thanks.

That's not worth further comment.

Oliver

Thanks for the suggestion. The more I read
here today, the more I agree with you. Obviously
there is a large number of readers who enjoy
spending their time "discussing" how to buy Palm with
their piggy bank or decry for the twentieth
time this week the evilness of Sony's memory
stick technology.

Oliver

Oliver: Please stick around, your dogged pursuit of reality and fact is refreshing... Just remember, throughout history, any call for critical thinking leads to persecution...

--JM

Do you know that 2 years ago they have more than 1B
dollars in the bank and a much more popular
OS then?

Would you pay 1B for Palm then? They have more than
1B cash at that time. :-(

ted

Palm suddenly releases the UberDevice that the PIC Users bitched and moaned about not having. Unfortunately it cost as much as a Cadillac, and ran slower than a PPC. But at least it provided MP3, streaming video, and a gamepad for a kickarse version of Quake.

Bill Gates laughed, Steve Jobs cried, and the last we knew Benhamou rode off into the sunset.

May I also suggest the linux guy from University of Puerto Rico be the Chief Marketing Officer - he can surely generate marketing FUD!

LMAO! I am convinced that Puerto Rican guy is an Iambic hoax!

P.S. I'll cough up $50.00 for Handera, will I get change with that?

Riiiight. Give them 4 months to convolute the API's so much that we're right where microsoft is.

Substitute HandEra for Sony, and you'd have a point. Other than duplicating API's needlessly, and creating more oddball standards there's very little that Sony has brought to the market that wasn't already done by another licensee or on the PocketPC side. Other than another iteration of pretty packaging every other month.

Handera - blah-blah-blah. Wheres handera fabled innovation lately?? Don't get me wrong - they've done good things in the past. But their devices are becoming outdated with nothing new released recently. No color. Just an awkward 240 x 320 (awkward in Palm OS terms) res screen, CF, and audio recording capability. Great things, yes, but CF and 240x320 HAVE NOT become any sort of standard (Sonys hi-res has been out for far less time and has been adopted far more quickly - and at least the res is the same as OS 5). All of this could be debated forever - i admit this. But what can't be debated is that Handera is a slow tortoise without the $$$$ to even concieve of taking over Palm. I love the naivete of the posters on this site - 'i really like Handeras last PDA - therefore they should takeover Palm!!'. Nice fantasy.

Give them Sony's or MS's budget and see what they'd do. Take a look at "Piloting Palm" for an insider look at the length of product time-to-market cycles in the early days of Palm and HandSpring.

Only Sony and Microsoft can trade time for money, and neither have yet proven with solid engineering results, that they can do that well...

"Don't get me wrong - they've done good things in the past. But their devices are becoming outdated with nothing new released recently."

Really... I assume you can use 802.11b on your Sony today? How about a laser barcode scanner? CDPD? 10/100 wired network cards? CF GPS? How about Margi's Presenter-to-go for on the road presentations? Heck even Palm's with SD slots can do that now. How much memory are you left with in your Sony when you pull the Memory Stick to insert the one or two non-memory MS in that are out? Still no dual slots eh? Hows high-res landscape mode on those Sony's? How do the built in PIM apps take advantage of high-res and virtual graffiti? You say yours don't make full use of the high-res, virtual graffiti and landscape modes? Surely they at least extend those abilities to all the built in apps... Sony no, HandEra yes.

Point of fact: any Sony today, only *looks* flashy if you compare it to what you can get done on a HandEra. When you get down to the brass tax of the small details, and what you can actually DO with a PDA today, the Sony's still look pretty dated compared to a HandEra.

And the throughput of the memory stick when benchmarked against CF on our PalmOS hardware, hardly makes Sony look state of the art. You in seriousness want to malign a dual slot SD/CF device compared to a single slot Memory Stick device? I can still buy larger, cheaper, more ubiqutous CF cards, and more CF accessories (with pre-installed HandEra OS drivers) than there are Sony devices. MemoryStick just doesn't compare... MemoryStick is what looks dated...

"Just an awkward 240 x 320 (awkward in Palm OS terms) res screen"

And yet somehow WordSmith, iSilo, QuickOffice, and Datebk5 (NR70 excepted), etc. all look virtually identical on a HandEra 330 as on a Sony. Amazing how that can be... You're overstating and myths fostering in the resolution area. Now if you're going to constrain your comments to non-highres apps with lots of bitmapped content (because you'll notice no difference at all if the app is purely text/form based) sure there's something to be said there. But anything people care much about? Not really, only Sony owners seemingly who weakly try to defend the engineering dominance of their Sony's with FUD.

"I love the naivete of the posters on this site - 'i really like Handeras last PDA - therefore they should takeover Palm!!'"

The exact sentiment in the Sony post I replied to actually... Nowhere did I say it could/would happen. You're making assumptions in your haste. I simply said that if innovation at the OS level was your objective, Sony is not your answer. HandEra is. Thats on an engineering level, not a financial/reality level. There's nothing to say Sony either, thinks a Palm takeover is something that should be done on a financial/reality level.

What world do you live in? The real world loves Palm OS - Palm isn't about to redesign the only PDA OS interface that has ever been really succesful (and there were many others before Palm came along and made the concept a household word). you and i are geeks. we dont like what sells. thats just the way it is. Palm is making the right move - would you have them create an OS that is in no way Palm OS???? Why would people buy it? Think about this.

Anyway , the point the 1st poster was making is that IT IS GOOD that OS 5 doesn't break compatibilty OR vary much from OS 4 - this way manufacturers can continue to use OS 4 in low-end or very small devices. OS 5 give u 4 main things - hi-res API, sound API, the ability to harness some of that ARM power with ARMlets, and much improved networking and security.

This brings me to the next point: most of you groaning about how the Palm OS isn't **exciting enough*** are really just complaining about the bloody launcher. When the screen-shots of OS 5 first came out everybody b*tched about how palm is doing nothing and how 'hi-res icons aren't enough'. This is stupid. I am glad Palm is in more capable hands then the marketing flunky wannabes on this site. Ya see - the interface is everything for the majority of Palm device owners. Why? because it is exactly what a frickin' PDA OS should be - simple. Yet - they've maintained this simplicity even though the OS has evolved to the point where i can surf the web, watch video, and soon - play decent looking 3D games. Perfect.

But all passive and lit color displays use more power and/or produce less contrast. Battery technology just doesn't advance that fast, so there will always be room for lower power monochrome displays, which happen to still own the cell phone and digital watch markets. Any PDA OS has to support both color & monochrome to cover all the high volume segments of the market.

(...who knows, maybe this will change when PDA's get implanted in ones eyeball, and draw directly on the retina using multiple colors of biopower organic laser diodes...)

And you know Steve wouldn't bring out another glorified organizer. The iPod was a new mp3 player that no one had. The Organizer features in the iPod are quite enough for someone who needs their calendar and contacts with them. The hard disk holds files as well.

I think Apple's PDA will be something that is totally different than what we know today. It will have wireless functions with Bluetooth and Airport. Firewire, multimedia and a hard disk. We can only imagine.

That's why the PalmOS is so old school, that Steve would not be interested.

The last poster forgot to mention how ridiculous this comment was as well; Palm didn't invent MP3s or MP3 players, or even hard-drive based MP3 players. Apple just made a really nice looking one.