Comments on: Setting the Treo Record Straight
While a obviously taking a sympathetic view to the various problems facing the beleaguered Palm today, Andrew nevertheless presents a compelling reminder of the elegance and ease of use found in the dated Palm OS. In many instances, the article reminds us, the competition has still yet to match Palm's "special sauce". Andrew offers up the full slew of current and forthcoming Palm smartphones (500, 680, 700w/wx/p, 750, 755p, Centro) running both Windows Mobile and Palm OS against various devices from other manufacturers equipped with varying hardware specifications and OSes.
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RE: Yeah right
Case in point: I bought a piece of crap Seido retractable earbud headset for like $30 from his site, which had received a great review, only to realize upon its arrival how flawed it was, in several ways. If I can write an honest critical review on a piece of hardware in 10 minutes, he should be able to, as well. It is, after all, his frickin job.
Peace Out
Alan
RE: Yeah right
HAS it come to this already? I do not consider, no matter how bright the backlight is or how tight the pixel density is, a 320x320 small square screen "large" by any stretch of the imagination. And this is just exacerbated by the wacky ways in which differnt Palm OS developers code their programs and scale their fonts.
For example, I have 20/20 vision and it irritates me to no end to see a half-arsed Palm OS port of a game utilizing just a fraction of the 320x320 screen and with fonts so small they are nigh illegible. At least Astraware can usually be counted on in this regard.
I HIGHLY doubt we'll ever see these fresh new formfactor Treos produced by Palm (at least under its current management and ownership). All they want to do is churn out endless permutations of the same Treo 600 design, rebrand similar looking "me too" WM decvices and adding and subtracting reshuffling features throughout the lineup.
On another note:
I went to the local Apple store yesterday evening and spent some solid time playing around with an iPod Touch. I still prefer the iPhone of course, but there's no doubting that the Touch excels in so many areas where Palm has fallen flat on its face. Of course, there are some areas about Palm OS & Palm's products that I find incredibly and inexplicably missing on Apple's products. Apple's "design zen" reminds me a lot of the "Zen of Palm'. Apple has sterling build quality, styling, sleekness, and UI but then makes their mobile devices overly dumbed-down by placing form over function. For example, the Touch's inability to add new calendar appointments on the device is impossibly mind-bogglingly dumb. And the photo viewer app feels so dumbed down in comparison to a 4-year old version of SplashPhoto or AcidImage on Palm OS that it makes me want to weep.
So my ideal device still doesn't exist but would be some bizarre hybrid of a Palm TX and an iPhone (but with EVDO).
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Yeah right
... why didn't *we* ever think about offering Palm advice?
USR Palm Pilot 1000 --> Palm Pilot Professional --> TRG SuperPilot --> Palm IIIc --> Palm V --> Palm M505 --> Palm M515 --> Tungsten T|2 --> Treo 600 --> LifeDrive --> iPhone
RE: Yeah right
I felt compelled to write something as I think some of the critisms of Treonauts are unfair particularly since, if you read the blog regularly, Andrew has been quite a critic of Palm, more so recently especially with the ill fated and perhaps dumbest product ever, the Foleo.
As for his product reviews I agree that a lot are positive, for the most part those products are probably well deserving (i've only got four or five accessories for my Treo and his opinions of those are fairly accurate) - he rarely reviews terrible products as it's clear to me his reviews are very thorough, comparitive, detailed and take more than 10 minutes to write - if I was him I wouldn't put the time and effort into reviewing products that are terrible.
If not a question of whether you can write a review in 10 minutes. It's a question of whther the review is useful to a reader. Otherwise you might as well read the CNET reviews which seem to be written in 10 minutes also.
I actually find the pictures most useful especially the comparitive ones he does.
So I think your comments are unfair.
Mstein
RE: Yeah right
I have to agree to some measure. (Granted I AM FRUSTRATED OVER PALM'S LACK OF NEW LINUX "PALM OS II" DEVELOPMENT.) I had an iPhone for 13 days (has to be returned within 14 to get a full refund). It just couldn't replace my Treo 680:
1. The text input was frustratingly slow & requires two hands all the time.
2. Lack of basic office apps!!!
3. No corporate email other than Safari
4. Speaking of Safari...It is sweet, but you cannot use it to replace corporate email because you have to constantly adjust the size of the screen (pinching).
5. "Multi-touch" lives up to its name in several ways. You will be "touching" the screen multiple times to do Treo "single-touch" tasks. For example, it has "multi-touch" dialing (no "one-touch" dialing).
(BTW. I am one of those despised but proud Apple enthusiasts...but iPhone can't replace my 680.)
RE: Yeah right
Anyway, he's right. Sure, he has a vested interest in selling stuff from his Treo store, but the fact remains that you can't find many (or any) phones as simple or user-friendly as the Treo with the same touchscreen+exposed QWERTY spec.
RE: Yeah right
The link I attached related to smartphone usability. Attached keyboard or not - Palm OS isn't as smart or as usable as it once was.
Just trying to remind you it's 2007, not 2004.
jca!
RE: Yeah right
Palm OS isn't as smart or as usable as it once was.
Maybe you meant it quite differently than I am reading it, but I don't see how this is true. For this to be true, Palm would have to have made the OS "dumber" and removed some of the previous usability. That is not my experience when comparing the current OS to previous ones. Are you saying that the current OS (5.x) is less smart and less usable than OS3 or OS4? Or are you saying that in comparison to other current mobile OS's, Palm isn't as smart or usable? Just what are you saying?
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/
I mean, yeah...
The hardware specs and interface look wonderful. It delivers a ton of functionality with it's historically (if not currently) robust developer base.
The problem is that it is increasingly slow, unusable and unstable. I thought Blazer was a good browser for years - but literally dreaded using it. My wife would ask me to look up something and I'd call 411 and pay the fee instead. Same thing with a lot of the features - they're slow and my 650 crashed several times a week - and all I did was email on it, wasn't even using any other apps. It would crash while I wasn't doing anything - I'd pull it out of my pocket, find that it had not only crashed and rebooted but rebooted with the radio off. Awesome.
You need to factor that into the equation and right now Palm is really losing out on that front.
<http://comments.deasil.com/> that is my tech blog. There are many like it, but that one is mine.
RE: I mean, yeah...
Even out of the shadow of 3Com years ago, Palm still acts as though they have the iron corporate jaws upon their throat and they can't innovate, just move things around to look busy. Here's the only "phone" that Palm put out before buying up Handspring and the Treo: http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/n/3323.html (Tungsten W). It's a cell phone and didn't even have a frikkin built-in microphone!
Time will tell if Palm will get their act together, or instead put their resources into car radios (with a Treo companion cable of course) or some other ridiculous distraction now that the Fooleo got 86'd. In 2003 the Treo 600 was revolutionary. Coming up on 2008 its successors are basically nostalgic throwbacks, with less battery power, lousier flash cards, and an aging operating system. Time to get cracking, Palm.
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**Another vote for a >100MB RAM Treo**
Verizon 700p 1.10 ROM update re-release is out
News item coming soon!
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P
RE: Verizon 700p 1.10 ROM update re-release is out
'Guess they had all their engineers busy with that company savior called the Fooleo?
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**Another vote for a >100MB RAM Treo**
great photoshop work
rpa
Palm Pilot >> Palm Tungsten E user
zzzzz
All in all, after the abortion of the Foleo, Palm has become more zzzzz than ever, marginalized to the point of becoming completely irrelevant (except the centro).
Regarding the article, the fact that he has not mentioned the SE P1i and it's revolutionary keyboard say it all.
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Yeah right
Treonauts my *ss. He just wants to sell accessories from his online store.
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