Handspring Targets the Enterprise

Posted By: Ed Friday, September 28, 2001 10:34:33 AM

Most handheld companies agree that the real promise of future growth is in selling to large corporations. But these enterprise customers want more than just PIMs for their staff, they want handhelds that can be integrated into their business processes.

Handspring took a step this week that should boost its sales in the enterprise. It has announced it will be working closely with Aether Systems, a leading provider of wireless data products and services for companies. Together, they will focus on delivering wireless enterprise solutions using Handspring's hardware and Aether's software.

Aether provides the services, software and support necessary to extend applications like email and sales force automation from the desktop to wireless devices.

Handspring is working hard to make the wireless handhelds enterprise customers need to access their data and systems. Its Visor line of handhelds can use wireless Springboard modules like the VisorPhone. The company has also received FCC approval for the Treo line, which are handhelds with built-in wireless capabilities.

According to the director of Enterprise Sales for Handspring, the company plans to announce new partnerships in the near future to make their handhelds even more attractive to large corporations.

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Right

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 12:36:19 PM #
The Palm is a very poor wireless network client because the processor is to slow to take full advatage of the 11 mbps network speed. If you want wireless ethernet you want a Pocket PC.

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 2:25:17 PM #
The PocketPC OS is too slow to handle 11mbps despite the fast processors.

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 2:41:18 PM #
really? it handle streaming audio/mpeg4 just fine.

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 3:00:32 PM #
The trolls, the trolls, the trolls are here again...

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 8:06:18 PM #
You do understand that streaming audio/mpeg4 has far lower bitrates than 11mbps, don't you?

Sure - but only if you want 1 frame every 2 seconds, Nimrod.
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 8:43:05 PM #
.

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 9:13:43 PM #
mpeg/compressed audio have about as intense processing power as a networking need come.

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 9:21:49 PM #
are you saying that Palm can handle even 1 frame a second mpeg4? yeah I would like to see that on dragonball.

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 11:01:40 PM #
> Sure - but only if you want 1 frame every 2 seconds, Nimrod.

11mbps is on the high end of DVD quality video bitrates. No current PocketPC is anywhere close to doing that. Streaming audio/mpeg4 is in the kbps not mbps.

RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 11:14:38 AM #
set up the mpeg4 compression to 1-5mb/s rate, see how the wifi and PPC handle it. Easy to test, no?

who says mpeg must be set up to the highest compression rate at kb/s.

Day in the life of a PPC user
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/30/2001 8:44:36 AM #
The scene, a salesman meeting with an important client.

"No need to wait, I can look that up in my iPaq. Yes, it looks nice doesn't i it? And it can play movies. No, but I met a guy who did once. Here, hold on a moment. OK, I'll just open the program I need. All I have to do is tap here, then here, then here, go into here, then tap here. Hmmm, not enough memory. I'll have to close some other applications. Just let me go into here, then tap on this, go into this drop down box, tap on this and then this, go into here, and I can close a few of these. There, that should give me enough room. So just tap here, and here, and here again and I'm ready to run it. OK, it's opening. Yes, that's the same hour glass from Windows. It's good to work with familiar things. So have you guys seen any good movies lately? I saw that too. Ok, the program is open. I'll just connect to the network and... Whup, the iPaq crashed. Don't worry, I'll have it back up and going in a minute or two. What, low battery warning? I don't understand, I just charged it up this morning. Wait, you guys don't have to leave! Why don't I just borrow a computer from someone and I'll look this up?"



RE: Right
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/30/2001 10:05:24 AM #
that guy should have make a short cut icon if he likes to show off his movie so much.

One tap, movie is launched.

Need enterprise developers.

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 1:44:24 PM #
Heavy duty enterprise developers is definitely lacking in Palm, this could be a liability.

Saying and doing

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 2:26:56 PM #
I hope Handspring understands that saying and doing are two separate things. Saying they are going to target the enterprise market and actually getting some of it are two different things. A good start might be flash ROM, so companies can install their corporate software on their employees PDAs. In that direction, they're already off to a bad start.

Exactly.I'd like to play in the NBA but it aint gonna happen
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 6:17:47 PM #
.

Again and again

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 3:10:14 PM #
Everybody say that they will focus on the enterprise market when their business is not good, palm is the first case and handspring now is the second.. God bless them.

RE: Again and again
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 4:56:14 PM #
Exactly. God bless them as I will certainly not. I am upgrading next year. And it will most certainly be an XScale ARM processor running the PocketPC OS.

Palm lost my business. OS-5...I mean BS-5 will be horribly late as they figure out what to do with BeOS. Next year will be funny. We'll probably see PALM devices running an XScale ARM processor and running OS 4.6 or some other incremental upgrade.

How lame is that?

RE: Again and again
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 6:09:37 PM #
True. Microsoft announced they were going after the enterprise market first because their handhelds failed in the retail market because they were too expensive and hard to use. So they decided to go to big companies where they could use their monopoly to force people to take handhelds they don't like.

> it will most certainly be an XScale ARM processor running the PocketPC OS.

I hope you are happy with it. As you have stopped being a Palm user, please stop coming to Palm sites. You aren't welcome here any more.

RE: Again and again
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 9:18:23 PM #
yes, this is a Palm site. So give praise to Palm Inc. and never say critical or pointing out the lack of product improvement.

Shame on you, you don't go to church pointing out theological hole in church dogma do you?

Nice

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 5:39:04 PM #
Finally, a bold decision. I admire handspring for taking such a giant step!

I hope you're being sarcastic
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 6:20:19 PM #
.

RE: Nice
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 9:17:09 PM #
the Russian did also try to do the giant step to the moon.

RE: Nice
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 9:38:41 PM #
G-i-a-n-t S-t-e-p ?? Don't you see there is a huge hole in front of Handspring ? All Handspring needs is
to learn how to fly ...

RE: Nice
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 3:02:12 AM #
Yes I was being sarcastic. Dumbass.

RE: Nice
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 4:29:56 AM #
This GIANT STEPS caused HS share prices to drop 73 cents to 1.35 against a rise in Nasdaq.

What to do about the trolls

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 9:34:31 PM #
There are one or two trolls who post here all the time. What
do you think should be done? Should we get the admins
to delete their obvious troll bait? Or do we just have to
ignore them?
I'm not talking about chasing off everyone who likes the
PPC, only people whose posts are all less than
10 words
and do nothing but try to pick fights. You'll find several
examples on this page.
Post a vote below.

How about all posts with the word "troll" gets deleted?
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 10:12:06 PM #
I'm tired of the automatic name-calling of "troll" every time somebody posts something that is not sympathetic to Palm, Inc. My God, man, PALM stock is at $1.46 and falling! You think they must be doing something wrong??!! Pull your head out of your @$$! It is OK to criticize companies that continually make bonehead moves. Blind faith and blind loyalty get you nowhere but ignorance to the world around you. OPEN YOUR HEART AND EMBRACE THE EVIL KNOWN AS MS PPC! Deep in your heart, you know resistence is futile. Look out your window...the Deathstar is coming your way!

"Troll" Name-Callers
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 10:22:16 PM #
The "Troll" Name-Callers are nothing but PALM-APOLOGISTS.

RE: What to do about the trolls
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/28/2001 10:47:46 PM #
The two trolls have voted. Anyone else have an opinion?

RE: What to do about the trolls
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 2:21:20 AM #
Well, if this people are typical of the PPC user community, then I'll stick with my Palm OS unit, thank you.

RE: What to do about the trolls
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 7:39:18 AM #
Troll ? That's your nickname, why call us by ur name ?

RE: What to do about the trolls
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 11:04:51 AM #
yeah man, I am telling you those trolls sure annoy the hell out of me, telling all the bad thing about Palm. Why can't people just post positive post only?

I mean Palm is the greatest right?

Pocket PC winning at Duke ! HELP!

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 10:51:53 AM #
Duke Hospital is trying to establish a PDA based wireless network using an already existing 802.11b network. There is huge support for a Palm based solution, but it is very sad that only PocketPC prototype solutions are technically feasible. I am looking for some help!

The Xircom cards do not have enough power (30mW) and only give about 50% coverage.
(an IPAQ with a Cisco Aironet 350 card worked well (100mW))

This is the main problem, but also Palms do not have enough memory to cache data.

It is sad to see how Pocket PC wins because Palm is lagging technically so much behind.


If somebody has some insights into how to obtain a Palm based 802.11b solution (100mW), please let me know, there is still ~2 months time...

Tony --> seiwert@yahoo.com


RE: Pocket PC winning at Duke ! HELP!
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 11:07:28 AM #
Write Palm, compaq and HP sales departments. Maybe they can give you some sort of deal after informing both party of your need.

The 802.11 CF cards price is plunging, so mabe you might want to consider that too.



RE: Pocket PC winning at Duke ! HELP!
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 11:56:28 AM #
Have you taken a look at the Xircom springPort module for Handspring visors?

http://www.xircom.com/cda/page/0,1298,1-840-1_1-1727,00.html

It says that it gets the following ranges and speeds:

Typical Range at 11 Mbps
Up to 300 feet (90 meters) in open environments and 100 feet (30 meters) in office environments

Typical Range at 1 Mbps
Up to 1000 feet (300 meters) in open environments and 300 feet (90 meters) in office environments

I think this is the same as the Palm add on though. Are your access points going to be further away than that?

RE: Pocket PC winning at Duke ! HELP!
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 1:20:48 PM #
ehm, if one has to invest in new handheld and new spring board, might as well invest soemthing that is interchangable (PC card/CF) instead of springboard. It saves tons of money being able to use the CF/PCcard in laptop too.

RE: Pocket PC winning at Duke ! HELP!
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 3:02:06 PM #
Alright, due to the symmetry of the building a 30mW card like the Xircom one does not cover the complete area (only 50-60%).

PC-cards are already being used extensively in laptops - and it is always the Cisco Aironet card (100mW).

I know that there are CF 802.11 cards but is any working with the Handera or a Visor? Symbol announced it would provide Palm support but I haven't heard again from them.

Please let me know if you have any more info, Thanks,

Tony -->seiwert@yahoo.com

RE: Pocket PC winning at Duke ! HELP!
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 6:08:52 PM #
I wouldn't trust a hospital with a PalmOS-based infrastructure. Flame on.

RE: Pocket PC winning at Duke ! HELP!
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 7:46:41 PM #
you can always write your own driver...

Deathstar wins at Duke!
I.M. Anonymous @ 9/29/2001 9:51:10 PM #
It's only a matter of time until they take over the world...

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