Quickies: T665C, Sony, OnBoard C, Spain

SonyStyle Hong Kong has begun taking pre-orders for the PEG-T665C/H which is the Hong Kong version of the T650C, which it released in Japan earlier this month. The preorder period is June 21 to July 4. The price is HK$3280 (around US$420). -Joseph So and William Chang

SonyStyle Japan has launched My Clié, My Style! to let users share their experiences with their handhelds. There is also a questionnaire to get feedback for the next generation Clié. -Eugene

OnBoard C, the only true C compiler that runs on a Palm, is now officially open source. OnBoard C was originally a commercial product by IndiVideo, but it's been available for free use for several months and the author released the source to the Palm development community earlier this week. The sourcecode will soon be available as a project on SourceForge, but meanwhile the executable and information about the source is available from the OnBoard C Yahoo! Group. -David Orr 

HispaPUG, the Palm User Group from Spain, will put on two meetings this Saturday, one by HispaPUG-Madrid and one by HispaPUG-Sevilla. -Jose Julio Ruiz

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Clie could dominate

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 8:43:23 AM #
Sony has made a lot of good moves and could really dominate the Palm market with a few more. One simple move would be to burn SilverScreen on the ROM. It is by far the preferred launcher for the Palm OS and would spice up the interface much like they have done with the hardware. Also WordSmith as the default word processor would be killer.
RE: Clie could dominate
rldunn @ 6/21/2002 9:59:50 AM #
I'm not sure if Silverscreen is the top launcher, as far as numbers go, especially recently, but I am sure that not more than half of Clie users use it. There was a poll in the nXt group on which launcher was the preferred one, and Silverscreen was an also ran, with Megalauncher being the top choice. Granted, web polls aren't exactly scientific, but my point is that for a lot of people, putting Silverscreen in ROM would just be a waste of ROM. I'd rather them leave it as is and give us the choice.

RE: Clie could dominate
wilco @ 6/21/2002 10:41:41 AM #
Too early to say....The race will be decided with OS 5 devices, if ever. For now, there's no question that Sony's devices are the best Palm OS PDA, feature-for-feature. But Palm still leads in sales at this point and the m5xx form factor is still the best to hold and use (think: hardware buttons) in your palm.

Silverscreen is good but Megasoft is also good, and so are the others like YiShow, Crs-Launcher, Launcher III, and the delayed Launcher X. Putting it on RAM is okay provided it is not the default launcher, and you can change it to another if you want to. Speaking of apps in RAM, there's a lot of them in Sony's 8 Mb FlashRAM (especially NR-70V-Sample pictures, Remote Control, Clie Demo, etc...) but wonder why you can't access them unless you transferred them to RAM.

RE: Clie could dominate
rldunn @ 6/21/2002 2:12:11 PM #
>> Speaking of apps in RAM, there's a lot of them in
>> Sony's 8 Mb FlashRAM (especially NR-70V-Sample
>> pictures, Remote Control, Clie Demo, etc...) but
>> wonder why you can't access them unless you
>> transferred them to RAM.

Those apps aren't in Flash, they're only on the CD, and you have to install them to RAM or to the MS to use them. Apps like CliePaint and ClieCamera are in Flash, and that's why you can access them right away.

RE: Clie could dominate
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 8:13:00 PM #
Sony's marketing department has been telling us that CLIE will dominate ... for how long now? Is it 2 years? Despite all the hype, it hasn't happened.

And what have they done in that time? They have released model after model, (virtually) each of which has more useless gimmicks than the last. Every few months we are hit with another marketing campaign telling how wonderfull the lastest so-called "feature" is. But what have they achieved? Adding MP3 playback - what's the point of that on a PDA? Strange screen resolutions - tolerable if you write in Chinese, Japanese or Korean (put aside the fact that the problems caused by the code), but not exactly vital for others. This is innovation?

If CLIE is to dominate any market, they will need to consider carefully about what really matters most to users.

They would do better to focus their brainpower on producing handhelds which are smaller, lighter, have longer battery life and bigger screens. They should dump their proprietary expansion medium. Let them also get rid of their software add-ons which compromise the Palm OS's simplicity and stability.

I suppose there will always be people who must have the latest multi-media toy with all the "gee-whiz" gimmicks. (Go to www.writingonyourpalm.net if want to see an example of this.) But those users represent a tiny portion of the market. It would be a pity if their petulant demands led manufacturers to produce models which the vast majority of customers do not want and will not pay for.

RE: Clie could dominate/with that battery life?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 9:12:00 PM #
"Clie could dominate" with that battery life? they prolly will but only for a few hours.(with backlight on low)
RE: Clie could dominate
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/22/2002 12:05:16 PM #
Let's see, you want bigger screens AND smaller handhelds, yet you criticize Sony's use of "strange screen resolutions"? Sorry to break this to you, but a 320x320 or 320x480 screen with virtual Graffiti area is a bit nicer than Palm's 160x160. I wonder why Palm has adopted 320x320 in OS5?

"Dump their proprietary storage medium"? Memory stick is not proprietary. Others have adopted it and according to the last report I saw, its much more popular than MMC, and growing rapidly. Get real. Memory stick is not going away and this argument is simply not valid anymore. The same goes for all of your other "arguments".

RE: Clie could dominate
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/22/2002 1:25:01 PM #
Some may say Minidisc is dead, but it's only dead in the US, it's really popular in Asia/Europe area, everytime when I see someone refer Minidisc as a failure, I'll be asking myself what I've been using for the past 7 years.
RE: Clie could dominate
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/22/2002 8:26:08 PM #
"They would do better to focus their brainpower on producing handhelds which are smaller, lighter, have longer battery life and bigger screens. They should dump their proprietary expansion medium. Let them also get rid of their software add-ons which compromise the Palm OS's simplicity and stability. "

1) Sony's marketing department never said they are going to dominate, your post started off as a flame, sounds like a flame, feels like a flame.

2) Longer battery life, Bigger screen, Smaller PDA. You are so smart, I thought no one knew this. How are we supposed to make smaller PDAs and have bigger screen, look at all the PDAs today the screen is basically as big as the PDA itself already, that is physically impossible. Also bigger screen and longer battery life, LoL ...

3) And that proprietary expansion medium you talking about has times the market share of the SD card, don't tell me how many companies are supportting SD, all I know is if Sony manages to have 7 times the market share of a so called open standard, then there must be something wrong with the open standard.

RE: Clie could dominate
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/23/2002 8:25:18 AM #
>Let's see, you want bigger screens AND smaller >handhelds, yet you criticize Sony's use of "strange >screen resolutions"? Sorry to break this to you, but >a 320x320 or 320x480 screen with virtual Graffiti >area is a bit nicer than Palm's 160x160. I wonder why >Palm has adopted 320x320 in OS5?

You can have a bigger screen on a smaller unit by cutting back on the borders around the screen. The unit can be made thinner. The buttons can be relocated. ... Need I go on? The first point is not a contradiction to anyone who uses their imagination. Imagination. Think about it. Isn't that what innovation is really about?

As to the screen resolutions, please consider this: Sony makes units with three different combinations. Which one is the standard? It can't be 320x320, because they brought in something else a few months after 320x320 was introduced. What will it be on the next new model? That Palm will support multiples of 160x160 will be a relief, because the Sony hack for 320x320 (which causes problems, according to developers) can be done away with. As usual, Sony produces gimmicks; Palm creates the solution.

Your bias is interesting, but please do not allow it is stand in the way of plain common sense.

NR70V Returns
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/23/2002 10:08:17 AM #
The Best Buy kid told me the sold 10 NR70V's and they got 9 returned by the customer because of cracked hinge and/or blank screens. Stranges - as I have heard no complaints here though. Comments?
RE: Clie could dominate
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/23/2002 2:31:02 PM #
Yup, everyone should stick to 160x160 because that's the only resolution that Palm currently supports until OS5 devices come out. Let's all ditch our beautiful 320 hi-res screens because they're not "standard" and they "cause problems according to developers".

If you have used WordSmith or even any of the built-in apps in hi-res on the T615 or NR70, you would not want to go back to lo-res. The fact that Sony found a way to go to 320x320 and beyond while still retaining full compatibility with standard apps a year before Palm makes them the innovator, and Palm the follower. Those that use the Sony devices do not consider their beautiful screens a "gimmick".

I am not biased against Palm or anyone else. I'm happy to see them switching to a new processor and supporting higher resolutions in the OS. It's obvious that you're the one that's biased against Sony. If you want to stick with your current device until Palm officially supports hi-res, good for you. If you want to use it now, thanks to Sony and others, you can.

Sony survey creativity

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 8:49:14 AM #
Too early in the morning for me to think creatively, so I'm putting this out to everyone else...

If you go to the Sony survey, there's terms and conditions at the bottom that you have to agree to. These are in *editable* text fields. Hmm, what could we agree to?

RE: Sony survey creativity
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 10:27:06 AM #
Agree to these terms only if you like receiving SPAM.
RE: Sony survey creativity
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 3:05:23 PM #
If you post something public on their website, you must agree that your message is "editable" by them.

This does not only happen on SONY, it's the same for ALL company which lets user leave any format of comment online.


Yippie!

N473 @ 6/21/2002 11:19:55 AM #
I have been waiting for OBC to go open source! I have been a user since it went free, this is a great development.

Cheers!
N473
Dana kids will learn programming in C
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 12:06:05 PM #
from On Board C.
RE: Yippie!
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 12:19:00 PM #
Before, it was difficult for me to write C code using graffiti but I think with my Treo 90, I can give it another shot.
RE: Yippie!
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 5:37:32 PM #
I'm about to spend two months traveling around europe and thanks OnBoard C and my folding keyboard, I'll be able to create some cool programs while I'm there. OnBoard C is the best thing about being a Palm developer.

Don't forget PocketC!

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/21/2002 11:09:45 PM #
It might not be a 'real' C compiler since it outputs bytecode, but check out what it can do at www.mobilewizardry.com for the Mobile Wizardry Palm OS Demo competition, for demos in the "Old School" c64/Amiga/PC style.
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