PalmSource Considering Laptop Licensee

Palm OS 6
640 x 480 screen (VGA)
built in Wi-Fi
otherwise...same hardware specs as hi end palm devices.

I think about having a small light tablet like this in my hands so I can roam around my house hooked into the wireless network...hooked up to my high speed internet access and browse the web or access files on my PC.

Palm! I think this would be a hit.

reformed lurker

I'd even say a bit larger than VGA, maybe 800x600 or even 1024x768, though that impacts battery life. A cradle with built-in charger and WiFi port, and a "screensaver cradle mode" that turns it into an electronic picture frame. Keep it in the family room for argument-settling IMDB visits while the TiVo is paused.

It could do to the Apple eMate what the PalmPilot did to the Newton.

"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

This could be huge indeed, but I'm thinking a huge potential market would be the baby boomers.. my parents spend $1000 on a desktop computer just to check email every so often and do some very light browsing on the internet. It takes up tons of space and isn't used to its potential.

A Palm laptop could have mave mass appeal to this crowd, especially with a built in 56K modem. Not everyone is on broadband with WiFi just yet...

Jodi

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=5742

"5) Want to get innovative? How about pushing Palms as a low cost laptop alternative? A clone of the CLIE UX50 with a slightly bigger screen, CompactFlash and SD slots, 802.11b, Bluetooth and Word/Excel/Powerpoint apps is all the "laptop" a lot of employees really need. Cheap to buy, cheap to support. A TCO dream come true."

I like this one, although you have to be careful to market it as a device for certain tasks people do with a laptop, rather than as a full PC. Otherwise you end up with the HPC syndrome.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource

While people like Mr. Mace may manage to keep Palm afloat over the next year, it is disappointing to see that Palm apparently doesn't already have a device like this in the pipeline. A PalmTop™ seems like too obvious an idea to not have been developed years ago. (What does Palm's R + D department do all day?)

Since Palm seems to have suddenly gained clarity of vision, perhaps they will soon be adopting the other suggestions given in the original post:

1) Release a 320 x 480, Vx-sized (thin, LIGHT) Palm ASAP. If you can't make it as small as a Vx, forget it. Despite what they say, size matters. Only a few fanatics will be submitting to those big, thick, heavy monsters that Sony is trying to ram down peoples' throats. Let Sony cater to suckers that want Monster Palms. Palm needs to get back to designing simple, elegant hardware that works for the way most people actually use their handhelds.

2) Make the Treo 600 available for $300 or less. If it's priced right, the Treo could become the new executive toy du jour - like the Vx was a few years ago. Price it much higher than $300 and watch it be ignored by everyone except the few hundred people that read Palm fan sites. The Treo 600 (or its immediate successor) may save Palm as long as the desire for quick profits doesn't win out over The Big Picture.

3) Stop the redundancy in Palm's software portfolio. Pick the best of breed apps and stick with them. If you really want to show what Palms can do, get users Hooked On Palm by creating a licensed suite of the best freeware and shareware Palm apps/games/utilities and bundling them with every Palm sold. I'd suggest looking at including as many of these as could be licensed for a reasonable price: Bejeweled, DiddleBug, HandyShopper, iSilo, Open, Vexed, Vindigo, YAUC, Zagat. Others - like APCalc, DateBk5, FindHack, LauncherX, McFile, TealLock, TealScript, To Do PLUS, Ultrasoft Money and Uninstall Manager - would make good replacements for those ancient original Palm ROM apps that do the same job. Sure, bundling hurts other developers, but it's all about survival of the fittest. Just look at what Microsoft has done over the years.

4) Stop skimping on the RAM. Yes, I know you want to sell SD cards, but at this point there's no excuse for releasing any PDA with less than 64 MB RAM.

5) Want to get innovative? How about pushing Palms as a low cost laptop alternative? A clone of the CLIE UX50 with a slightly bigger screen, CompactFlash and SD slots, 802.11b, Bluetooth and Word/Excel/Powerpoint apps is all the "laptop" a lot of employees really need. Cheap to buy, cheap to support. A TCO dream come true.

6) Hire what's left of the HandEra software engineering staff and use them to make some real improvements in the Palm OS. The "Zen of Palm" spin just doesn't cut it these days. Unfortunately, I envision a whole lotta current apps breaking if Palm finally advances the OS to where it needs to go.

7) Fear Microsoft. Palm's historical dominance in handhelds won't mean much if Microsoft starts giving away basic PPCs with every copy of Office. Don't think they can't or won't just buy the PDA market outright. The petty cash fund in Redmond could probably cover what was spent on worldwide sales of all PDAs last year.

8) Fear Nokia. Cellphones are already doing what most people use their Palms for. The average Joe isn't going to buy a Palm if their "free" cellphone comes with an address book, to do list, memo pad, date book, digital camera and games. Only geeks will be willing to carry two devices.

9) Adhere to the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Most Palm users never even use any programs other than the built in apps for a reason: Palms are almost perfect "as is". Just make them smaller, lighter, faster and more integrated with cellphones, digital cameras and MP3 players. Sound easy doesn't it?

10) Don't wait too long before selling out to Sony. A purchase for 800 million within the next six months - say, January 15, 2004 - sounds like a good way to exit stage left. Don't let me down - baby needs new shoes...

(The invoice for my consulting fee is in the mail and is due upon receipt. Remit cash payments only please - no checks or Handspring stock accepted.)

Armchair analyst

Sometimes the truth just isn't pretty™

And usually, that's all it is. In my experience, having supported SONY branded computers for a while, they give me nothing but trouble (mostly hardware problems). Their official site doesn't help much either when I'm trying to download patches/updates for software incompatibility.

IMHO, they're second worst right under Compaq (desktops/laptops, not servers).

They are probably the one who could develop something interesting the fastest at an interesting price point.

Maybe they can, but they wouldn't be doing a good job supporting it, if their current and past supporting trends are any indication.

... and doing so, I am sure they would love to hit MS who is trying to lure away their gaming market with its X-Box.

MSFT is in no way catching up with SONY in gaming. MSFT has a better chance beating out Nintendo (if they aren't already). I don't think SONY is worried about the X-Box, which is a total flop in Japan (that is, at least not until the next generation of gaming consoles are revealed).

P.S. : If only they could put a SD Card instead of a Memory Stick in it....

Never.

Jim

Seriously, this notebook idea would be fabulous in Palm OS w/ multitask! Imagine a 15oz device with 128mb ram, 3/4" thick folded, 7" x 9" folded, "full" keyboard, 800x600, Docs2Go6, SD, CF, wifi, bt, ir, e-mail, web, modem. Don't bloat it, don't complicate it but simplify it so that my mom could read ebooks, surf and get mail on it with zero learning curve.

This would truly be an INSTANT ON/OFF "notebook" that could change this totally screwball "boot + wait + load + wait + bloat + wait + freeze + wait + service pack + crash + wait + hourglass ..." computing world that we are imprisoned in.

Sure it's not going to have the power of a P4, storage of a 120gb drive nor 19" lcd. But 90% of real productivity could happen this way ... and fast!

Recently, I started and typed a quick document on my kid's (my old) Compaq 486 with Win31 & MSWordWin v2.0. I was amazed at how "simple" and quick it was compared to my PIII, XP, MSWordXP with that little flaoting clipboard idiot! Now which system is more powerful? For getting that document done, the 486.

Just visualize a Palm OS laptop with no harddrive light, no hourglasses, no waiting ... and it all does 95% of what we'll ever use. I believe!

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Hell, for that matter. I think in the future, the average user won't even know anything about operating systems. The end-user experience will be VERY SIMPLE!

Ron

They can't be anywhere near a laptop price. That's just obvious. A salesman trying to justify what the Palm 'laptop' can't do as to what a similarly priced notebook can do is going to have a hard time.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love a 6" tablet to mess with. But not running Palm OS in its current state.

Something like a Tungsten C with 2 SD slots, a 3x larger display and a full size keyboard could weigh under a kilo and still give you over a days worth of battery life. Try getting anywhere near that with an under $700 laptop.

A PalmOS laptop might not make a great 3d gaming machine, but a 400+ ARM CPU has plenty of performance for basic web/email/note taking, and would be far more immune to viruses and misconfiguration than todays typical Wintel laptop.

Then again, a whole bunch of Windows CE hardware vendors tried something like this a few years ago and failed miserably, so something has to be done differently to succeed (even more agressive pricing?).