Jeff Hawkins Clarifies the Future of the Visor

"I will continue to stay with my husband(s) so long as he (they) has (have) sufficient means to support me."

Elizabeth Taylor

And so you get a memory-stick based item instead? Sure, that's a LOT cheaper than SD.....

I actually do own N770, what do you think you are the only person with cash to buy something like that?

I didn't like memory stick, but its far better than secure digital. Memory sticks are here with up 128Mb in size, soon there will be 256/512, and it looks like Sony is getting more and more open with it -- Lexar and Sandisk were licensed to produce memory sticks WITHOUT royalties, which means prices will go down big time.

Dream on. Do you think there are developers out there that will be putting money into making new Springboard modules? Not a chance. I'm sure they are trying to cut their losses and are vowing not to get burned again by this company.

I think that this Clié guy problem is that he doesn´t know how to read, because you can perfectly use MMC instead of SD for storage. I bought 5 units of 28MB SanDisk MMC on eBay for 37.50, can you do that with MS???? BTW, they work beautifully :-)

I dont want to have shredloads of memory chips, I want 2-3 top size chips, Memory Stick in this respect is better than MMC/SD, but worse than CompactFlash for which I could have bought 1Gb IBM disk.

Now finnally, the main point why I bought Clie is BEAUTIFUL COLOUR SCREEN! Check subject of my posts -- no colour models == no future, NOT: SD/MMC sucks, MemoryStick rules. I would not buy Palm M505 even if it had compact flash beacuse its screen SUCKS!

When I bought my Colour CLIE the sales guy told me that they sell better than mono-models -- people are happy to pay premium for colour screen!

There is a big market for colour palm sized devices, ever heard of Game Boy Advanced? There is nothing preventing of having one palm device used both for serious tasks and games, analogue of a PC in your hands.

>>In any case, your sales idiot was very wrong.

And who are you to say that he is more wrong than you?

Do not forget, US market does not equal the world market. At least in Japan, B&W devices is dying. Sony did not even release the s-series (except the old S300 and T400) in Japan. They are no. 1 PDAs seller in Japan since N700C released in April/2001. N750C is the top PDA now (may be overtaken by T600C next month). The statistics is published by Nikkei mobile monthly. Palm products have never been on top position, it was Sharp's Zaurus all the while before Clies appearred. Actually Clies save PalmOS in Japan because Zaurus and PPCs have so much to offer when it comes to screen resolution and wireless connectivity.

BTW, HS has stopped their online store in Japan since 12/26/2001 and left a 2 staff in the Japan office to support their PDAs. The Edge dropped from 49,000 yen (same price as N750C - N760C in US) to 19,800 yen (abt $150) 2 months ago. Still they cannot sell because 160x160 display is not acceptable for Japanese Kanji when you have the Clie hires to compare. HS is moving out of Japan for sure as Treo has no place here because there is no GSM here and it is neither color nor hires. They did not release Neo and Pro as well.

Well, it's no wonder Sony got into the PDA market then. They couldn't let Sharp, or anyone for that matter, outsell them on a consumer electronics item in Japan.

I guess that would be pretty cheap HotSyncing from Europe to your machine in the USA wouldn't it. Not to mention really fast on the 'ol 14.4Kbps connection ;) It takes about 10 min. today with my VisorPrism/AvantGo on my local Xircom 802.11b connection. I couldn't imagine the dial-up being practical. At the very min. it would cost me about $50 to HotSync while visiting Europe (approx. $1 per min. the last time I was in Finland), less than the cost of the MemPlug!

Also, you would hope that you remember the the IP/Hostname of the remote machine you are connecting too and that your local ISP isn't having problems back at the office.

The other challenge is that not everyone has a dedicated phone line for Remote HotSync'ing nor a dedicated internet connection (CABLE/DSL).

Face it, expandability on a PDA,

**communicator or not**

is not a luxury but a necessity.

Now that's a good idea, be sure to get a patent on it before someone else does!

That's partially precise. The SIM Card can save a max of about 50 phone numbers, no more. When you do a hard reset, you lose your Palm Addressbook.

It's true you can get back the 50 stored on the SIM Card after a hard reset, but if you have 600 names/addresses (like I do) 50 is typically immdiately family/friends. The business associate you're likely to meet at the Airport may very well not be in your SIM Card and was instead in your Palm Addressbook, which was wipped out.

Just something to consider.

> To be precise, when you use a GSM phone the
> telephone numbers are stored in the GSM card.
> So if you have to do a hard reset you don't lose
> your contacts. This is obvious for non-american
> phone users...

Indeed. I have about 250 contacts stored in the flash memory of my Ericsson T39 mobile phone, along with
2 x POP3 email accounts (the T39 has a -very basic but working- email client built in as well as a WAP browser)

>You missed the part where I pointed out that I used >to do this all the time on my 14.4 modem. it is slow >but doable. I wasn't saying its the best solution, >but the first guy made a blanket statement that you'd >be screwed. I just pointed out that that wasn't >necessarily true. But the FlashPlug is a much better >solution. I see a Treo version of this within 6 >months.

I was actually the first guy :)

Anyways, you're right it's doable but dependent upon a few things as to wheter or not you are screwed. What if you bought a TREO without a backup plan of paying for a second phone line in your home that would allow you to remotely HotSync? What if you don't have Cable/DSL in your area? If either of those are not possible and you own a TREO, you are- for lack of a better word, screwed if you have to perform a Hard Reset during your trip.

I was looking at the cost of the alternative and the reality of how many people would have such a contingency in the event of disaster with their TREO as opposed to a MemPlug or some other backup solution.

You mentioned the FlashPlug as a potential solution. The problem with the FlashPlug (I owned one of these too with my Palm VIIx) is that you need to install the application to the PDA "FIRST" before you can move any data from the FlashPlug to the PDA. Therefore, it's essentially useless too while on the road and after a Hard Reset. It can't auto load the program that is needed to access the FlashPlug (or Memory Safe)...

You make some good points, but the fact that there is no solid backup solution for the TREO while travelling is a fatal flaw in the device.

My Experience: I used to have lots of problems with my VisorPrism/VisorPhone and had to perform Hard Resets when my Prism would jump into an infinite loop on the Startup screen. It would show the Palm Computing screen, flicker and reset itself infinitely. There was no way to recover aside from a Hard Reset(tried all the wonderful tricks of recover Pin with up arrow, down arrow, Power, etc.).

I would assume the TREO is going to be suceptible to the same condition. As it turned out, removing ICQ from the Prism resolved this problem for me(haven't seen it do that again in about 9 months. It took me forever to isolate the problem (ICQ may not have been the cause of the problem, but it did fix the problem after having removed it).

With the VisorPrism/VisorPhone and the MemPlug, you at least had a solid solution for recovery that didn't require

a) Dialing back to the office
b) Having a PC (or second PDA) handy

I hope Handspring put some kind of safeguard into the TREO to prevent the issue I had mention above. If not, I'm sure someone is bound to run into it. When they do, they'll miss not having a SpringBoard for recovery.