[Deslock]

Originally Posted by Gerard

Yeah, right. Palm's corporate identity is being compared to Microsoft's various OS/device identities. Clever. Microsoft hasn't re-branded itself, has it? {snip}

Why would a phenomenally successful company like Microsoft rebrand itself? While I personally think Palm's name changes were stupid, they had some reasons... just like Microsoft did for changing the name of its consumer-grade mobile OS: it had failed so badly from 1996-2000 (and continued to struggle for the next few years) that the names WinCE and Palm-sized PC had become a liability to Microsoft's PDA platform.

None of that is especially relevant to this topic, but your post about Palm's name changes is even less relevant.

Getting back to "Ultra Mobile 2007", I look forward to seeing what MS can come up with. I don't care what flavor of Win32 it runs (or if it's based on something else entirely) as long as it isn't too temperamental, has good performance and battery life, hardware DIVX decoding, at least an 800x480 screen, and a real web solution. IMHO, the lack of a decent VGA browser is one of PPC's biggest drawbacks (yes, yes, I can run ozVGA + NetFront, but with that comes many other disadvantages and still renders agonizingly slow).

[Deslock]

Originally Posted by Gerard

Yeah, right. Palm's corporate identity is being compared to Microsoft's various OS/device identities. Clever. Microsoft hasn't re-branded itself, has it? {snip}

Why would a phenomenally successful company like Microsoft rebrand itself? While I personally think Palm's name changes were stupid, they had some reasons... just like Microsoft did for changing the name of its consumer-grade mobile OS: it had failed so badly from 1996-2000 (and continued to struggle for the next few years) that the names WinCE and Palm-sized PC had become a liability to Microsoft's PDA platform.

None of that is especially relevant to this topic, but your post about Palm's name changes is even less relevant.

Getting back to "Ultra Mobile 2007", I look forward to seeing what MS can come up with. I don't care what flavor of Win32 it runs (or if it's based on something else entirely) as long as it isn't too temperamental, has good performance and battery life, hardware DIVX decoding, at least an 800x480 screen, and a real web solution. IMHO, the lack of a decent VGA browser is one of PPC's biggest drawbacks (yes, yes, I can run ozVGA + NetFront, but with that comes many other disadvantages and still renders agonizingly slow).

[Deslock]

One more tangential post since my point in responding to jlp on page 9 appears to have been lost:

It seems mildly ironic to me that people are bashing Palm for changing its name in a thread about "Ultra Mobile" at a website named pocketpcthoughts that's dedicated to an OS now known as "Windows Mobile" (and used to be known as WinCE, Palm PC and Palm-sized PC).

(Or was that too subtle?)

[Gerard]

I am sorry that you mistook my intention with that retort post. I found the initial Palm name change post to be irrelevant to the thread, and yours equally so. Besides that, re-naming the OS is something all too familiar in the Palm camp, regardless of the branding of the corporate side. Why would Microsoft rename itself? I don't know; why would Palm? Shouldn't these be in the 'trivia' section, if there is one?

Windows CE was not a failure. Growth of the MS mobile OS has been gradual, not exactly a skyrocket, but it has been an evolution with compatibility running almost throughout. I could still runn old CE2.11 apps on my PPC2000 Casio. 5-year-old PPC2000 apps still work on my WM2003 device. Continuity is useful.

As for Ultra Mobile 2007 having hardware DivX decoding.... don't hold your breath. Open source is Bill's enemy, publicly declared on several occassions by the rich boy himself. It'll be a frosty one below before that happens, or even Motion JPEG AVI playback in mobile WMP it would seem, despite the fact that this format is extremely popular with digicam users worldwide. There's something a bit wrong with Microsoft when it comes to video formats.

[Racer-X]

Originally Posted by Deslock

One more tangential post since my point in responding to jlp on page 9 appears to have been lost:

It seems mildly ironic to me that people are bashing Palm for changing its name in a thread about "Ultra Mobile" at a website named pocketpcthoughts that's dedicated to an OS now known as "Windows Mobile" (and used to be known as WinCE, Palm PC and Palm-sized PC).

(Or was that too subtle?)

No. I took it that no one cared. Maybe you could visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/about/faq.mspx though and get a feel for the difference between the names "Windows Mobile," "Pocket PC" and "Smartphone" and then come back and look at the name of this site, and find that what is ironic is, your post makes no more sense the 2nd time you said it anymore than it did the 1st.

(or was that too subtle?)

[Deslock]

^^ Gerard: CE was a failure in the consumer PDA market by any reasonable measurement. Your stories of compatibility may be heart-warming to some, but they're irrelevant (and frankly nothing special... I ran dozens of Palm apps written in 1997 on my T3 last year). As far as video goes, I just want a decent all-purpose 3D chip like my X50v has (which plays 480x640 DIVX at silly-fast frame rates). Unfortunately, the upcoming HTC phone reportedly lacks such a chip.

^ Racer-X: Not sure what your "no one cared" statement means... I was responding to Gerard. I never said that Microsoft's naming convention/chages were nonsensical, just that it's ironic that people here bash Palm for name changes given all the names that Microsoft's PDA OS has gone through.

[MBurch]

I am supposed to lug a pound around on my hip? I agree with the sentiment that converged devices just don't work.