I would love Palm to give me a reason to switch back, but they have missed the boat once again, releasing another PDA based on a OS as aging as MSDOS.. They have lost pretty much all thrird party manufacturer support, Sony I don't blame you
I don't think Sony dumped Palm OS. They just got out of PDAs, period. Except in Japan, where they still sell Palm OS PDAs.
I love my Axim but I really hope WM5 is a big step up from the current OS it uses. I wish I could hack it to run Palm OS and apps; like a dual boot sort of thing.
I would love Palm to give me a reason to switch back, but they have missed the boat once again, releasing another PDA based on a OS as aging as MSDOS.. They have lost pretty much all thrird party manufacturer support, Sony I don't blame you
I don't think Sony dumped Palm OS. They just got out of PDAs, period. Except in Japan, where they still sell Palm OS PDAs.
I love my Axim but I really hope WM5 is a big step up from the current OS it uses. I wish I could hack it to run Palm OS and apps; like a dual boot sort of thing.
Thanks Surur, I did read it and I apologise for my poorly written post. What I'd actually like is an Axim that runs Palm OS, but I can boot a Windows Mobile shell on top of that to run apps like OziExplorer and Destinator. The app in that thread does the reverse.
Generally, I think most Palm apps are no better (or worse) than PocektPC apps. It's just the OS I prefer. The exception is alternative PIMs, where Pimlico Software's Datebk5 has it way over any of the PPC ones, I've tried 'em all and settled on Pocket Informant, but... (sigh)
I don't think Sony dumped Palm OS. They just got out of PDAs, period. Except in Japan, where they still sell Palm OS PDAs.
It was more of a case of declining sales, and wanting to "get out" and avoid further losses. It's hard to say whether it was attributable to Palm OS being used, or due to the fact that CLIEs just happened to cost a lot more than anything else. We may see Sony return to the market at a later stage - but then again, we may not.
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After reading this article over at Brighthand, I have to say that there are a few really good things inthis device.
4GB HD 2 day battery life 8O (Although I'd like to see an SPB benchmark on that). Mounting as a HD without the need for PDA synching software This one is really nice. Imagine how your life would change if you could just plug your PocketPC into any computer and transfer data around like it was a super intelligent thumb drive. Then we wouldn't have to post every few months about "anybody know of any good file syncing sofware?" Asthetics From all the glamour shots it seems to be pretty attractive.
As to the whole multi-tasking discussion... what does it say about the fact that Garnet's capabilities are using a 10 year-old (or is it 15) technology for task management. As I'm sure most would agree, its always bad news to put the burden of a better OS experience on the software developers. Perhaps thats evident in the fact that there are so few Palm applications that take advantage of co-operative multitasking. Atleast thats my impression from Jeff Kirvin post. I'm by no means an expert on the PalmOS software community.
I wonder how much thought Windows or Windows Mobile, or even OSX developers have to give to the subject of multitasking when they write programs?
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You get about 4-6 hours just playing music, and only about 100 minutes playing video. Compare this with this battery test for the current crop of high end PPC handhelds.
Only the mp3 playback test is comparable, but its enough the illustrate the battery draining effect of the lifedrive, in the way they chose to implement it. Thats 4-6 hours with the screen of playing music in the lifedrive, vs 12:30 hours with the Loox 720, that has the same size of battery than the lifedrive.
That two days reminds me of the two weeks battery life claims Palm people used to brag about (but only if you use your device for 30 minutes per day :roll: )
Jeff Kirvin wrote"Leaving a word processor running in the background is just a waste of memory on a handheld."
Uh-huh. And if for instance one wished to copy some text from a browser or a contact's notes field or from a document open in a secondary word processor into a document open in the primary word processor, is this not a patently useful function? Having an open document slam shut just because I want to grab a look at email or get some text from wherever is relevant to the task at hand and add it, or conversely to reference the same document multiple times while also keeping a browser window open for contributions in a forum (quoting blocks of useful text from archived docs into discussion threads, for instance) would be intolerably frustrating. Add to this the apparently crippling limit on clipboard size, and one has a profoundly limiting device in terms of any sort of serious editing. Of course, if one prefers to limit the functionality of PDA for their own use... welcome to Palm-think. 'We don't provide it because you don't need it, we think.'
I am yet again dismayed by these writings of yours Jeff. I'd not visited your site in over a year, owing to what seemed a steady and un-justifiable increase in anti-Microsoft flaming. Now I see that not only has this not changed, it has increased in both blinkered thinking and vitriolic anti-PPC content. The finger-pointing and half-truths expressed are unfortunate, especially as they seem to come while Palm device variety and sales are waning and seem likely to become a small niche market within the next few years.
There are sometimes absurd shots being taken at Palm as a whole. If Palm (pa1m0ne, PalmSource, Palm Powered, Palm-ish-whatever) were really so very bad the ccompany would have failed utterly years ao. As it is, WindowsMobile (Pocket PC, WM, WinCE, whatever) has had to fight tooth and nail for market share and whatever significant market growth it has earned. We're talking a battle of giants here, and they both provide some decent strengths for users.
Of course from the perspective of this PPC user of 5 years, Palms were never really an option. I did my research in magazines, tried a few in stores, asked around, and in the end concluded that a Casio E-115 kicked some serious multi-media @$$ on anything Palm had to offer. Hint as to why: I bought Pocket Artist within 3 months of purchasing the PPC and got heavily into Photogenics not long after, and all along was learning more and more about encoding audio and video for use with the PPC. Plainly Palm took years to catch up, and arguably they still haven't... although CorePlayer (formerly BetaPlayer) will soon be doing a heck of a job helping Palm users get what PPC users have had for years with Pocket TV, WMP, GSPlayer, and umpteen other media softwares
For the strict business user the Palms of old make perfect sense. If I wore a suit to an office I'd probably use one too. But there are a lot of users out there who, like me, are not chained to desks and want a little or a lot more variety of data handling than even the latest Palm device can offer. Unless and until Palm offers the depth of choice of use that PPCs have all along and quits riding on the past, a colour screen just is not enough to make Palm anything more than glorious black and white.
I'm not sure there was an attempt to deceive stock holders, but that seems to be the end result. Their is obviously something wrong with Cobalt that scares manufacturers away from it.
Actually, there's nothing wrong with Cobalt, but everything wrong with how it's been presented. At each milestone, PalmSource has Osborned themselves.
They released 6.0 in Dec 03 to meet an arbitrary marketing milestone. The system worked, but the UI was the same as Garnet and it was missing all the telephony stuff. Rather than tell licensees to develop that stuff on their own, PalmSource said that such features would be available in 6.1. So the licensees waited.
They released 6.1 which is a fully functional, stable OS, with full GSM telephony (no CDMA, which pissed off PalmOne/Sprint/Verizon), but as soon as it was available, they announced that Palm Linux was on the way and it would have all of Cobalt's advantages *and* the open source community for low level things like drivers. Seeing the lower development costs, the licensees waited.
And we're still waiting. Nothing's wrong with the code, but PalmSource has made it clear that you'd be stupid to buy it when the Next Big Thing is just around the corner.
As to the whole multi-tasking discussion... what does it say about the fact that Garnet's capabilities are using a 10 year-old (or is it 15) technology for task management. As I'm sure most would agree, its always bad news to put the burden of a better OS experience on the software developers. Perhaps thats evident in the fact that there are so few Palm applications that take advantage of co-operative multitasking. Atleast thats my impression from Jeff Kirvin post. I'm by no means an expert on the PalmOS software community.
But by the same token, the Palm OS method is far, far more efficient and uses less memory. Which is better for a resource-contrained mobile device?
Jeff Kirvin wrote"Leaving a word processor running in the background is just a waste of memory on a handheld."
Uh-huh. And if for instance one wished to copy some text from a browser or a contact's notes field or from a document open in a secondary word processor into a document open in the primary word processor, is this not a patently useful function? Having an open document slam shut just because I want to grab a look at email or get some text from wherever is relevant to the task at hand and add it, or conversely to reference the same document multiple times while also keeping a browser window open for contributions in a forum (quoting blocks of useful text from archived docs into discussion threads, for instance) would be intolerably frustrating. Add to this the apparently crippling limit on clipboard size, and one has a profoundly limiting device in terms of any sort of serious editing. Of course, if one prefers to limit the functionality of PDA for their own use... welcome to Palm-think. 'We don't provide it because you don't need it, we think.'
If you were running Palm apps coded to the official programming guidelines, you'd have no problem at all. You'd leave the word processor, do whatever, and when you come back to it, you're *exactly* where you left off. When a properly written program saves state the way it's supposed to, you really can't tell the difference between than and multitasking except that saving state wastes so much less memory.
FYI, the standard PalmOne PIM applications are improperly written and do NOT save state they way they are supposed to. Palm has great concepts, but often shoddy implementation.
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I am yet again dismayed by these writings of yours Jeff. I'd not visited your site in over a year, owing to what seemed a steady and un-justifiable increase in anti-Microsoft flaming. Now I see that not only has this not changed, it has increased in both blinkered thinking and vitriolic anti-PPC content.
I call it like I see it. You may want to look again, as now I'm calling out PalmOne for their shoddy developer relations and ignoring the user community. I don't pull punches for anybody.
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