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Handhelds Hardware

Pictures Leaked of 3 new Palm handhelds 242

Posted by CmdrTaco from the getting-closer dept.
ahecht writes "On Thursday, Palm's Solutions Group's CEO Todd Bradley announced that 3 new handhelds will be released in October. Within 24 hours, pictures of all three handhelds have leaked out on the web. The first to be released, the sub-$100 Zire, can be seen here. The second handheld, previously known as Oslo, now has the name Tungsten T, and features OS 5 and built in bluetooth (pictured here). The third handheld is the Tungsten W, pictured here, which is a GPRS smartphone (although it does not have a built-in speaker or microphone). Zire will be released October 7th, while both Tungsten models will be released on October 28th." Could just be rumors or fakes, but it seems reasonable.
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Pictures Leaked of 3 new Palm handhelds More

Pictures Leaked of 3 new Palm handhelds

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  • Nasty Screens (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nobley ( 598336 )
    When will they start making PDAs with electronic paper for the moniters making them more natural to read, LCD screens arent all that nice to look at for too long, especially at palm size.

    • Re:Nasty Screens (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nobley ( 598336 )
      Just incase some of you have not seen examples of electronic paper before, an example of what I had in mind can be seen at http://eink.com/
      • When will they start making PDAs with electronic paper

        Patience grasshopper. The answer is in the very site you cite, you just have to read their July press release [eink.com].
        These color electronic ink displays are targeted for commercialization in
        2004. Using E Ink's electronic ink technology in components made by TOPPAN, Philips plans to first introduce monochrome displays (ranging from black & white to 4-bit gray scale initially) for handheld devices and portable consumer electronics next year.
        I wouldn't hold my breath though. No projection for color and that's what would really be exciting.
        • Please ignore my last sentence due to me being on crack (2003 is the monochrome projection, 2004 is the color; still too long to go without exhaling though so the penultimate sentence may stand.)
  • You know, I really despise these super-hi-rez images that manufacturers use in their advertising. Looking at those images, you'd think that those Palms have crystal clear screens, but of course they don't - it's just a dirty strategy to lure unsuspecting consumers into stores.

    Bah!

    • It appears that we have mislead you by claiming that the new Palm-Dealy had a 32-bit display. In reality, it has a 4-bit greyscale display. The image we chose as a "demo screen" was a 32 bit image made with Maya, Bryce, and Vouse Espirit taking our render farm a week to render. It is not an actual screenshot of the next version of palmOS and it is not and actual image of the Palm-Dealy's screen. We apologize for the misconception and will offer $10 rebates against an accessory purchase valued at $1000 or more.

  • Palm must be one of the dumbest companies on earth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Khazunga ( 176423 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:22AM (#4306916)
    They had one hell of a product, back in 1997. Yes, that's five years ago!!!

    Product development since then? Zero, zip, niente, nada de nada. They let go all of their competent techies, and are now a mass of marketeers without guindance, slowly sinking to the sound of Titanic's band.

    It's really sad that these guys took Psion's market, and then managed to give it away to M$.

    • Of course, instead of admitting that the competition just plain sucked, most people throw up their hands and blaim MS's monopoly.
      • I can't see how did I blame Microsoft monopoly. I did mean that, Palm keeping its current strategy of selling Dragonball-based Palms, then iPaq and family will win the market.

        I am a Palm III and Palm Vx owner. I carried a Palm for the last ~4 years. Its a good product, but one must realize that this is the computer industry. One doesn't sit tight on a good product for five years.

        PPCs on the other hand, are horrendous devices. MS didn't resist on slapping the desktop GUI on those things. How dumber can you go over adding a taskbar on such a small screen?!

        I believe PPCs are inferiour products. For equal evolution, Palm would give a much better platform (yes, I've programmed both PalmOS and PPCs). Monopoly has nothing to do with it.

        Aw, gosh. I'm just feeding the troll...

        • I'm sorry - I didn't mean to come off as a troll. Also, I wasn't trying to say that YOU were blaming the MS monopoly, I was just adding to your comments about how Palm sucks. Sorry for the confusion!

          P.S. Although I used to think that PPC's were horrendous I changed my mind when I saw my friends Toshiba with Pocket PC 2002. The task bar really isn't as bad as you say. Although the price/performance ratio is not worth it for me personally, the next generation PPC's will probably be good enough for me to finally upgrade from my Palm 3xe.
          • No harm done. Slashdot comments tend to be read harsher than they were written.

            The last PPC I used was an iPaq. I don't like it. The iPaq seems nice in the outside -- perhaps a bit oversized. The interface, however, just doesn't feel right. Lots of little things. Smallish buttons, crowded interface...

            It's just the opposite feeling you get from sitting in front of a Mac interface (I'm not a regular mac user, I use Windowmaker/Linux).

    • Re:Palm must be one of the dumbest companies on ea (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "It's really sad that these guys took Psion's market, and then managed to give it away to M$."


      Not quite yet, they haven't [businesswire.com].

    • Re:Palm must be one of the dumbest companies on ea (Score:5, Interesting)

      by waytoomuchcoffee ( 263275 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @01:06PM (#4307237)
      The mantle has been passed in the Palm front. Sony has one hell of a product right now. The NR70 has 320x480 res, virtual grafitti, and can do practically everything a PPC can do, but with 1/20 the MIPs. Plus it looks a lot cooler. And did I mention that the NR70 was just discontinued? Let's see what happens when they announce their Xscale version of the NR70 in a few days. Should be an interesting next couple of months. Competition is good.

      Note to get here it took two things -- Sony to pump up the Palm brand, and MS to fumble and not support Xscale routines in the PPC OS. I find it amazing, after years of Palm letting its OS rot, that the Palm OS will actually have a (rather large) advantage in at least one aspect -- ability to actually use Xscale routines and power-saving modes that will have to wait until the next version of the MS OS. Not to mention the Palm OS can use other processors as well. I would never have guessed this happening a year ago, when PPCs had a large lead in both software and hardware.
      • The mantle has been passed in the Palm front. Sony has one hell of a product right now
        And that's the key. It's time for other companies who do hardware well to shine.

        Right now, Palm may suck in the hardware market, but the PalmOS is still strong. v5.0 is in the hands of developers, and can run an many platforms. Palm has definatly not been sitting on its hands. They have provided a top-notch OS with excellent support. No, the current off-the-shelf versions (3.x & 4.x) don't have all the bells and whistles, but it is solid, stable, and fast.
    • Yup.

      I just replaced my 3 1/2 year old Palm V with a Palm M515, and you know what? It's not that much different.

      The extra RAM is nice, but 16 megs of RAM is really nothing to brag about - a 16 Meg MMC card is only $30.

      The color screen isn't very vibrant, gobbles the battery, and worst of all has thin vertical black lines separating every column of pixels.

      My new palm is actually a bit THICKER and HEAVIER than the old one - oops.

      Worst of all, memos are still limited to 4096 bytes. Unbelievable. I don't like having to shell out for a third party product to rectify such a ridiculous limitation.

      I appreciate the snappier performance of the new palm's cpu, but it isn't enough difference to enable any different, new applications.

      All in all, I like my new Palm somewhat more than the old one (thanks to the extra RAM and CPU speed). But I wouldn't have upgraded if the boss hadn't been buying, because the M515 is just an incremental upgrade from the V I had before. It makes me wonder what Palm has been doing the last 4 years.

    • My m500 will email, lightweight browse, play games, help me remember stuff and run a multitude of small, useful apps. Frankly, I don't consider MS Word or MS Excel to be something I want on my PDA. I want those on a laptop. A PDA to me is a personal digital assistant. All the WinCE (or XP Embedded or whatever) thingies do what I need and more, but with shorter battery life and added weight. For me, the m500 is great.

      Oh. By the way. Product development since then? Zero, zip, niente, nada de nada.. You are wrong [palminfocenter.com]. As simple as that.
      • Oh. By the way. Product development since then? Zero, zip, niente, nada de nada.. You are wrong. As simple as that.
        I stand corrected. Palm OS 5 looks great. However, you must agree that for the last 5 years, we've seen nothing new. New palms can do the same thing as older ones, and are just heavier/power-hungrier. This is reflected in this quote from the text you referenced:
        "This is just the beginning of a very aggressive roadmap -- a new era of innovation for the platform," -- Dave Nagel, CEO of PalmSource
    • I had one of the first PalmPilots way back when, and there is hardly anything about the device that HASN'T been upgraded.

      The screens are much better, supporting high resolution color, sometimes with virtual graffiti.

      The amount of memory is, what, 32 times what the original palms had?

      You have the option to go with rechargeable batteries, or not, or on some devices, either or.

      SD expansion is now standard on all but the lowliest level Palms, and Sonys, which use a competing expansion card. Some devices do Compact Flash as well.

      The new Palms' processors will go up to 175 mhz for this release, and the sky's the limit.

      There are all kinds of different Palm devices coming out to fit different niches, with built-in cellphones, GPS, scanners, wireless, etc. There are also smaller elegant devices for executives. There is even a PalmOS ruggedized laptop for the educational market.

      The base price has dropped to $100, while the top end has not shot out of sight.

      Lastly, they continue to totally OWN their market, regardless of Microsoft's best efforts. And the number of licencees making Palm devices is growing, not shrinking like Microsoft's.

      Step away from the crack pipe!

      Jon Acheson

  • I Forsee Problems... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:22AM (#4306919)
    I see two problems with these handhelds.

    1) Moving parts (sliding parts). Face it ... if something moves, it's a weak point. Part of what makes handhelds worth spending money on is their longevity, and adding a weak point to a relatively fragile device is a mistake.

    2) The Tungsten W will end up in the courts with a lawsuit from RIM. A good reference is here [theregister.co.uk] where they've had success thus far.

    • Re:I Forsee Problems... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1) Moving parts (sliding parts). Face it ... if something moves, it's a weak point. Part of what makes handhelds worth spending money on is their longevity, and adding a weak point to a relatively fragile device is a mistake.

      I agree here, it's just a bad idea. The .75"-1" size difference created by being able to hide the Grafitti area is just pointless.

      If this thing is made to be carried around in a pocket, that sliding area will by its very nature become a lint vacuum. Hell, I've got a Nokia 8200 series phone that's got some dust sitting on the screen, under the faceplate-- and those things have amazingly tight seams.
      • To some people, size matters enough that a .75"-1" difference will look interesting even if it introduces a new potential point of failure. I don't claim to understand these people though. ;)

    • Tungsten W may not fall under the patent (Score:5, Informative)

      by coding_ape ( 550567 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:52PM (#4307185)
      Each one of the independent claims in the RIM patent is very specific about the geometry of the keyboard. From the piture, the only one that the Turngsten W would come near is claim 23, which (among other things) claims

      ... the three sets of tilted keys are arranged into a QWERTY keyboard having at least three rows of keys, a top row, a middle row, and a bottom row, wherein the first set of keys is tilted at a first angle to a vertical reference and forms a top row of keys in the QWERTY keyboard, the second set of keys is tilted to a second angle to the vertical reference and forms a middle row of keys in the QWERTY keyboard, and the third set of keys is tilted to a third angle to the vertical reference and forms the bottom row of keys in the QWERTY keyboard, wherein the first, second and third angles are equal;

      Besides the fact that this could probably be shot down by prior art, all Palm would have to do (if they cared about being sued) would be to change the angle of the key rows a bit and they would be in the clear. Seems like a patent so specific as this one really shouldn't be a threat to innovation; all it really stops is exact BlackBerry clones.

      But I agree with your first point, important moving parts on a thing that's supposed to ride in your pocket all day are a Bad Thing.

      • I've not heard of any Sharp Zaurus problems with the keyboard so far. If you look at how they did it, there are 4 gold plated contact pads on each end under the keyboard. 4 mating contacts slide along the underside of the keyboard and make contact when the keyboard reaches it's end of travel. Pretty solid design from how it feels, looks, and works.

        LoB
    • 1) Moving parts (sliding parts). Face it ... if something moves, it's a weak point. Part of what makes handhelds worth spending money on is their longevity, and adding a weak point to a relatively fragile device is a mistake.

      Longevity? Those built in batteries lose a bunch of power if their first year and are history in 2-3 years without much hope of replacing them when the time comes. Palm will tell you to purchase another PDA from what someone's told me.

      When you apply this to the low/mid range PDAs like the Palm III, m10x, m125, and visors(except Pro) you're right, but not the high end ones. And the Tungsten IS a high end PDA. Love the Bluetooth though. :)

      LoB

  • It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:23AM (#4306920)
    It's about time that they have some reasonably priced models. This is really, really gonna help them. Very few people need a $500 PDA. At that price, you can get a full featured laptop that isn't a whole heck of a lot bigger. I'd consider a $100 PDA for basic organization stuff. I would never consider more than that for something that's not a laptop computer.

    • $500 for a laptop? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by EnglishTim ( 9662 )
      We're talking second-hand PII450, aren't we?
      • Possibly something that high, but you can get 233MHz librettos pretty regularily on ebay for under $250, and they are a palmtop size. Note that 233MHz w/ 64M of RAM is much more powerful than the current Palms, and you can run 98 etc on those palmtops, so there's no real shortage of apps.

        Still, Palms do have an advantage in that they are easier to use than palmtops. When you take something that is designed to be bigger and cram it down, it doesn't work as well for what you are using it for as something designed to be that size. (I've used both libretto's and palms/visors before, and unless it's an L2+, I'd prefer a high end palm. I prefer an L5 to my current laptop). Plus, while the libretto batteries are impressive (10 hours charge with normal use, 13 hours max), they don't hold a candle to the battery life of a palm.

  • The Zire? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SetarconeX ( 160251 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:23AM (#4306921)
    I saw this headline, and immediately jumped for joy when I heard Palm was going to release a new sub-$100 handheld. "Finlly!" I thought, something that could replace my aging Palm M105.

    But then I checked the details. 2 meg of memory? Exactly what can you do with that much space these days, even on a handheld? The idea seems to be to attract new customers, but why would you sell something that's obviously less powered than the lowest current model?

    You're not going to attract new customers by putting out lousy hardware. Palm's gotten bad press lately for failure to innovate, and this is not helping.
    • The Handspring Visor Neo sells at $99 at my local target, and that has 8 MB of memory, a 33 MHz DragonBall (double most Palms), and, of course, the expansion slot. If you need a cheap one, that'd probably be a good route to take.

    • Re:The Zire? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Nobley ( 598336 )
      the palm m100 is only a year old and that also had 2 megs of memory, that is plenty to include a full featured word processor, ala QuickWord (even use true type fonts) and solataire,.. Leaves space for about 1+ megs of compressed documents too, Id say thats plenty of usefulness.

    • Re:The Zire? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by paja ( 610441 )
      2M is just what would consider fine (in account of usual size of PalmOS apps) and I think I could live with it for a reasonable amount of time.

      I am a happy owner of PalmVx (I know, it has 8M) and I have 1M free. I have looked at memory stats and I have 2.5M in docs, 1.5M in plucker and around ~.5M of useful data, the rest is bunch of crap people are beaming to me (Palm based company with one really keen owner of m515).

      Which leaves me on what You expect of PDA?

      I think I can specify (and live with 2M):
      - contact
      - memo
      - calc (custom, i hate palm calc)
      - datebook (pretty satisfied with the default)
      - one or two really stupid games to kill time on airport or business meeting
      - infra to exchange info
      which is good average, on top of this I would like the following:

      - serial cable & terminal emulator
      - IP range/subnet calculator

      actually I think, that 2M is not a big win and 4M would be better, but I think this Zire would be my choice if I would be considering a PDA for employees in small bussiness...

      again: consider the size of applications (excluding dictionaries, city plans and other similar things) - that 2.5M of isilo docs are FreeBSD handbook, compete all 5 volumes of Hitchikers Guide to Galaxy, 5 other books...

      --
      paja
    • "Palm Zire" will probably not be the full name of this model. Instead, Zire will be the name of a family of handhelds from Palm, like the Visor line from Handspring.


      From that, I'll probably conclude that Zire will be a product family, just like the Palm 1xx series. I would expect them to announce more expensive models with more memory, more expansion slots, and even color display some time later.

    • You'd think Palm's price for including, say, 8 megs instead of 2 would only be a few pennies, so yeah it's strange.

      On the other hand, I have 4 years' worth of appointments in my palm and it only takes up 211 K. I have over a hundred addresses and phone numbers, and it's only 12K. I have the game "Pocket Chess" on there and somehow it's only 29K. So if you just want to use your personal organizer as a personal organizer, 2 Megs is really not that bad.

  • Smartphone (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jsse ( 254124 )
    compare to this [sonyericsson.com], that smartphone [palminfocenter.com] looks like an old nanny.
    • but the sony phone is really just a pretty phone. The palm is a PDA. I have a really good sony phone and don't feel any need to upgrade to one that can take pictures. I still use my palm all the time for contacts and calendar. My sony has a good contacts and calendar section for a phone but it is still just a fancy phone and does not compete with a PDA.

  • OS5 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by banky ( 9941 ) <greggNO@SPAMneurobashing.com> on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:24AM (#4306930) Homepage Journal
    every shot of OS5 looks just like every other Palm OS since... well since the beginning. Didn't Palm buy Be? Weren't they going to do something new with their OS?

    • Re:OS5 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      OS 5 is just the move to ARM. OS 6 is supposed to be the one to break the API, and that's presumably when we'll see all the Be stuff getting integrated into Palm OS.

    • Re:OS5 (Score:5, Funny)

      by i0lanthe ( 198512 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:28PM (#4307106) Homepage Journal
      every shot of OS5 looks just like every other Palm OS since... well since the beginning.

      Yeah, what gives?... in Intro to HCI we learned the critical importance of changing the user interface as much as possible between OS versions. (Or was that, the importance of not changing... hm, well, maybe I shouldn't have slept through that lecture. ;)

  • still dragonball (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wfmcwalter ( 124904 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:27AM (#4306934) Homepage
    Palm's innovation-curve is flatter than ever, particularly at the high-end, and they're continuing to lose market share to winCE units (despite winCE still being, well, winCE). Dragonball just doesn't have the horses to cope with the stuff one would want the next-generation of mobile-comms-organiser-thingy do to (decent audio, voice, decent handwriting-rec, games, still & moving images). Sony in particular have done an amazing job squeezing performance out of the palm platform, but there's a limit.

    A palm unit with an ARM is _long_ overdue. I want a decent, useful, modern handheld, and I don't want more windows.

    Palm can't compete in the low-end electronic-diary market - Casio, Sharp et al will eat their lunch - and currently their concept of innovation seems to consist of putting the same unit they've been making for years in a cool new case.

    • Well, If going with arm means getting these feeble battery-lives that ipaq's and zaurus are getting, then please, no!

      True, dragonball is slow - but battery-life is far more important to me than performance. I know I don't put my palm in the cradle every day.

      • Well, If going with arm means getting these feeble battery-lives that ipaq's and zaurus are getting, then please, no!

        The older StrongArm processor required over 900 mW at 233MHz (in the Ipaqs of just a few months ago), while the older Motorola (like in the Palm V) consumed 50 mW (66 mW peak). Meaning the StrongArm required 18x the power at 233MHz.

        The newer Xscales require about 50mW at 200MHz. Supposedly the Motorola's that this palm is using requires even less. That's the real benefit of the newer processor, the battery-life increase.

        Ironic that the power-savings features in the newer Xscales are not used in the current OS for Pocket PCs. However, Asus in it's branded PPCs coming out will have a software patch to the OS to help this out a bit. For that matter, you can't really see that much of an increase in speed either in the newer PPCs.

    • Re:still dragonball (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nerant ( 71826 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:51AM (#4306996)
      I quote: "Yesterday, Todd Bradley, CEO of Palm's Solutions Group, said his company would be launching a handheld that runs Palm OS 5 on October 28. This appears to be the model he was referring to.

      Bradley said that this high-end model will have Bluetooth wireless networking built in and use a Texas Instruments OMAP processor, which is based on designs from ARM Holdings. According to rumor, the Tungsten T will use the OMAP1510 processor, which combines into a single chip an ARM-compliant processor with a DSP for multimedia capabilities, and runs at 175 MHz. Sources familiar with this device say it will have 16 MB of RAM."

      Also, Palm OS 5 includes PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment), an emulation enviroment of sorts that allows the running of existing Palm Apps. (It emulates the DragonBall)

    • That's Pun-ny (Score:4, Funny)

      by NetGyver ( 201322 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:02PM (#4307016) Journal
      yes yes, i agree, a Palm with an Arm just makes total sense to me. =)
    • Sony is going to eat their lunch in the high-end as well. Note that they discontinued their top two Palm OS models a few days ago (NR70 and NR70V). Obviously, they are announcing an OS 5 in a few days as well. Maybe Monday, to steal Palm's thunder a bit. Except the Sony will have 320x480 full screen resolution with a virtual graffiti area.
    • I have a palm and use it a lot. I have tried many others and although there are a lot of prettier PDAs I always end up wanting another palm for one main reason. All the others use more power to produce their eye candy than a PDA can hold. The compaq battery did not even last an afternoon with me yet my palm will last a fortnight.

      A lot of people do not really use or need their PDAs but for those that do the palm is still the best. I cannot see why the new top of the range has a keyboard though and no graffiti pad. If I need to do a lot of typing I use a PC and could not use that stupid attempt at a keyboard. If I need to make a note I would find graffiti easier.
  • I hope the quality of these Palms is top-notch. I have $300 in service plan at best buy and they no longer carry my model :

    (My palm has issues syncing these days and the cell phone just sucks at reception, who the hell knows whats up with that)

  • Keyboards... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by singularity ( 2031 ) <nowalmart.gmail@com> on Sunday September 22, 2002 @11:31AM (#4306948) Homepage Journal
    Why do Palm/cell manufacturers insist on putting a keyboard on their combination Palm/cell devices?

    If I am going to buy one of these devices, it is to reduce pocket-bloat by one device. That means that my primary motivation in getting one is size. Adding a keyboard only adds size.

    I suppose I can see adding a 3x4 number pad for dialing, so if they are going to add anything I would rather see a usable 3x4 pad than an attempt at adding a full keyboard to aid in data input.

    Currently I have both a Samsung SCH-3500 phone and a Sony Clie PEG-T665C. I would consider a combination phone/Palm device if one could do things as well as both of those devices. While I am all in favor of reducing pocket bloat, I find that dedicated devices do their job better than any combination device.

    In the mean time, I will use a data cable to attach the 665C to the Samsung. Although I am really eyeing the new Vision-capable phones from SprintPCS...

    Also - I have a Canon S200 camera. Until such time as a camera added to a Palm device can come close to the quality of that camera, do not even think about adding a camera to any device I am going to buy.

    That camera is portable enough (and durable enough) to end up in my pocket for times I think I *might* want to take pictures.

    • Re:Keyboards... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iso ( 87585 ) <slash@warpze[ ]info ['ro.' in gap]> on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:12PM (#4307057) Homepage
      There's lots of reasons to add a keypad to a handheld device, and the "bloat" is hardly more than the writing area of a standard palm handheld. First of all, it's much faster to type than to use the braindead "grafitti" of Palm handhelds (hint: use your thumbs). You can also enter text with one hand on a keyboard, whereas with a Palm you need one hand to hold it, and the other with which to write.

      Of course you also need to realize that different people have different requirements. Beleive it or not, the world does not revolve around you. For you it's "pocket bloat," for me it's useability. The keyboard makes sense. Research in Motion was right all along. The new BlackBerries are much more useable than any Palm I've seen.

      - j
      • A keyboard + a Palm = a laptop computer. What's the point of buying lots of silly things to plug in together, lug around together, and sacrifice real hard drives, CD-R's, etc. when you can just buy a hard drive. I think (and the market has proven me correct, based on sales), that there's really no space for a product between pocket organizer and laptop computer. It's like buying a moped.... what's the point? Either get a car or a bicycle. A moped is both a very slow motorized vehicle, and a very heavy bicycle. A PDA is both a very slow, feature poor laptop, and a very expensive, bulky pocket organizer.
      • I agree. As PDA's become more Net orientated, a keyboard is a must. Ever try to send somone an instant message through grafitti? Ugh.
        • I actually used to take all of my course notes on grafitti. One of the advantages I found it had over standard paper is that you didn't have to look down in order to write.

          Once you learn it, you can get really fast at it. I am faster with a thumboard (though haven't had enough experience to become a touch typist), but grafitti is hardly "braindead".
      • Being a Blackberry user, I am with you that it is a lot more usable than the Palm - I let my Palm IIIx sit for longer than its 2 AAA would last and I lost all my data!!! (Thanks to Yahoo! they were uploaded. Phew!)

        A downside to Blackberry tho, is that it does not have enough 3rd party programs to compete with Palm/WinCE's libraries.

        IIRC the new Blackberry uses Java. It is the right direction - but still a good developer relation program would help a lot.
      • You may think the keyboard is better because you can type with one hand, but I like the grafitti because I can write without looking at the palm at all. Useful when i'm taking notes from whiteboard, or while driving.

    • New Kyocera (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Shook ( 75517 )
      Personally, I feel excited about the form factor of the new Kyocera 7135 [kyocera-wireless.com] I like Graffiti, but I feel a number keypad is very necessary. It seems like this Kyocera might finally get it right. (Although many people are complaining that it doesn't have the new features of PalmOS 5)
      • Have you seen the 6035?

        It's "old tech" by today's Smartphone standards, but so far, if you care about phone functionality, it's the only way to go. Almost every other Smartphone out there is a PDA first and not a phone first, and hence most of em' suck. (The Samsung I300 is the worst, Treos are much better but still not the best - From what I've heard the Treo 300 is pretty buggy. In addition, you CANNOT use "classic" 2G data services with the Treo 300 on Sprint, you can only use Sprint's ridiculously expensive Vision plans, which have gotten pretty lousy reviews.)

        If you care about phone functionality, Kyocera smartphones are the way to go. I have a 6035 on Verizon and it is simply amazing. Not sure if I'm going to get the 7135 or not. Don't feel like killing my battery for a color screen.

        The new Palm smartphone will be DOA - It's a PDA first and not a phone. (First strike against it) No comment on whether it's a Europe-targeted or US-targeted phone. If they're trying to sell a GSM phone in the USA, that's its second strike. The GSM footprint in the USA is dismal, even smaller than Sprint PCS coverage. (Apparently AT&T plans on transitioning to GSM, so this will change eventually. But it could take a while...)

        If you want a smartphone your best bet is a Kyocera 6035 (or 7135 when it comes out in a month or two) with Verizon.
    • Actually, I was waiting for a keyboard on one.

      I ain't writing on no plastic screen after having a blackberry.

      Thumboards/keyboards are about 100x better than touchscreens anyday, IMHO.

      I might actually buy one with a keyboard if it's cheap enough. Lord knows I've needed one of these for long enough...
  • HARDBALL!! [palminfocenter.com] and its only $100

  • zire (Score:2)

    by Triv ( 181010 )
    ok, call me crazy, but doesn't the Zire look an awful lot like an iPod? Hell, it looks like it was designed to match my flatpanel iMac and my iPod. AND...it's dirt cheap.

    For sub-100 bucks, i'd prolly buy one in a heartbeat. It broke the pricepoint for me. :)

    Triv

  • Sorry Palm... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by forsaken33 ( 468293 )
    As evil as Sony is, they're eating Palm in the handheld market, IMO. You can't deny that their Clie line is pretty damn sexy. Most have color screens, silver casings, chrome accents, and the screens are marvelous to look at (320x320 color). Plus even their budget palms use rechargable batteries.

    In addition, look at some of the cool things Sony builds in. My clie has a built in mp3 player, works off a memory stick. Their newest line is very different, it flips open at the top, and you have a keyboard and a screen all in one. And thats a 480 by 320 screen, if i remember right. Plus you can get that with a digital camera.

    Palm, only entry level people are going to pay for what you're selling. Look at what other companies are doing, and make the best looking, great-screened, multi function Palm device out there. Maybe then i'll start looking at you when I need a new palm.

  • hehe (Score:3, Funny)

    by jchawk ( 127686 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:10PM (#4307050) Homepage Journal
    Well I guess that's how you solve the problem of leaked pictures. . . You post the site on slashdot, and the problem kinda works itself out.

    Anyone have a mirror?

  • I wouldn't mind... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:16PM (#4307069) Homepage Journal
    ...one of these. Spiffy little bugger. Stylish as hell. The two buttons are for the datebook and the address book...isn't that what you most work with on a Palm, anyway? It would be nice to have a spare in reserve in case my m100 goes south. 2MB is a surprisingly large amount of space when you use lightweight Palm apps. It's like having a Mac SE in your pocket. I like it. It's not a replacement for a laptop or a Zaurus or an iPaq. It's a Palm. It's the right tool for the job.

  • Cellular phone with SSH? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OSSturi ( 577033 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:33PM (#4307122)
    When reading "PDA" I've thought about what a PDA would have to be able to do for me. Well, an SSH client would be enough. I could read an write mails on my server, manage my text-based calendar and administer my server. But why a PDA with SSH and a cellular phone to transmit the data? Why not just a cellular phone? They can handle mail, pictures, online-games already. SSH should be relatively trivial to add. Does anyone know of such a thing?

    Yes, please correct my spelling and grammar mistakes, I'd like to improve my English.

  • Speaker Conspiracy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NetGyver ( 201322 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:39PM (#4307137) Journal
    So The Tungsten W has no speaker nor microphone. Did I hear that right? no speaker? Come on, every palm has a speaker! How are you supposed to hear all those annoying "beep-bop-bloop" game sounds? It's got a keyboard you say? wow! You get redundancy, on-screen keyboard and a *real* keyboard. That's cost effective.

    I mean after all, the Zire looks like an Ipod mp3 player, and it has a speaker. Can't play mp3s, but hey, it's got the "look"...it's got the speaker!

  • Palm's philosophy is losing meaning ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hobbs ( 82453 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:42PM (#4307147)
    I see several posts about palm not being innovative, but there is more that should be said about the poor old palm ...

    I finally decided to dive into the world of PDAs after resisting for so long (forgetfulness being my main driver :/). After a lot of research, I splurged on the most recent generation of CE devices (Toshiba e740 FWIW) with built-in wireless, great expansion options, etc., all for about US$500. This machine is my mp3 player walking to work, an instant on recording device, plays movies (PocketDivX), and I can read slashdot from it, not to mention the regular PDA features.

    I'm an OS agnostic - I just like what I can program, and this is infinitely more programmable, with ports of all your favorite unix tools already. In addition to that, I can get an expansion pack that allows me to plug in any USB keyboard and has a VGA port that will do 800x600 @ 256 colors - yes, I can put a powerpoint presentation on this and leave the laptop at home, and this thing is just a small attachment to the e740 - the functionality is all already built in. Way cool. (Note: the ipaq also has a Linux port, but not yet the newer e740 because it has new hardware)

    What would I have gotten from Palm? Well, let's not even compare that because Palm gets blown away too easily. I was actually comparing against the Sony palm-based devices. They were a bit thinner and lighter, they had mp3 option in several players, and they even had the NR70V with built-in camera ... but aside from cool factor it was such low quality as to be not useful. It also only has memory stick expansion, which is much more limiting than the SD *or* CF that I have now.

    All that for about the same price.

    So what happened? Well, once upon a time, the only way you could get the functionality of these new CE devices was in mini-laptops (the original size of CE devices), and they were much more limited. Palm had the small form factor and all the same stuff. However, Palm is fighting an uphill battle against technology advancement by not adopting new stuff faster. Why are they still waiting to ship an ARM-based device? CE already is shipping units with the latest 400mhz Xscale ARM-based CPUs (think ~ to Pentium with MMX). Palm *was* great, but today all that "simplicity" just looks dated.

    Two big groups buy these devices. For geeks, who love technology, it's hard to resist all the joy commanding this device can bring. For PHBs, who love spending as much as possible to get all the features that they'll never use, the CE devices are also hard to pass up.

    OK, so what's the downside? I've been using my device for a while, and the only disadvantage is battery life. Using wireless without being plugged in can drain you fast. Add to that that it regularly powers over 100MB mem (32MB rom, 64MB ram, + whatever I'm accessing from CF or SD), color screen (standard on CE devices), ... This is one of those things that basically should be plugged in on a daily basis. That's not really acceptable for a PDA IMO, but since I go to work almost daily, my PDA is well fed. I will be buying my wife a PDA, and it will likely be the Sony instead. She likes the "sexier" look (cool brushed aluminum) and lighter feel (it has to fit in the purse with a million other things). I can't expect that this will be plugged in daily. It's a pity battery life hasn't kept up with technology, but that is honestly the only downside I can find for the CE device (OS preferences aside).
    • I don't know if I am waiting for a tablet, or what you have described.

      I would love to be able to hook up a keyboard, mouse and VGA monitor to one of those little units. Something I can work on a word document, or even use as my 'email everywhere' workstation for office and home, currently am using my tiBook for that. w/WiFi I can surf slashdot at home on sofa (already have the hub). The only thing that is holding me back, I feel like I won't really get the full functionality of it unless I can dock it with a VGA / mouse / keyboard. I guess I am waiting until I can do that before doing much more. A 400 mhz processor running embedded CE is fast enough to do the office docs / email.. but geezus the interface with a pen sucks.

      Anyway, interested in your experience with that.

      Cheers
      • There are still no mouse drivers for CE that I know of - but I hear that if you hook in a mouse, it essentially works, you just don't see the cursor. The USB in the expansion pack works fine with any USB keyboard though. The expansion pack is a bit cumbersome for the e740 because you can't dock it at the same time - it's an either or. Of course, if you are docked you usually have the control software on your computer.

        As for the pen interface - I thought this would be a bit limiting, but have changed my mind. It has the 3 input styles - virtual keyboard, "letter" recognizer and block recognizer (graffiti rip-off). I have found that I can be very efficient with the virtual keyboard even while walking. I've also found that the letter recognition is fairly good with my handwriting. My fingers are also good enough to use as a stylus when I'm too lazy to get the real one out for a quick data check.

        But to compare to a tiBook ... I would have given 2nd thoughts to this if I had had such a nice notebook (thin, light, but still super powerful, whereas I have something a couple years old). I don't use it at home or anywhere where a proper machine is otherwise easily at hand. It's great for on the go and in a pinch to carry data.
        • oh ?
          i have a CE device with not only a cursor, but a mouse pointer.

          It's an IBM Z50. It runs Windows CE HandheldPC edition, 2.11. It has a 640x480 screen, is in a micro-laptop form factor. It has no moving parts. It has 48mb of ram. Its instant on, instant of. It has a type 2 CF slot, and a type 2 PCMCIA slot.

          Cisco makes Aironet 352 drivers for it.

          It gets 8 hours of battery life.

          Microsoft makes a Windows Terminal Server client for it.

          Add all that up ? I have an instant on, WiFi with wep 640x480 client with a usable keyboard and usable mouse (the ibm thinkpad eraser), that lets me terminal serve into my windows server at home and run IE 6 or any other app i want.

          I get better batttery life than ANY laptop, it synchronizes with Exchange at work out of hte box, and it cost me $250 on ebay.

          There isn't a better wireless web browsing experience.
      • For that sort of thing, the OQO [oqo.com] is where it'll be at. The core of the device is a PDA-like device with a 640x480 4" touchscreen. It has built-in Airport and Bluetooth, Firewire and USB. There is a cable to give you a VGA port. In addition, there is a docking station to turn your OQO into a desktop machine, with usb, firewire, VGA, and I believe PCI slots even. Can't recall if there's PS/2, or if it's assumed one uses PS/2 for that. *And* there's a laptop docking shell, in which you plug your OQO, rather like a battery in the laptops found today., basically turning your OQO into a laptop with ports, builtin KB, touchpad/mouse device and screen.

        The OQO has a 10 GB HD, 128 MB of RAM ( or more ) and a Transmeta 1 GHz processor. You can run regular x86 OSes- Linux and XP are the options available from the factory.

        The Pen interface is great, if it's done well. For a PalmOS device, the pen interface falls apart when you're doing more than simple organization/PIM/game tasks. The Newton did it best, and the PocketPC does it OK- you can get a quite decent WPM (I can easily achieve 40-45 on my Newton) when you're using *real* handwriting recognition and not just a soft-keyboard or character recognition like graffiti or jot.

        For me, the OQO is pretty much the Holy Grail of computing. When they're released (should be fairly soonish), I plan on selling my iBook and Jornada 720 to buy an OQO and use it as my main computer. Luckily, you can get *real* HWR on Windoze, but not Linux, not at least in a way that consumers can get to it. Motorolla has it's Lexicus QuickPrint system ported to x86 Linux, but there's no way to get it if you're not an OEM. QuickPrint isn't anywhere near as nice as Netwon HWR or ParaGraph's CalliGrapher, which is available on PocketPC, WinCE, and desktop Windoze.
        • Wow, thanks for the link.

          I feel like I am doing the same thing. I have my handspring visor, cell phone, tiBook, linux box and a few workstations (not including my workstation at the office..)

          I have found my handspring gather dust lately. I am just tired of carying around all the crap.

          One thing I have taken a look at is the http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/5a98.shtm l Cappuccino TX-3 Mini PC. It seems to have a VERY small form factor and a lot of power. It's still nothing close to the size of a OQO or a PocketPC, also not having a screen makes it useless as a portable unless it is docked.

          Funny thing is.. I really don't need all the functionality of Windows XP. PocketPC would be fine, too bad no real docking though. Unless that machine is 1ghz plus (OQO), I cringe at thinking what it will perform like.

          Cheers

          • The Cappuccino doesn't have a battery either, does it? I was under the impression that their MiniPC wasn't for mobility so much as portability- taking it places, or having a problem where a very small computer is a good idea, but not the kind of computer that could sit in your pack or your pocket.

            Regarding computing environment, another link I forgot to mention is the PDA operating system/environment I'm working on called Dynapad. It is what I currently run on my Jornada 720 and will run on my OQO when I get one. Even now, on my iBook, I do most of what I do on my computer within the Squeak [squeak.org] Smalltalk programming environment. The only thing I use Mac OS 9/X for is to browse the web. Squeak includes a pretty simple web browser, but it is insufficient for a lot of web sites. For some web browsing, I simply use Links from within a vt100 terminal app that is native on Squeak. I've written some code on the Squeak side of things to allow me to open Opera windows from within Squeak to automate it, but I imagine that this may be a bit harder on WinXP than it is currently with AppleScript on OS 9/X, but perhaps Windows Scripting Host would be a good replacement.

            In all honesty, the only reason I *may* use WinXP on my OQO is for ParaGraph's CalliGrapher [paragraph.com] HWR software. As I said, Linux doesn't have any real HWR, so for me, it's pretty useless as a PDA or other pen-based platform. Which is why I have a Jornada 720 running WinCE instead of a Zaurus running Qtopia.

            At this point, Dynapad wouldn't do quite everything that PocketPC does, but in the coming months and years it will. In about a 6 MB footprint, Dynapad includes:

            * PIM applications: Notes, Todo, Names (Contacts), and Dates (Calendar)
            * Net apps: Simple web browser, IRC client, email client; and coming soon, a LiveJournal client as well as an app with very similar functionality to Watson/Sherlock 3
            * A full Smalltalk development environment using the Morphic GUI toolkit; with the ability to create entirely new apps on the device itself, or modify existing apps to better work with the user's expectations
            * An OODB as the "blessed" means of data storage- makes sycing with desktop machines or other Dynapad devices as well as sharing the data via the internet very easy
            * Character recognition, rather like Graffiti,but without a dedicated space- write anywhere in a text box
            * A GUI builder for rapid application development
            * An advanced, extensible, dynamic, reflective architecture that allows end-user programming and scripting

  • Welcome Slashdot visitor! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SQL Error ( 16383 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @12:51PM (#4307179)
    You have been redirected to a ligher [sic] version of our article in order to conserve bandwidth and keep the site running smoothly for everybody. This is the whole text of the article, if you would like to read the story along with our reader comments, please click here. You are also welcome to bookmark us and explore the rest of our site!
    Thanks, www.palminfocenter.com

    Damn! They're on to us! How are we supposed to slashdot sites if they do this?
    • Damn! They're on to us! How are we supposed to slashdot sites if they do this?

      Just have your revenge on them by actually reading a few of their articles and clicking on the pretty pictures.

      That'll teach 'em to try to get an actual readership.

  • I really expected Palm to have something new by now. I just was looking at the Palm m500 at the store.. hmmm looks a lot like my Palm Vx. I would still get a Palm over a WinCE device just because of the # of programs out for it (sound familiar?) but that'll change eventually and then it'll be WinCE all the way sadly.
    • I really expected Palm to have something new by now.

      Cheer up, you could have jumped ship to Handspring, like I did a while back when I found myself saying that. (Oh well. Springboards were a fun ride while it lasted.)

  • Stop wasting space for dedicated handwriting pad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BlueF ( 550601 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @01:52PM (#4307427)
    Hate to say it gang, by I actually prefer most of the WinCE PDAs that I've seen (despite their clunky sizes). I say this becuase the lack of a 1/2" strip dedicated to handwriting really make sense to me.

    I currently use a Palm V and while I love it's small size (thickness) it would be SO much better with out all that space wasted (hell, same goes even for the buttons).

    My ideal PDA would have come with a very thin footprint, hi-rez color, and all screen... as big as they're going to make these things, why not get down to the business of letting us view, read, type, watch things on the _whole_ PDA?!?*

    *Of course... wireless, tons of memory (slot upgrade), and good quality sound are also desired (in as small of a package as possible). : )
  • I currently have a second hand M100 that I bought a little while ago. It holds my address book, takes notes, plays some fun little games, holds a few ebooks from Guttenberg and doubles as a Gaydar.

    Nice but ugly.

    The Zire does the same but looks nice. When are they coming to the UK? :)

    Oh and to the naysayers. I'm still not using all my 2meg. Not by a long shot. Great battery life too.
  • The third handheld is the Tungsten W, pictured here, which is a GPRS smartphone (although it does not have a built-in speaker or microphone).
    Let me get this straight: Palm is going to release a "smart phone" without a speaker or microphone? They're sold seperately as a headset?

    This sounds more like a "smart marketing phone," but it doesn't surprise me. Walking down the Palm Accessories aisle at Frys, I sometimes get the sense that Palm's accessories division is really bloated and desperate. I hope this doesn't become a trend: "You simply must buy our new 32.6-gigahertz cordless phone (speaker, microphone, and other electronics not included)!"

  • But does it run Linux?
  • ...on the Tungsten. They're selling cities like crazy!
  • I really hope their top-end ones have 320x320 screens rather then the old Palm 160x160. I'm tempted to upgrade from my old Palm V soon, but I don't think I could go with a 160x160 one when there's those Sony Clies with their gorgeous 320x320 screens...
  • Could just be rumors or fakes, but it seems reasonable.

    I was expecting real pictures after reading the story.. the first couple of pictures were definately computer rendered and the last was horribly grainy.. The idea of a sub $100 palm device is cool tho.. so I hope the rumors are true.
  • Google's news site had a direct link to this story, with the discussion.

    M@

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