VisorCentral.com - Love VC, but it's extinction or (r)evolution time

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VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Visor General Chat (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=31)
-- Love VC, but it's extinction or (r)evolution time (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=32444)

Posted by dsaroff on 02-23-2003 10:39 PM:

Love VC, but it's extinction or (r)evolution time

I love VC: best discussion groups, good news, well layed-out, etc. But, let's face it, it's getting moribund. The Visor is dead. Heck...after owning my VDX since the original release in September 99, today I bought a Tungsten T.

BUT, I don't want to lose this wonderful community. My fear is that it will quietly become a back water of obsolete technology. The equivalent of an Amigo group--passionate, but withering.

Let's NOT let this great site die. I propose to the user community and the managers that a new direction be charted for it.

Let's expand to include Clie, Palm, Acer, Handera, etc. Let's become PalmCentral!

Or, let me put it to those who manage and own this site: What is your vision?

What do you think?

Posted by tealwheel on 02-23-2003 11:15 PM:

u got my vote

also maybe to point to lots of still-existng visor resources for springbords , parts etc
b/c right now the visor still beats any 160x160 pda right?
zire line
M100 line
M500 line

no fair comparing sonys s300 w/16mb!

Posted by Digisane on 02-25-2003 05:59 AM:

...

Good bye, Cruel World! wait.. what do you mean, it's not time yet? Oh shucks.

I see the future of VC will merge into one with TreoCentral, and would be left at that, with still a (small) forum area for Visors , perhaps even a graveyard area for Visors showing how it died.

__________________
I'm just a dreamer..

Posted by L3 on 02-25-2003 08:49 PM:

I agree that this board will die without major changes. I switched to Sony Clie (760 first, now NX-60) and come back here once in a while to reminisce...My wife just moved to a Clie too, after both of us being devout VDx owners for a very long time. Handspring just plain let us down by moving away from innovating for the springboard slot.

VC...take a cue from ClieSource (www.cliesource.com). Its an amazing source of info, general discussion, software and hardware innovation and idea sharing and even has some pretty lively off-topic discssions going on.

I'd hate to see this forum go away, but I see a trend of fewer and fewer users/posts as time goes on. (Especially with devout HS users moving over to treocentral.....)

Posted by EricG on 02-26-2003 07:21 AM:

I'd rather see it die a proud death than merge with TeroCentral and wither away into nothing slowly.. Remember it for what it was not what it became.

So long as my Prism keeps working I think that there is still something to talk about.. Just because Handspring discontinues it doesn't make my visor instantly dead..

__________________
"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Posted by Digisane on 02-26-2003 08:00 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by EricG
I'd rather see it die a proud death than merge with TeroCentral and wither away into nothing slowly.. Remember it for what it was not what it became.

So long as my Prism keeps working I think that there is still something to talk about.. Just because Handspring discontinues it doesn't make my visor instantly dead..

I'd rather it not die at all (The forum and my Visor). As dsaroff mentioned, it would become "the equivalent of an Amigo group--passionate, but withering."

Realistically, in my opinion it has to merge with TreoCentral somehow. That news about the Massager has been on the front page for about 3 months now. If and when any company crazy enough starts popping up with a new SpringBoard or something that's for Visors once in a while, it can come up in a section of TreoCentral.

VC can't exist forever.

__________________
I'm just a dreamer..

Posted by EricG on 02-27-2003 07:09 AM:

If you mean the "Amiga" computer group, I am still a proud owner of 3 of them.. They don't seem to be withering as far as I can see.. Look the same as when I got them, perhaps just a little more well worn in now.. They are just as functional now as ever.. Wintel machines are just now starting to perform to a level of computing I was used to using over 15 years ago.. And there are still plenty of websites about the Amiga out there..I suspect the same will be true for older palm pilots for years to come. Heck when I got my first Amiga 500 there was no such thing as the web.. sure there was the internet but no websites.. all you had was ftp, telnet and maybe if you were lucky you had access to the Archie or gopher search tools.. things have come along way but my amiga is still ticking..

I still don't see the logic in your argument.

__________________
"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Posted by tealwheel on 02-28-2003 02:07 AM:

Amiga 3000 & upgrading

wow, the Amigas still around
i almost bought a Amiga 3000 back when they 1st came out but no one ever heard of them and my wife told me not to vear away from the tried & true
but I wished for years I bought it

please don't tell me how great its been all this time, i'm not sure i coudl take it

anyway its hard for me to see ug my prism until it breaks, for just a few simple springboards
em - the only other cameras in pdas are rare or superexpensive (for both the pda & camera, esp brand new)
modem - i guess most ppl who ug to sony etc dont use a modem much? or those who go to pkt pc have a CF modem or buy one 1st thing?

i feel like i already have these (& plenty more like stowaway etc) , and ug would just make me buy them again, but no real gain in functionality (except for sony Nz90's 2mb camera)

Posted by dsaroff on 02-28-2003 03:03 AM:

My original point is quite simple.

These boards used to be dynamic and filled with conversation. Now the discussions are getting few and far between. If we continue at this rate, VC will be dead.

I'd hate to loose what we have.

I don't care if the Visor is discontinued or not. It's just technology. BUT, I do care if we lose this community to atrophy.

Posted by EricG on 02-28-2003 06:53 AM:

Re: Amiga 3000 & upgrading

quote:
Originally posted by tealwheel
wow, the Amigas still around
i almost bought a Amiga 3000 back when they 1st came out but no one ever heard of them and my wife told me not to vear away from the tried & true
but I wished for years I bought it

please don't tell me how great its been all this time, i'm not sure i coudl take it

You have absolutely no idea what you missed....

It's a dammed shame what an out of control all encompassing all crushing monopoly can destroy in its wake.. of course Commodore themselves didn't help the situation either..

But thanks to the miracle of emulation you may still yet catch a glimpse of what was, go to goggle and search for Amiga Emulator UAE .. however, now that Wintel machines are finally surpassing what the Amiga could do without easily without even batting an eyelash, well over a decade ago, the impact will be much less than it was at the time.. to get a full impact, you really have to put yourself in the context of the era, when the intel 286 16mhz cpu 1mb ram and 20mb hard disk was king in the pc world and EGA/VGA graphics were all the rage.. and Mac's were just getting color.

__________________
"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Posted by Digisane on 02-28-2003 02:01 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by dsaroff
My original point is quite simple.

These boards used to be dynamic and filled with conversation. Now the discussions are getting few and far between. If we continue at this rate, VC will be dead.

I'd hate to loose what we have.

I don't care if the Visor is discontinued or not. It's just technology. BUT, I do care if we lose this community to atrophy.

Yup. I completely agree. It's all about the community. But my prediction is just as simple. As time wears on, VC would be integrated into TC, and the forums would go there too, along with all of us. Therefore, the community would still be as lively as ever, mixing it with the Treo guys. That's about 1 or 2 years down the road. More than that, it becomes harder to predict.

__________________
I'm just a dreamer..

Posted by tealwheel on 03-01-2003 01:13 AM:

Re: Re: Amiga 3000 & upgrading

quote:
Originally posted by EricG

You have absolutely no idea what you missed....
--------------------
man i knew it
it was like a dager in my heart when i read those words up there

It's a dammed shame what an out of control all encompassing all crushing monopoly can destroy in its wake.. of course Commodore themselves didn't help the situation either..
---------------------
yeah i think i rem Comm was going out of biz at the time or something? and i didn't want my wife to say ' i told you so' later

But thanks to the miracle of emulation you may still yet catch a glimpse of what was, go to goggle and search for Amiga Emulator UAE .. however, now that Wintel machines are finally surpassing what the Amiga could do without easily without even batting an eyelash, well over a decade ago, the impact will be much less than it was at the time.. to get a full impact, you really have to put yourself in the context of the era, when the intel 286 16mhz cpu 1mb ram and 20mb hard disk was king in the pc world and EGA/VGA graphics were all the rage.. and Mac's were just getting color.

--------------------------
ill check it out
what you say at the end there was one more thing that scarred me off. it just seemed so avdanced at the time, i was really worried the salesman was just lying and it was all a scam somehow
seems stupid now huh?
scotty, beam me back to 1988 so i can redo this one!

as for the Visor ahead of its time i have to laff when K.Zeta Jones comes out w/things like 'Take a pic and e-mail it!' like thats new

yeah, the Visor is the Amiga of now
so we prob have at least another yr before other pdas catch up
even a high end ipaq costs $$$ and is way huge before it can take pics, expand mem, use a 'thin modem'

or a visor phone

Posted by EricG on 03-01-2003 06:47 AM:

I'm not worried about the (non Treo) visor community surviving.. it will.. If I had a Treo I would be worried bout handspring going under, at least the other shoe has fallen for us Visor owners already so the waiting is over.. The other thing that concerns me is the fact the Treo is part cell phone, and how often do people change their cell phones.. allot.. they change them as certain models/brands move in and out of fashion or style.. Also once the cell phone part is dead or service is deactivated in favor of some new "kool/hip" cell phone or because the cell phone technology in the Treo is defunct (carrier gone belly up) or too old (CDMA vs GSM vs future protocols), how much do you think people will want to use their treo's for just the pda, now that it's half paralyzed.. Short of some internal mechanical issue, Visors will keep ticking along regardless of the outside world, like the Apple Newtons still do.. I see old Treo's being thrown in the trash.. I don't see the same long term deep bonding going on with Treo's as you would find in the Visor community, by their cellphone nature they are doomed to be a semi-fashion commodity, they are very different worlds Treo's and Visors.. I suspect once Handspring starts to circle the drain and/or some other rad-kool cellphone/pda combo comes out you will see allot of the Treo community jump ship and set sail for other waters never to be heard from again..

__________________
"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Posted by EricG on 03-01-2003 07:06 AM:

Re: Re: Re: Amiga 3000 & upgrading

quote:
Originally posted by tealwheel

seems stupid now huh?

No actually,, I think allot of folks felt that way.. it was really way beyond its time.. It was such a vast leap forward it was hard to wrap your head around just how advanced it actually was for the time it was in.

I recall using a pc for the first time (after owning my amiga's for a few years) and getting really annoyed when I tried to use windows while formatting a floppy, I simply couldn't imagine that something as simple as formatting a floppy in a pc would lock up windows so badly.. On the Amiga is was seamless.. you didn't even notice it.. infact you could format disks in 3 or 4 drives and it wouldn't even bat an eyelash.. you'd never even notice it was going on, the system didn't hang or freeze up.. It was weird little things like that , that I noticed.. I recall thinking how barbaric the pc was in comparison to even my little Amiga 500.. The Amiga also had TRUE pre-emptive multi tasking, in hardware which makes the world of difference each program ran as if it was the only one on the machine.. it was seamless and a thing of beauty to behold.. infact each program could open its own screen with its own resolution and color depth, the screens weren't windows like you see in XP or 98, but more like layers stacked up on each other , you could pull the top most screen down to reveal the one below it.. again each was totally unique and separate from the others.. of course within a given screen you could have "windows" as you know it.. it was just really funky like that.. I suppose you would have to see it in action to get a grasp of what I am really talking about.. but to the point, every thing about the amiga from the OS to all the custom co-processor chips were a thing of beauty and a labor of love.. One odd tip, if you look on the mother board of any Amiga there are little messages etched in from the designers.. on the inside case cover of the 1000 are the signatures of all the designers.. imprinted into the case.. you don't see that with PC's these days..

Of course Microsoft came along and squashed this beautiful thing into non existence with its monopoly like some mean little sadistic kid squishing a beautiful butterfly simply because he could.

__________________
"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Posted by Digisane on 03-02-2003 10:44 AM:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Amiga 3000 & upgrading

quote:
Originally posted by EricG

Of course Microsoft came along and squashed this beautiful thing into non existence with its monopoly like some mean little sadistic kid squishing a beautiful butterfly simply because he could.

First, software, then browsers, then gaming consoles and now same thing is happening with the cellpone market. I heard that all the other cellphone manufacturers rallying are against this?

I hope they win, because it would get really tedious to see Microsoft cellphones advertisments plastered across newspapers and TV screens and getting good reviews just because they are able to sync with Outlook out of the box, and people actually buying them in horrifying numbers and cellphone manufacturers dissappearing from the industry.

Btw, very informative about the Amigas. I've never seen one of those though.

__________________
I'm just a dreamer..

Posted by EricG on 03-02-2003 11:54 PM:

The problem with Microsoft is that its a 600 lb gorilla that can sit any where it dammed well wants to and doesn't have to look to see if its gonna crush anyone in the process.. simply because they don't care if they do.. And because they have their monopoly money they can keep funding things like the XBox, PocketPC and cellphones well past what any of their competitors are finically capable of.. Funny thing is, if Outlook wasn't part of the monopoly equation no one would care if their phones could sync to it.. and for the record my company uses Lotus Notes, so syncing to outlook is sorta irrelevant to me and all that will be left are phones that can sync to Outlook and I'll be lucky of I could find one that does Notes.. So if I want to be able to sync to my inbox I am forced to use Outlook, see how the self serving monopoly works..

__________________
"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Posted by tealwheel on 03-04-2003 02:26 AM:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Amiga 3000 & upgrading

quote:
Originally posted by EricG
No actually,, I think allot of folks felt that way.. it was really way beyond its time.. It was such a vast leap forward it was hard to wrap your head around just how advanced it actually was for the time it was in.
..
Of course Microsoft came along and squashed this beautiful thing into non existence with its monopoly like some mean little sadistic kid squishing a beautiful butterfly simply because he could.

man, that above part is really amouthful
its the 1 time in my life i wish the salesman really took the time out to give me the hard sell
oh well

now to the ms threat
at least they seem to make the same mistake again & again (or did .. not sure if they still will) by changing the os so much w/each ver your forced to upgrade
1 thing i really still like about the palm os is you can run apps that were written 5 yrs ago on it

might be true what u say about cell/pdas .. maybe they were never meant to be 1 device
maybe 1 day the 1-svc-for-1-phone won't be true anymore & that will fix it (any phone will work w/any svc? is it possible?)

anyway great info, thx

Posted by cml on 03-04-2003 03:08 AM:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Amiga 3000 & upgrading

quote:
Originally posted by tealwheel
maybe 1 day the 1-svc-for-1-phone won't be true anymore & that will fix it (any phone will work w/any svc? is it possible?)

Unfortunately digital cellular differences are pretty deep, down to the point of actually how the 1's and 0's are transmitted and recieved, etc. The rest of the world uses GSM (lucky for them, their phones work anywhere on their continent where there's service), with the Americas it's a mixed bag (TDMA, CDMA, GSM, IDEN) all which are pretty incompatible.

This is why I am a stickler of analog (AMPS) cell phone service - because it is the only protocol that can be found across the nation and most of the world. I HIGHLY recommend that your digital phone can support Analog because it is the only nationwide standard. Personally, I still own a Nokia 252, and my parents an original StarTac, which we have had no problems anyplace in our nationwide travels.

- CML

Posted by EricG on 03-04-2003 06:42 AM:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Amiga 3000 & upgrading

quote:
Originally posted by tealwheel

now to the ms threat
at least they seem to make the same mistake again & again (or did .. not sure if they still will) by changing the os so much w/each ver your forced to upgrade

I think that's on purpose and part of the plan.. isn't also weird that with each new release of the OS you need a slightly better pc.. and odd that windows only runs on one hardware platform (i.e. intel) .. if this isn't a conspiracy I don't know what is.. seems pretty mutually self serving to me..

__________________
"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no �them� out there. It�s just an awful lot of �us�." -- Douglas Adams

Posted by tealwheel on 03-06-2003 02:41 AM:

yeah, and you gotta love how if you use the word conspiracy, they have it set up so it auto means youre a nut!

hey, on an off-topic note, just to see what would happen, i started a political blog on blogger.com, and took a controverseal position (not that bad, tho)
and i wrote in the blog i hoped it woulndn't be taken down (since they make it such a point when you sign on that youre the owner of your own blog data)
but they took it down

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