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While reading a LA Times article about the PocketPC, the article mentioned that HandSpring is planning on releasing a high-end visor during the summer, any comments or details?

I never heard anything about a new Handspring organizer...

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The Visor handhelds are the best!!!!

http://www.latimes.com/business/200...t000036144.html

Wow Nelly, this looks cool. But where did the LA Times get their information. I mean don't you think that Visorcentral.com would get the info first. There is a huge possibility that the reporter just thought that sounded good and wrote it. They do that all the time...

I also read in business week that they planned a release in late summer, I think it was a colored screen model. This was in a review about the Palm IIIc in the Technology & You section in the March 6, 2000 edition.

[This message has been edited by pk (edited 04-23-2000).]

Hey pk,

Do you have a link to that article?

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The Visor handhelds are the best!!!!

Wow. This story sounds legit. I wonder how they got their info. It would be really cool if Handspring come out with a color unit that is better than the current color units from palm. It makes me wonder if the slow release of the modules have anything to do with this. What do you all think?

It would be cool if the high-end Visor will have a lot of the features in PocketPC, but be reasonably price and be a stable OS. It would be real nice to play mp3s without having to buy a springboard.

elfbomber:

Thanks for the link. But D ev R ay 4Real is probably right: there's no visible substance behind the LA Times claim, especially since they don't quote anyone from Handspring, or anyone else. Of course, this is definitely a case where it's better to be wrong.

yucca:

I don't think Handspring's future developments have anything to do with the slow release of the modules. The best explanation I've heard was from Innogear: in the last year there's been a worldwide shortage of many components used for handheld devices, particularly cell phones, which have been in in record demand. Innogear and other springboard manufacturers have had to get in a queue behind other consumer electronics manfacturers that already had outstanding orders.

I doubt that Handspring let many companies in on the springboard's technical details earlier enough before the Visor's release to get a head start. Add time for marketing, market research (how many units should we make?), design, testing, redesign, purchasing (e.g. the component shortage issue), negotiating and coordinating distribution, etc. -- and you get big delays.

Moreover, this is the first generation of springboard products, so the learning curve is probably steeper than products with a history like pagers and cell phones. Springboard manufacturers are starting from zero experience, which is why they underestimated the time to market. The standard learning curve in manufacturing is that production runs are 20% faster each year. In other words, it takes real experience to learn how to cut corners, and make things more efficient. I suspect that a year from now, these companies will go from announcement to product in three or four months.

Vinnie,
It would take more than
Pocket PC to make me dump my Visor.

Admittedly, the Pocket PC offers
some very nice features but
at the end of the day, you want
your PDA to be just like the Visor -- fast, efficient, and handy. I don't want the bells and whistles on a clunky machine like the Jornada.

I clicked on the link for the LA Times article, and got an "Article not found" message. I did a search for "Handspring Visor" and got 3 hits, none of them mentioning anything about a new visor.

Maybe D ev R ay 4Real was right and they retracted the article?

Hmmmmm

quote:

---

Originally posted by Franklin dela Cruz:
I don't want the bells and whistles on a clunky machine like the Jornada.

---

Vinnie...I tried to place the link in but Business Week Online is a subscription service that goes along with the magazine subscription. I couldn't get the link to show up. The Handspring mention in the article was more of an 'aside'. It was only one sentence long but it certainly caught my attention. If I can find the article posted elsewhere, I'll link it.

The LA Times have puts their articles on the webpage for like a week or 10 days before taking them down and archiving them. After that, you would have to use their hunter service to access the article for a nominal fee.

I contacted Handspring coustomer support and they didnt know anything about a new Visor. Here's what they said:


Dear Vinnie Lee,

To the best of my knowledge Handspring is not planning on releasing a new
version of the Visor. They are going to focus rather on modules for the current
models.

Thank you,
Russell
Handspring - Sales

- Please place my name in the subject line of your replies to ensure delivery to
me

--- Original Message ---
From: "Vinnie Lee" <[email protected]>
Received: 04/24/2000 09:12pm Eastern Standard Time
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re:

Dear Handspring,

There were two articles that said that you would release a high-end model of
the Visor in the late summer. The LA Times said that and Business Week also
said that. Is this true??


Hope this helps!

-Vinnie

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The Visor handhelds are the best!!!!

Vinnie:

I doubt that Handspring sales or CS for that matter would know whether or not a new unit is coming out soon. It seems that they are one of the last ones to know what is up. Days before Handspring went retail they were still telling us that it would be several weeks before the visor get in stores.

Keep in mind that HS has announced their IPO. As such, they need to be careful about announcements that can be perceived as bolstering their worth.

I'd guess that they won't make any official announcements until they're ready to release a product.

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MarkEagle - Ice is nice!

To the best of my knowledge Handspring is not planning on releasing a new version of the Visor. They are going to focus rather on modules for the current models.


Most modules in the pipeline are being done by independant developers. If Handspring is spending much time on modules, most of that time is probably in support of those independant efforts.

IIRC, Hawkins said way back last fall (summer? spring?) that Visor was just their first effort, and that he had other ideas in mind. (They might not be working on a "new version of the Visor", but no doubt they're working on something new. The implication that they're focusing on modules strikes me as ludicrous.)

No offense, but asking a CSR about this was a waste of time. In the extremely unlikely event that they actually knew anything, they wouldn't be allowed to talk about it.


[This message has been edited by bearpaw (edited 04-26-2000).]

This is just a guess. But judging from stuff I've read I'm willing to bet that HS had a phone/web springboard in the works and a color visor.