Registered: Oct 2001
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Posts: 203

Palm buys Handspring

Palm today announced the acquisition of Handspring - transaction expected to be final this fall. No word on Visor support.

http://www.visorcentral.com/content/Stories/1499-1.htm

Registered: Jan 2000
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Posts: 391

Too late

If they'd done it in 2001-2002 - before Donna pulling the plug on the Visor had really sunk in - Handspring might actually have something that Palm could use. But now? They've already got a Treo-wannabe, it's not like it'd take much to turn the Tungsten-W into a full cellphone. This seems more like marketing or a political bailout than anything.

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Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC<br>
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Registered: Dec 2000
Location: Austin, TX USA
Posts: 178

Well, this is the proverbial "END" that we have all been waiting for. It was pretty obvious it was going to happen, but it is nice to have a definite turning point... not a slow fade out.

Well, I guess it has been fading for some time now.

-sigh-

It was fun while it lasted. I still use my prism everyday. What a great product!

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ThirdMan

Registered: Jan 2000
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Posts: 391

I just wish they'd lasted long enough to give us a Prism II.

(wavylines)

160x220 or 240x320, transflective display with soft grafitti area, 16M, Super-Z 66 MHz CPU, and back to the original Palm form factor... and a dual-slot springboard module (CF+SD with VFS, Wifi, and SDIO drivers) with 16M flash...

(washboard scratch and rimshot)

Back to reality...

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Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC<br>
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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Nebraska- the Good life
Posts: 695

Deja vu... weren't some of us talking about this being a logical step about a year ago?

Solid pluses- Jeff is back where he might be able to keep his visions alive and moving forward. I know that means he will be abandoning the Springboard idea, but I am excited by what he sees as the next level- his visions outlined in "Piloting Palm" have pretty much been coming along on several levels.

I think getting Ed back into the mix will help nicely as well.

The new Tungstens and Zire lines have shown me that Palm is getting serious about the PDA business again, and that is certainly good news.

Prediciton: Within the next couple years, Palm will be back in a leadership role with a new hybrid model that will create a wireless handheld device that be even greater than Sony's great vision for mobility integration.

(I'd love to post a link for that, but I cannot find the article about it. Basically, one of Sony's leaders is looking to wirelessly integrate your electronics so you would 'wear' a headset and screen that is smart enough to display what you want based on a number of cues. It would pick-up and coordinate music, data, voice, etc. from a variety of sources... yada yada yada.)

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at!

Registered: Jul 2002
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Posts: 120

1. This is good news.
2. Forget the time wasters of "woulda, coulda, shoulda".
3. What is more important - that people said this should have happened x-amount of time ago or that it is happening now? 4.Reserve the "I told you so's" Bitterness is toxic.
5. Things "corporate" always take longer than we want them to.
1. This is good news!!

Registered: Jan 2000
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Posts: 391

The only way this could be good news is if Palm has someone who can take care of good ideas once Hawkins has found something shinier to play with. Making Hawkins CTO just seems like a bad idea to me. Hopefully that's just a courtesy title and there's someone else as overall technical lead...

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Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC<br>
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Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by Madkins007
Deja vu... weren't some of us talking about this being a logical step about a year ago? [...]

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location:
Posts: 143

If palm will now have access to the springboard technology, do you think they might revive it in future models? Just a dream of mine

Registered: Jan 2000
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Posts: 391

quote:

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Originally posted by HindeR
If palm will now have access to the springboard technology, do you think they might revive it in future models? Just a dream of mine

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Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC<br>
<a href=http://www.taronga.com/~peter/>Ar rug t� barr�g ar do mhact�re inniu?</a>

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Nebraska- the Good life
Posts: 695

quote:

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Originally posted by argent
The only way this could be good news is if Palm has someone who can take care of good ideas once Hawkins has found something shinier to play with. Making Hawkins CTO just seems like a bad idea to me. Hopefully that's just a courtesy title and there's someone else as overall technical lead...

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at!

Registered: Jul 2000
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Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by Madkins007
Hasn't Hawkins title been CTO for a while now?

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Registered: Jan 2000
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Posts: 391

quote:

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Originally posted by Madkins007
Hasn't Hawkins title been CTO for a while now?

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Not at Palm it hasn't.

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Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC<br>
<a href=http://www.taronga.com/~peter/>Ar rug t� barr�g ar do mhact�re inniu?</a>