Registered: Nov 1999
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 153

Gee I really want to like Handspring as a company and they did pretty much get my orders to me in around 5 weeks or so but.... isn't it a little disingenuous to ramp up a special parallel manufacturing run for ClubMac while being swamped with orders from early adopters just so you can have someone selling the (for full retail) on the MacWORLD San Francisco show floor this week. Ouch!

No springboards were for sale in the Partners booths.
Handspring was not beaming show guides to visitors - Palm was.
Handspring was giving out little wall-walker guys, stickers, and imprinted cheap black styli.
Handspring's demos were lame - but you could win a Visor for watching and filling our a card.
They did show pulling out the backup module during a backup up without problems.
Targus was showing the ThinkOutside folding keyboard. Brilliant/elegant design.
Cases to come for Visors and modules etc from them soon.
Keyboard has function keys to match those on Visor.
My request for a joystick brought a gleam to his eye.
Xircom showed a wireless Springboard with Apple's Airport for seamless networking (and of course web access-wow)
Palm gave out really cool pens - no additional sylus function.
Palms bag was much cooler than Handsprings.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 434

Hmmm... Maybe I'll get that Airport after all...

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 45

quote:

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Originally posted by Eug:
Hmmm... Maybe I'll get that Airport after all...

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Yes, the Airport sounds really nice!
I have been considering getting it for our laptop computers and for the Palm/Visor it makes even more sense. Combine that with Zilog's phone Springboard headset and a slot for SmartMedia memory (ROM or RAM) and it would be a kill app.

But, please, no color screen. The battery drain is already going to be such that we'll likely want more power. Just have it recharge each night in the cradle like the VTech phones do but do better power management.

Right now I and all of my sales and tech support people walk around with our brains wired (okay, voice and ear piece but sometimes we joke... ) in with headsets plugged into 900MHz VTech phones on our belts (very nice machines, great range of about 1/3 mile for practical use which covers our facility).

If I could replace those with a handheld that would also give them access anywhere (even via cellular when we're too far from the base for 900MHz) to the customer database, email, tech docs, etc I would do so in a moment. Heck, the VTech phones cost more than the Visor Deluxe. Just a few days ago one of my employees was lamenting that she had to take her husband into the hospital for medical tests and would be waiting around for three hours doing nothing. She wanted to go with him and needed to drive him due to the medication they would give him but she also had things she wanted to do. A device like this... ...

Then make it SEAMLESSLY integrate with our server and desktop machines. Allow true easy multisyncing on the fly, over the air, of course! By the way, has wanyone else noticed that the Visor (and Palm Vx) slip neatly inside one of the battery/drive bays of a Macintosh PowerBook G3? Now you see it, now you don't. Imagine a cradle that slides in there like a zip drive and then accepts the Visor for high speed data transfers or... (drum roll) even better (symbols clash)... the Visor becomes a drive as seen on the Macintosh's desktop... Drawing power from the desktop machine if necessary of course since that machine may be plugged in and has a battery bigger than the entire Visor!

Do you hear us Visor - VTech - Zilog - Xircom - Apple? I've got enough projects so someone else will have to tackle this one...

[This message has been edited by pubwvj (edited 01-27-2000).]

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 153

Imagine using your desktop machine as a personal virtual server and have it filtering incoming data and dispatching it to your wireless Airport-enabled Visor in the office or via a Qualcomm HDR enabled springboard while you are on the road. While I love my ISP's and company's servers and firewalls with all my heart, they don't give me the services I want for my information appliances.

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