Registered: Mar 2000
Location: El Paso
Posts: 8

I found today's announcement of Palm's moving to the ARM processors particularly interesting. I presume that they'll be porting over the Palm OS to the ARM chips and running old binaries in software emulation. The ARM chip is more than fast enough to do that at full speed if not burdened with a bloated OS.

I don't recall how portable the palm os code was, but I'm guessing that the "port" will actually be a near complete rewrite of the os from the ground up to get it to work on ARM. I'm looking forward to what it brings. Whatever they do, they must not increase the complexity required to accomplish simple tasks with the device.

My two cents on the palm os. I've stayed with the palm os because it does exactly what I need it to do. Would I like a device as light and small and FAST with color more memory, more speed, and color? Of course I would. Do I need such a device? No.

I use my visor for work and organizing, which are my main priorities when I'm not near a desktop. Everything else takes a distant second after those, and I'll sacrifice no efficiency to have other features. Work use consists largely of medical reference, and it must be as fast or faster than looking stuff up in a pocket reference. Even a one second delay or one extra tap is unacceptable to me.

I'll considering moving to another platform when it can do what I need better and faster, or when it can do it equally as well and offer other benefits.

That's basically why I think so many have remained loyal to palm os despite better "paper" offerings from msft. It does the important stuff incredibly well, at a very nice price point, in a great form factor. Even my visor is a little larger than I'd like, but it was the cheapest way to get 8MB. Really, the Palm V has *the* form factor to have.

I'm not a great fan of msft's business practices, though some of their products are quite nice. For those msft supporters, I doubt you'd be so supportive if you were in business and msft suddenly were to come in with their deep pockets and give away a comparable product for free just because they liked your market share. That is blatantly anti-competitive. The could afford to do that because they had a lot of money, and more importantly, they could offset the cost of the browser to their more profitable divisions. That they did this specifically to bankrupt a major competitor and to dictate the future standards is exactly the type of behavior that anti-monopoly law was designed to resolve.

That said, I've used msft products all my life, all their os's since the early versions of ms-dos to win2k (yes, even including windows and windows 2.0). Their os's are large and bloated, that nobody can argue, and very crashy for a company that has so many resources. Win2k is much better, but still fairly ugly, especially when compared to osx or beos. I'm really hoping for a breakup of msft, as I think it's not only in the best interests of the market and the consumer, but also for msft.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Chandler, AZ
Posts: 289

RE: Palms move to ARM .. I am glad they are doing this. While it seems the palm community believes it shows Palm has no direction, I think it is essential to move the Palm platform to something that can be expandable. I mean, in a year or so, the base functionaility of the Palm will be integrated with Cell phones, MSFT's PocketPC will probably have yet another version and probably a lower price point (~$300 or so) so where does that leave Palm? I still think the PDA will need to be a Laptop replacement to remain successful.

RE: MSFT business practices.. There are a lot of companies that have various advantages. Some have money, some have intellectual property, some have equipment, etc.. Unfortunately for the computer industry, MSFT has all of those things and I believe does overtake markets and I hope there is a stop to that.

Regarding their operating system.. yeah .. nothings perfect. However, I feel the stability that MSFT was able to achieve in W2K is good enough for a TON of people. I have been running it since Febraury and have never had to reboot due to a system crash (only reboots were due to driver/software install that forced the issue). However, I feel the amount of hardware support, software support and ease of use that the W2K platform provides far exceeds what OSX or BeOS currently provide. I don't really see the big advantage to the BeOS interface.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

Cerulean,

I couldn't agree more on the issue of Palm moving to ARM itself! In order to provide new features and solutions, they're going to need a more robust processor powering their systems. At this point the DragonBall is becoming a dinosaur, 20 MHZ simply isn't going to cut it for features that will require faster hardware.

I'm particularly excited at the prospect of Palm adding wireless capabilities to all of it's products.

*NOTE*
Sony has just announced that they are dumping the Palm OS in favor of EPOC. Ouch!
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Foo

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

At 200 mhz, Palm is going to have to really slow down their OS. Otherwise you won't be able to see it! Mayby they'll have a turbo mode and a slow mode setting for legacy apps.

My guess is the Palm's trying to close in on MS' licensees, who are probably sweating bullets right now at the sight of buzzards circling. Initially I was cynical about this move but after thinking about it, it may be a shrewd business decision. Technically, I have a few reservations about StrongARM: shorter battery life, higher price, the need to cross-compile and tweak for several processors (one of the main gripes that programmers have about developing for WinCE), and the frivolous features like voice activation that Palm's been talking about. Oh well, it's a brave new world . . .

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

Gameboy70,

I don't understand why you think this platform (PocketPC) is dead? HP has already sold out of their pre-release shipments, and report that they have been overwhelmed by early sales. So far, public reaction been positive. I was just listening to the WinMag audio report at Techweb Today, and the two reviewers both gave the PPC a two thumbs up, and one of them is a Palm user.

For a dead product, it sure does sell quite well!

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Foo

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

I'm a pessimist by nature. I look at a full glass and say, "That's not empty." I watch Bergman films. My Visor is Graphite.

I would've been very surprised if the initial sales were weak. MS has hyped this year's model like crazy. We'll know the real story in a couple of months.

My dark outlook may be colored by the fact that I bought a PDA that was discontinued a year later. Or it could be that WinCE has historically been portrayed as the next big thing, and historically they've flopped. I just don't see what's substantially different in the new versions to revise my opinion.

Then again, I predicted the Palm V (when it was $500) and the iMac were going to tank. So trust your own judgement, not mine.