Registered: Mar 2000
Location: Columbia, MO
Posts: 125

"No offense to the Pocket PC, but we might need to bring .Net services to Palm and other [handheld] devices," Ballmer said during a question-and-answer session in front of an audience of about 7,000 information technology managers at Gartner Group Inc.'s Symposium/ITxpo 2000 conference.

http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/st...TO52552,00.html

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505 STI

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 434

Don't hold your breath! Microsoft has made the same noises re: interoperability with Netware and unix for more than a decade; and support has always been at best half-hearted. I'm not saying that there won't be some level of support for the Palm OS in their .NET initiative; but it will be minimal, and it will be lacking when compared to the support for WinCE. When you call them on the deficiencies, they will blame Palm and/or the "limitations" inherent in the Palm platform.

How many times do we have to do the same dance with Microsoft before we learn that Microsoft believes that we only exist to pay them money for the priveldge of being stepped on?

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 12

They may support the Palm OS, but it will be the same as their lousy support for Mac users. Palm users will always get feature lacking late updates to promote the Pocket PCs.

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Richard Kettner

PalmCritic.com

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: bright side of the moon.
Posts: 996

on a side note, if anybody is interested, this month's issue of WIRED (november 2000) has a REALLY good article on the microsoft antitrust case. the writer had privalige to talk to many involved (including gates) during the trial only if he withheld the article until the trial was over. I learnt A LOT from this article.....

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Ever feel like the train left while you were busy reading the paper?

Stealth-Mod.

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: Roseville, MN, USA
Posts: 161

I'd expect them to embrace the PalmOS and write a client that does everything their wince client does. Then, if the .net thing seems to be working, they'll slowly start adding improved functionality to the wince version that never makes it to the palmos. People who've become dependent on the .net functionality will start moving more towards wince as they find they can't do as much with the palmos version.

Unless .net ends up just like Bob.

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

quote:

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Originally posted by PaulD
"No offense to the Pocket PC, but we might need to bring .Net services to Palm and other [handheld] devices," Ballmer said during a question-and-answer session in front of an audience of about 7,000 information technology managers at Gartner Group Inc.'s Symposium/ITxpo 2000 conference.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 638

Imagine what they would charge for something like pocke word, or excel, or the .net service. Microsoft is know for their bloated prices, and Palm users usually don't like that kind of thinking.
BEN

Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 80

Woohoo!

I emailed this to [email protected]!

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Southern California, USA
Posts: 41

.NET != Office && IE

.NET does NOT mean MS will put Office and IE on Palms. All it means is that the only thing stopping them from doing it would be figuring out which features to rip out so it didn't take 7.9MB of RAM on our machines. Of course, we are talking about Microsoft, so they may not take that extra step. :^)

Remember, this isn't the only step MS has made towards .NET portability--they made a deal with Corel that says that if MS wants them to, they'll port it to Corel Linux, and rumor has it that MS will propose a similar deal with Apple

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<img src="http://www.handspring.com/products/visorprism/images/PrsmLgPct02.jpg" align="left" width="115" height="115">Brent Dax
[email protected]

Visor Prism, USB recharging cradle, Win2K
I wish I could post from AvantGo...

<B><-- Cobalt Blue is really cool!</B>

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Southern California, USA
Posts: 41

quote:

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Originally posted by Palm Critic
They may support the Palm OS, but it will be the same as their lousy support for Mac users.

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<img src="http://www.handspring.com/products/visorprism/images/PrsmLgPct02.jpg" align="left" width="115" height="115">Brent Dax
[email protected]

Visor Prism, USB recharging cradle, Win2K
I wish I could post from AvantGo...

<B><-- Cobalt Blue is really cool!</B>

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 165

quote:

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Originally posted by Brent Dax
Lousy support for Mac users? Explain why Office 2001 for Mac is now available, with a richer feature set than Office 2000 for Windows.

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<br>"Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union" -Frank Lloyd Wright

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Redwood City CA
Posts: 472

If it's true, I'll be pleasantly surprised. Also, you can bet it'll come up when the anti-trust case comes back.

The fact MS hasn't released software for the Palm OS could, possibly, be taken as an abuse of monopoly power in that the applications group is attempting to shore up a failed system (PocketPC) by withholding support for the dominant handheld OS.

On a related note, I believe James mentioned that Handspring's HotSynch software and the WinCE synchronization software doen't seem to like being active at the same time, and implies this is a problem with the WinCE software. I'd argue the problem could exist in either WinCE or HotSync, or even in the desktop software itself; I've noticed a similar problem between HotSync and Psion's synchronization software.

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 1

Microsoft bloatware

One of my favorite things about my Visor and the Palm operating system is that it isn't Microsoft. I don't think the Palm system needs Microsoft's bloatware. There are several very good doc readers that can view Word files by converting them to RTF.

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: San Francisco, CA
Posts: 431

I would really like to see Pocket Excel and Word on the Palm. It's a hassle having all these different word processors / editors with their different formats. Who wants to bothered with continually converting files from one format to another???

I think that a lot of people would agree with me -- look at the interest that the latest version of Documents To Go, that allows editing of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, has generated.

Registered: Jun 2000
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 216

NEVER!

I will NEVER, EVER, alow ANY software from Microsnot onto to my Visor!

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 2

.Net Services

I think ".Net services" refer to something different than an Office suite for the palm os. I was at VBITS / VS Live conference recently in Orlando where Microsoft presented it's .Net services concept. It is more a programming concept using Visual Studio.net, Visual Basic, C#, SOAP, XML and other technologies for exchanging data across the web. When you author a .Net service, you use Microsoft technologies to expose a method or function to the web to be used by other processes or individuals across the net. An example might be to electonically approve access to your medical records by a doctors office wirelessly on your visor.

Cheers,
Richard