Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 103

Isnt it sad the sheer amount of speculation on how to perform what should be simple opperations that anyone else with their respective pda's based on the fact that that EEFIG is the only third party manufacturer that is producing springboards and selling them. How hard can it possibily be For a hardware manufacture to send out an accual release date and stick to it? It is however amazing to think about the rallying support group that spawns from people that are forced to endure unexplainable shortages. And blatent lies. I too own a visor. An Ice visor dlx. I like it alot. I like the IDEA of the the handygps and the IDEA of the sixpack. However I am starting to feel stupid for believing the release dates from these manufacturers. I am starting to feel stupid for being led on. I personally like my visor better than my old palm IIIx and easily think that it is way more slick but at the very least palm computing was not lying to me.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Mililani, HI, USA
Posts: 256

ya know...maybe Handspring wasn't so "late" after all, eh? Despite all of their trouble, they did meet their release date, unlike everyone else--springboard and keyboard manufacturers alike. I know delays are unavoiable and a common thing with tech product releases. But it would give us all a huge break if these companies would start projecting delays into their publicized projections.

In fairness to Innogear, I like that they came forward and said, "Later! We don't wanna release shoddy products, so we're looking at least at a summer release" (para). . . .But it would be cool if we knew that Q4 99.

[This message has been edited by ragamuffinn (edited 03-03-2000).]

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

If there is one thing that I have learned, it is that release dates can slip. The Palm V came out 4 months after it was supposed to. Manufacturers don't want to dissapoint people by having to push back the release date further. Almost every video game is delayed. That is one of the reasons why most of the springboard modules we have listed are by Quarter instead of month. They aren't trying to lead you on; sometimes production difficulties come up (like the earthquake in Taiwan) or major bugs are found. I would always rather wait an extra month or two than having to deal with buggy products.

The IntelliGolf module is now shipping, and I prefer the newer look of the SixPak than the original. With any luck, by September there will be more 3p modules than you can afford

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

[This message has been edited by JHromadka (edited 03-03-2000).]

Registered: Sep 1999
Location:
Posts: 106

James, I think there's a valid argument to be made on both sides. I for one am coming down on the side that has been disappointed with release dates. If as you suggest, we'll be up to our eyeballs in Springboards come September, that puts them out a year from Handsprings original release date. Now if you're building a bridge, a years slippage is nothing. Promise your wife the lawns gonna get mowed this weekend and wait two...you may have a problem.

My point is the technology arena has been defined as an immediately changing industry. Can anyone guesstimate have fast the desktop PC's will be running a short year from now? With the advent of everchanging "on the go devices" what will be available a year from now? Even if the new stuff isn't on the shelves yet, those companies will be pulling their own 'Handspring', enticing early adapters with their "coming soon" products. There's a good bet to be made that after the novelty of owning an admittedly low cost visor (sans springboards) for a year, we may all become early adapters of a slicker, cheaper phone/color/updgradle/pim/wireless messenger doo-hickey.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

Could any of the Springboard "delays" have anything to do with the fact that the manufacturer's were simply waiting to be sure that the Visor was, in fact, a viable product? I mean, it's one thing to jump on the bandwagon and say "We're gonna build some of those gadgets..." but... if the Visor turned out to be a dud and someone HAD produced a module or two... where would they be now? Keep in mind that R&D consumes copious amount of cash in any industry and it's even more significant in the tech sector.

I think it's safe to say the the Visor is here to stay. HS is selling thousands of them and their so-called "problems" will be resolved. Now the 3rd party people can invest (mucho dinero) in production of the add-ons.

Additionally, as James said, if I were building modules, I'd want to make darn sure that they worked, worked well, and were as bug-free as possible before the first release.

Besides, let's all be honest here... we are all impatient and want all these new gizmo's and gadget's NOW!!! Well... at least I do


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MarkEagle - Ice is nice!

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

My biggest problem is that with all the delays that the springboards have in making it to the market, it's going to be a tough choice of whether to buy the "necessary" springboards or to buy the color Visor! Yeah, okay I'm dreaming...

Maybe 2001 is going to be the year of the Visor. I'll just have make sure I keep an extra $2,000 lying around for color and springboards.

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 107

My thoughts exactly! I have no problem with the Visor as a product. It�s the delays I�m concerned about. Maybe HS is on the ball, but so much of their appeal is based on the Springboard, IMO. And if the Springboards aren�t coming to market fast enough, well � agree with you RJT, �We may all become early adapters of a slicker, cheaper phone/color/updgradle/pim/wireless messenger doo-hickey.�

I�ve said it before � I can�t believe how fast this technology is changing. Partnerships are happening all over the place. It�s only a matter of time before we see a Nokia/PalmOS/Qualcomm/JDS Uniphase device. And while everyone else is enjoying this brave new world in telecommunications, we�ll still be playing with our one and only Tiger Woods PGA. Yipee.

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 107

Can I say one other thing? Maybe this is a no brainer, but HS is going to have to license its Springboard to other PalmOS PDA manufactures if it ever hopes to survive. Just ask Apple. I�m sure they'd say the same thing.

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 62

Ken:

What you are missing is that HS doesn't need to license the Springboard Technology. You are missing something in the comparison with Apple. The proper comparison is that Palm needed to license their operating system to other manufacturers in order to survive.

Two very good examples where this wasn't done. Great marketing school case studies. Sony Betamax, which was licensed at great cost, so everyone else designed the VHS, which now controls the market, and isn't as good a unit (but that's for another chat site.) The other one is Apple, that refused to license their OS, and lost their market to PC's and to Microsoft.

Handheld devices are too valuable and the market is too large for one manufacturer to control it for too long. Pretty soon, other companies would have come out with something that was a universal OS that would have gone head to head with PalmOS. That was the point behind Windows CE. It just didn't make it. But there would have been others.

Palm needed to license the OS to protect its position in the market. Now, the fact that 3Com "allowed" Hawkins and (excuse my mental lapse) others to leave Palm Computing was the bigger loss for them.

HS is alive and well, and the market is growing. Look at the price of the Palm IPO. What other IPO's have gone up and so far down so fast?

The market belongs to the innovators.

LONG LIVE HANDSPRING!!!

larry

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 72

I love my visor but my faith in the device is starting to slip. My friends, who have palms, are starting to tease me and my visor. There are not many springboards at the time being and by the time there are it seems that my lovely visor will be obselete. I just hope i see some good stuff showing up soon.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: "Children are a gift from God, they are a reward"
Posts: 1049

Hey Guys (gals),
Reality check...
Is the Visor not cheaper than a comperable Palm?
Did you buy your Visor because you NEEDED a GPS module, cell phone module, Six pack module, etc. RIGHT now? Or WANTED them? (ther is a difference)
Were you planning on owning your Visor for a while and getting the modules you need one at a time, or buy them all at once?
(Does it not have four more modules currently available than any other PDA?)
Aren't they the only PalmOS Pdas shipping with colored cases? (sure you can buy a case for a Palm, but you void your warranty using it)
Didn't they hammer everybody on the USB connectivity?
As to the springboard license, haven't they (Handspring) said they were open to that?
As to the PalmOS question, Qualcomm has a product out now and Motorola not only has announced a deal, they are also stockholders in Palm.
Handspring will be around next year. As to their marketshare, who knows? The Visor can't be obsolete as long as people use the PalmOS. We as a society seem to want to rush headlong into a NOW! NOW! NOW! way of life, which is kind of stupid. This country was built on other things than who is the hippest, hot at the moment, fly, groovy cool, etc.
By the way Skaman35, by your friends own logic unless they have a Palm IIIc, they're hopelessly outdated too.
I like my Visor alot. This is my second one. I don't like the way everything has gone down with releases, though. I might buy a color PDA in a year or so, or not. It may be a Visor, or not. I hope that when I buy modules for my present Visor they aren't too buggy. I'd like to think that if I get a new PDA, I could at least give my son a working unit with working modules.
Calm down- if you feel the need to do something, do us all a favor and develop some really cool modules and rush them to market! I hear that product development is a breeze!
Michael

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 103

Perhaps the point of my message was obscure.
The visors selling point was the option of using interchangable components-springboards.
I had a palmIIIx with a digital compass,modem and a trg memory upgrade giving it 8megs. It was very functional. It allowed me to connect up to the internet. It conformed to my needs well. Then comes the visor. Its cheaper faster and expandable with the promise of springboards. However its accessories are not compatable. It DOES however STATE and IMPLY that comparable accesories are available and others are soon on the way. It backs up that statement by providing release dates for accessories. These dates provided are reasonable. So it is assumed that by buying a visor they are not loosing all of the abilities that their previous accessories provided. The visor is good product. With the ecception of the crappy stili and the lack of replacement stili( I am still waiting for handspring to ship them) the Visor is an excelent product.
All I really want is the same functionality of my old pda (memory& modem) that was stated and implied to be available. I do not think posts stating "How do I connect my visor to an extermal modem" should be nesisary.

My 1.973567485964738509 cents

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 107

Larry Chester � I understand your point, but I still think my comparison is valid. I�ve HEARD � only rumors � that other PDA�s are working on similar Springboard-like technology. Granted, they�re not PalmOS handhelds, but nevertheless they still target the same audience. If these competitors *do* come out with similar plug-n-play type devices, we�ll see the Beta vs. VHS war all over again.

IMO, it would be wise for HS to license the Springboard technology. They need to stay one step ahead of the competition, not one step behind it. Plus, we the consumer would benefit greatly.

I still think VTech�s PDA is going to dominate the market before the year's up.


[This message has been edited by Ken (edited 03-05-2000).]

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 62

Ken:

I hear what you're saying. And honestly, I don't know if the HS VDX will dominate the market in another year, or be a major player, or just disappear. Since it is compatible with all PalmOS software, I had the functionality that I wanted when I bought it. If there are never any springboards, I will be disappointed, but it wouldn't have deterred me from buying one. There are many other reasons for the purchase, which have been listed above, so I won't repeat them.

My VDX has made my life a lot easier than the Sharp Wizard I used for 4 years. And no one knows if the next technology leap will leave HS and all of PalmOS far behind. But for right now, I am enjoying it.

If in two years, the new NEXT BIG THING blows off the HS VDX and all of the Palm units, you and I and half of the Handheld world will be all too happy to plunk down another $250 to buy that.

It will be smaller, lighter, larger screen, full color, well you know the drill. But who can predict? And I am not going to care. In technology, you can't look or think too far into the future. Remember the Psychic Network went out of business, and they didn't see it coming.

Larry

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 45

quote:

---

Originally posted by Larry Chester: Apple, ... refused to license their OS, and lost their market to PC's and to Microsoft.

---

Reality check - Apple didn't lose the market. Apple continues to thrive and make excellent far better products than run of the mill PC's. Sure, "the rest of you" can drive your little cheap no-name brands that fail after two years on average and require three times the technical and lifelong support costs yet don't perform as well. But PC's don't really dominate the market as much as MS would like you to believe.

Remember that statistics are often used to lie. All those statistics about market share are no exception. They talk about Apple only _selling_ a small percentage of the computers. What they fail to mention is that Macs stay in use for an average of 4 times longer than PC's _and_ are used in the innovative applications as opposed to the mundane applications that most PC's are relegated to.

Me, I prefer the Mercedes of computers, the jaguar, the real thing, a Macintosh. Far more processing power, far more reliability, superior core programming, usability and frankly, styling. Windoze doesn't even compare to MacOS. Microsoft can copy Apple all they want but PC's are always behind and Gates continues to foist buggy software on users, using you as his alpha testing ground. I have to use both but the Macs are far better than Windoze any day.

Hopefully Handspring and Palm will be as innovative and successful as Apple even by half!

In any case, as to release dates, I would rather see the vendors get the products perfect than release them to early.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 28

Don't get me started on MAC's

all i have to say it's a 16 Bit OS that runs a gui. Oh wait a min thats just like 95
oh wait one more it crashes just the exact same. the only reason ppl who buy mac's stay with them is cuz of cost. Who the hell can aford to buy a new G4(and yes they do crash jsut last week i had one screw up the bios for no reason what so ever)

now if you want an OS that can take the daily abuse go with a unix flavor. i've said it several times befor but not even win2k can hold up against my 486 lynix server. it's still kicking and just yesterday the powersupply fan started to go and it's heating up (and making alot of noise) but is not showing any signs of die'n.

Tell me any personal PC OS that can hold up for years of punishment, i'm not talking about just useing it normaly i mean hogging it down to the point it does nothing but swap to the HD and just chug along as best it can.

Shoot the only other OS that i've seen that does't crash like mac's and 9x is palmOS. :P my ppro is still running fine and i've yet to here any complaints from the peroson who's useing it off me for now.
my visor works great too.
only 2 crashes thanx to incompatible hacks. nothing else. Heck i even had a hard time whiping out the memory cuz the stupid power protection is so well designed on the visor, much better then palms. I had to keep the batteris out of mine for literaly 1 hour for it to wipe out. while all my palms you just simply pull the bats, hit reset and reinstall the bats. you on the road.
but not with the visor.
:P

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 33

here here! piloteer. I work for the NAVY. And in my department we have Solaris and HPUX servers that havn't needed rebooting in MONTHS!!!

And talking about performance. My sparc ultra (233 MHz) outperforms any of our PC's (700MHz) or MAC's. Go figure!

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

Leave it to a Mac zealot to twist the topic of discussion to "Why anything negative anyone ever says about the Macintosh is wrong."

I believe the original topic had to do with disappointment over the continuous delays by various companies in rolling out their springboard modules... I have to agree; when I glanced at the Visorcentral homepage and saw the words "Innogear" and "Released" in the same headline, I got pretty excited. When I looked at the product, I was pissed - the 2V is really a pretty useless module. I'm sure that some people are keen on having a little bit of extra memory and a vibrating alert, but it's not the MP3 player or SixPack that everyone has been waiting for for months now - until today I had never read anything about the V2.

It's frustrating - I remember when Innogear's page said "Coming soon", and then "Coming Spring 2000"... Now it's "Coming Summer 2000" for the MP3 Jam and SixPack- sure, delays and complications happen, but maybe these companies should be more conservative in their predictions - better to build anticipation and deliver closer to your original estimate, than build anticipation and consistently piss people off by pushing the release date back every month. I'd hate to see what happened to the Amiga happen to Handspring - lack of support for an elegant product with lots of potential. (True, in the case of the Amiga it was Commodore's own fault - Handspring seems to have its sh*t together after some initial turbulence - now it's time for the Springboard developers to follow suit before the general public blows the springboard slot off as a gimmick!)

Registered: Sep 1999
Location:
Posts: 81

Not to skew off topic, but....

<RANT>
about the Mac thing. pubwvj, your stats on Macs lasting longer probably comes from the fact that most Macs are purchased for educational institutions, who are notorious for being behind on the technology curve, only replacing machines a couple of times per decade. Also, while your Mac may run forever, what exactly is running on it? It sure isn't the newest, hottest games, which is the main reason that people have high end computers.
</RANT>
Just MHO.

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 1571

I would rather wait a year for a quality fully functional proudct to be released. The module developers aren't deliberately "pissing" people off. They haven't release any of modules for the simple fact that they are still ebing developed. If I recall correctly, its been just sevn months since Handspring start selling the visor!

Good things come to those who wait. Patience is a virtue. The modules are coming.... it not a matter of *if* but *when*