Uncle Roger
Member
Registered: May 2001
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Posts: 90 |
Re: Is 20gigs coming out for the PRISM
quote: Originally posted by kwallyg
I really don't know about the rest of the world but I consider any electronic device a computer. A Handspring, PALM, Cell phone, and even a game system like the playstation or Xbox. Perspective gadgets are being increased with memory, hard drive space, and CPU speed, why can't PDA's.
Well, not every electronic device contains a computer, but these days many do. The big difference, however, between the computer in your visor, PC, and playstation and the one in your camcorder, stereo, and such is that the former are all general purpose computers and the latter are single purpose, dedicated computers.
quote: If you look at the Cell phone market. PDA's will not be in existence if they keep increasing the memory with 64 meggs and able to accomplish everything that the PALM can do! Look at some of the Cell phones and tell me what you think? What I'm saying is that PDA's are being updated slower than any mechanical device (COMPUTER) out on the market. What is going to help the PDA market what is going to be the killer app or hardware?
The problem with the idea of my cellphone replacing my visor is that my cellphone is far too small to have a usable interface (and of course my visor is a little too big to be a cellphone.)
quote: I can compare a PDA to a computer any day and it would be a no win situation. If the architecture changes and I'm able to have a 20 gig hard drive on my PRISM, I would love it. Right now it's only a myth but later it will happen or handspring will become outdated.
Certainly, you can't compare a PDA to a full-fledged personal computer -- nor would you want to. It's like comparing a Toyota corolla to a full-size van. The Toyota would be absolutely terrible at carrying a whole scout troop, or a bunch of old minicomputers. That doesn't make it a bad vehicle, does it? No, because they're different vehicles designed for different purposes. My PC is great for a lot of things -- image processing, ebay, acting as a terminal for a minicomputer, etc. My visor is great for different things -- keeping phone numbers handy, keeping my schedule, even doing some writing on the go.
quote: A company like Microsoft is building a bigger software bundle to fit the needs of the people, of course there will be bugs but the majority elects to use the software and it's proprietary. No matter what the courts do or say, Companies and people around the world are using Office. "As storage limitations get bigger, better software will come to fit the needs of people".
Sure, and more people eat at McDonald's and Burger King than any local burger joint, so does that mean they make better burgers?
Microsoft's primary concern is increasing market share, not making better software. Don't kid yourself that they want to do what's right -- they're in it for the money.
quote: So, I'm relating the PC industry with the PDA industry because eventually they will be able to mix and match information from Japan to U.S. in a second using the best software and hardware. Try and vision it and tell me if I'm wrong. It's happening now but it's all mixed and mingled with whose using what? What are the top browsers, cell phones, PDA and other quick devices that might work for the MASS market.
But the PC and PDA industries are not analagous. They are similar, yes, but not the same. Even if you were to try and compare them, the current PDA market is like the late 70's or early 80's of the PC world. Different vendors, with proprietary systems, and everyone building their own software and coming up with their own uses. In which case, one wouldn't expect the hardware to improve terribly fast -- there is not yet the financial impetus.
quote: I remember in the 80's when American Online was the only company you could go online with. Now you can find an online carrier anywhere. I'm morally wrong saying something about American online because it's 2000's and we're far and beyond that technology stage; however, PDA's seem to crawl with adding memory or having killer applications. "American Online was a killer online application".
Bzzzzt! Wrong. In the 80's, AOL was a small commodore service. It wasn't until the early 90's (iirc) that it became AOL and began providing americans with free floppies. AOL was never the only way to get online. Other large services included CompuServe, Prodigy, Genie, etc.
America Online was not a killer online application -- that was a) e-mail and b) hypertext (as in the web.)
quote: Vision the future and tell me what you think?
Well, I usually charge a whole lot of money for that (see <http://www.techsynthesis.com/> ) but here are some freebies:
- The biggest advances for the next few years will be in software. There are two reasons -- there needs to be more applications and better integration with PC applications and, in the current economic climate, much cheaper to bring to market.
- PDA's will get better quality, higher resolution, color screens. This will be one of the main areas in which hardware will improve.
- Ethernet, especially 802.11b wireless, will become more common, as companies begin to put more handhelds to work for inventory, sales processing, and data lookup functions in their businesses. Look at the PalmOS devices being sold by Symbol -- you won't hear about them on the net much, but Symbol has a huge presence in the retail world.
- CPU's will get faster and they will be able to handle more memory. This won't be as big a factor as you think however -- figuring out how to make usable software with such a small footprint will be the big advance, and it won't be done by making bloatware. A faster CPU won't make such a difference.
- You will begin to see the lessons learned from the PDA world being applied in both the cellphone/pager/smartcard arena and the laptop industry. Innovative technologies like the Matias HalfKeyboard and even Grafitti itself will start to show up on laptops.
Anyway, that's about it for tonight.
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