Friday, April 18, 2003
Something Sad, Something Funny
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THE COMPETITION" @ 01:00 PM
There are two things happening in the PDA world today that doesn't involve the Pocket PC - one is sad to see happen, the other just blows my mind. :roll:
First, Handera is getting out of the PDA manufacturing business. Handera was originally named TRG and they were the official hot-rodders of Palm PDAs. They took the Palm III, crammed 8MB of RAM into it then threw in a Compact Flash slot for good measure. This was when Palm was still saying external storage cards were too complex. Their most recent innovation, if you can call the summer of 2001 recent, was the Handera 330. It was still based on the Palm III formfactor but added some features you still can't find on a Palm OS device. It had a 320X240 screen (sounds familiar, huh?), dual expansion slots - one CF and one SD, soft input panel, swappable rechargable batteries and a voice recorder. I always thought the TRG/Handera devices were a killer hardware platform in search of an OS. I hate to see any power user's device like this go. There were rumors of a color 330 last year, but it wasn't meant to be. Handera PDA division couldn't survive on the low sales in a niche market. They will continue to do consulting work, which is where they got their start. It wouldn't bother me in the least to hear Handera had a hand in designing a future Pocket PC with one of the big Pocket PC OEMs.
Now, for the headline that just stunned me. "Palm Solutions Group Announces Memory Innovation." Wow! What have they done now? Will Pocket PCs be forced to play catch up in the memory game? Well, no, not really. They have modified the PalmOS to address up to 128MB of RAM. Granted, no Pocket PCs ship with 128MB of RAM yet, but mods are available and the Pocket PC OS itself is quite capable of seeing all of this RAM and has been since its release in 2000. How this qualifies as an innovation three years after it was done in another PDA is beyond me. It just smacks of "you don't need it until we have it" again.
Now for the really funny stuff. Look at the bottom of that Palm press release.
• "...the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system, which was condensed from a desktop OS..." - well, it sure sounds good in a press release despite having absolutely no truth to it whatsoever.
• "A Palm handheld uses about one-fifth the storage to manage text or voice memos vs. a Pocket PC handheld" - Well, when your memos only hold 4k, it is easier to use less storage.
• "A Palm handheld owner can enter a Date Book appointment with only two steps vs. seven steps required of a Pocket PC device owner." - Oh my, I never thought I'd see tap counts in a press release. Hey Palm, you check out this article before putting this kind of thing in press releases. :lol:
First, Handera is getting out of the PDA manufacturing business. Handera was originally named TRG and they were the official hot-rodders of Palm PDAs. They took the Palm III, crammed 8MB of RAM into it then threw in a Compact Flash slot for good measure. This was when Palm was still saying external storage cards were too complex. Their most recent innovation, if you can call the summer of 2001 recent, was the Handera 330. It was still based on the Palm III formfactor but added some features you still can't find on a Palm OS device. It had a 320X240 screen (sounds familiar, huh?), dual expansion slots - one CF and one SD, soft input panel, swappable rechargable batteries and a voice recorder. I always thought the TRG/Handera devices were a killer hardware platform in search of an OS. I hate to see any power user's device like this go. There were rumors of a color 330 last year, but it wasn't meant to be. Handera PDA division couldn't survive on the low sales in a niche market. They will continue to do consulting work, which is where they got their start. It wouldn't bother me in the least to hear Handera had a hand in designing a future Pocket PC with one of the big Pocket PC OEMs.
Now, for the headline that just stunned me. "Palm Solutions Group Announces Memory Innovation." Wow! What have they done now? Will Pocket PCs be forced to play catch up in the memory game? Well, no, not really. They have modified the PalmOS to address up to 128MB of RAM. Granted, no Pocket PCs ship with 128MB of RAM yet, but mods are available and the Pocket PC OS itself is quite capable of seeing all of this RAM and has been since its release in 2000. How this qualifies as an innovation three years after it was done in another PDA is beyond me. It just smacks of "you don't need it until we have it" again.
Now for the really funny stuff. Look at the bottom of that Palm press release.
• "...the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system, which was condensed from a desktop OS..." - well, it sure sounds good in a press release despite having absolutely no truth to it whatsoever.
• "A Palm handheld uses about one-fifth the storage to manage text or voice memos vs. a Pocket PC handheld" - Well, when your memos only hold 4k, it is easier to use less storage.
• "A Palm handheld owner can enter a Date Book appointment with only two steps vs. seven steps required of a Pocket PC device owner." - Oh my, I never thought I'd see tap counts in a press release. Hey Palm, you check out this article before putting this kind of thing in press releases. :lol:
