Aceeca Releases 64-bit Palm OS Hotsync Drivers

Ironic how Win 7 (in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors) hit the market when there were still a number of new Centros out in the market and being sold/activated. If a small operation like Aceeca can release this as an act of goodwill to the Palm OS community (I can assure you there are more late-model Palm Inc Garnet device users installing this driver than there are Aceeca PDA users), Palm or Access definitely could have done it with their far greater available resources. What a shame but kudos again to Aceeca!

This might be the final chapter in a long saga but it's definitely not the first instance of the "Palm companies" twiddling their thumbs while 3rd parties and the user/dev community scramble to address a glaring flaw or product shortcoming. Softick Audio Gateway & Card Export, TealScript for the G1 fans, Dmitri's PowerSDHC, FAT32 driver and all the other "PowerUps", Aeroplayer on the T|T etc etc etc etc)

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X + Palm TX

Smart companies don't shaft longtime customers. Palm lived off the goodwill of the Palm name for the past decade during which time they foisted crap like Lifedrive and Pre upon unsuspecting victims. (Read the horribly inaccurate, never-updated Palminfocenter fluff "review" of the Lifedrive to see how the media played a role in deceiving customers.)

Having ACCESS to the sourcecode, both Palm and Access should have been able to fix the desktop issues within a few weeks and at minimal expense. Instead they said "Screw you!" to the millions of people who have purchased PalmOS devices over the years. Palm abandoned PalmOS users and developers when they transitioned to webOS. HP/Palm screwed the developer that had released the PalmOS emulator for webOS. HP/Palm abandoned owners/early adopters/victims of the original Pre. Access LIED repeatedly about its ability to get its tragic ALP OS onto shipping hardware. Access changed its OS and strategy/business plan yearly for 3 years, the entire time releasing nothing but fetid VAPOR(ware) from the mouth of its chief shill, David "Lefty" Schlesinger. See a pattern with these companies? History repeats and eventually customers and developers that have been burned in the past will wise up and move on to more reliable/trustworthy platforms.

So yes, maybe there would be no DIRECT financial gain to Palm or Access from supporting legacy products, but the goodwill such a move would have generated would have been worth the trivial cost of providing the support.

FJH

I'd like to see Aceeca introduce a refreshed PDA32 in the future (perhaps to coincide with the availability of 802.11g & BT options) in a black case. Adding 4GB SDHC card support to it would be icing on the cake. Hell, I bet Dmitry Grinberg could really give them a hand for stuff like FAT32 and SDHC support.

Back to Palm: The LifeDrive, with its initial shipping ROM, remains the single worst product I ever purchaed at a substantial pricepoint with reasonly expections of performance and reliability. In fact, I returned the first one, waited a mont hor two, then bought another hoping I just got an early production dud the first timea round. It was just as bad. What a horrible, horrible device. Some of its flaws were addressed in future ROM updates but there was simply no reason to release a Microdrive-based device with such a feeble amount of RAM in 2005. I'd rather have seen a refreshed T5 with 512mb or 1gb of internal flash than that nasty 4GB Microdrive.
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro-> Verizon Moto Droid X + Palm TX

The Tapwave Zodiac makes a decent book reader if you can still find them. I bought a couple back when they were being blown out for around $100 apiece when the company announced they were giving up on the market and liquidating all of their remaining stock. It was definitely ahead of its time.

FJH