Discussion: Is the Palm VII Series a Flop?

although i have never owned a VII or VIIx device (heck, i dont see coverage here in Sweden) - i do believe that they were not a flop. the purpose of the device was to test wireless based Palm services.

it was first tested in NYC with around 3000 devices (from memory) and proved an instant success. i doubt it was about the proprietary palm.net network, or about selling devices - it was about testing a new market.

i think the Palm VII series is a dying breed though, especially since it is III form factor (which is getting boring, not to say old), and the fact that Palm have proposed the movement away from the palm.net service by introducing the Mobile Internet Kit.

for the first time, i messed with PQA's, and checked directions, weather, news by linking up my Palm devices with my GSM mobile phone. the idea of web clipping shows a lot of promise, however, the technology is limited to the type of stuff we have in PQA's now..

the introduction of Omnisky type devices to give V/Vx devices (and others) wireless access just makes the notion of wireless Palming more interesting.

i'd like to see the introduction of a true TCP/IP based wireless network, not UDP/IP that exists today :) but then again, anyone with a mobile phone and a normal ISP service can do this right now! i'd like to see it in a cheaper package.

[and, it'll also be fun to start programming some true wireless games] :P

// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/

You can surf the web using the "easter egg" or add-on
apps..

Tough decision between Vx and VIIx. Finally decided on VIIx. I can now surf the web (text only) with Dpweb by www.digitalpaths.com. This is a web clipping browser. I will use www.Skipwire.com download software(no cradle needed) and send email attachments(coming soon). Can view pictures with Fireviewer and make Palm compatible pictures for free at www.fireviwer.com. If I'm out of the Palm.net coverage area, I just use the modem accessory to dial into a free ISP. Don't have to worry about an external wireless modem(Omnisky) and extra batteries. Didn't want to deal with an extra set of batteries.
I use rechargeables for my VIIx and swap them every 5 days. I use freewarepalm.com for all kinds of freeware.
My friend bought the Vx with Omnisky and she wishes she now had the VIIx. Besides, the VIIx fits just fine in my suit coat pocket. Don't try that with your Vx with Omnisky.

I agree that Palm.Nets coverage is the biggest issue. Palm has to move to a system that has much wider coverage. That is a no brainer.
The issue I have is the idea of true web surfing. The screen size on a PDA is not very large. That is never going to change. The screen size is a function of the size of the unit and that can not be larger than what will fit in a pocket. If it is too large people will not carry it with them and if they don't have it on them they will not use it. Web pages are not designed with the idea of a small screen so if one brings one up on a PDA they must scroll left, right, up, and down.
Another thing that must be kept in mind is the difference between wired and wireless connections. Despite the commercials on television, dropouts are still a very real issue and I do not see that changing any time soon. This is not an issue with wired connections. Another issue is bandwidth. Even now there are many web sites that one must have a DSL or better type of connection to download in a reasonable amount of time. Last time I checked most uses of the web still use 56k dial in. This shows that the web has a habit of catering to the higher speeds. Is wireless access ever going to be faster then a direct wired connection? No. Any frequency one can put over the air one can put over a wire plus with a wired connection one can use light frequencies. These are a much higher then the microwave frequencies that are the maximum a wireless system can use. The higher the frequency the more data it can hold and the faster that data can be moved. Now this brings up the use of the available bandwidth. When one is broadcasting over the air every one is using the same range of frequencies as every one else with in range of the tower. Because of this, part of that range of frequencies must be used for arbitration. As with a traffic cop, there must be some thing to keep the users of wireless from walking over other users. This eats bandwidth. With a wired connection one can have all the bandwidth of the cable to oneself.

Even with the above Palm should still have a true web browser. This is for two reasons. The first reason is for sales. There are people who do not understand what a PDA will and will not do. With a web browser they will think they are getting what they need and will buy the unit. After they have used it for a bit they will understand how clipping is a much better idea. Second, is for the occasional information that is not available by clipping. This includes research for information that is very specific, old, or not what the general public is not interested in. But this type of information is very much the exception not the rule. An example of the above might be what was the population of a town in England in 1423. Most of the day to day information like weather, news, directions, theater listings, stock quotes, sports scores, personal info, flight listings, etc would be retrieved by clipping.
The nice part of web clipping is being able to get information quickly and easy. It does not need a high bandwidth connection so one does not have to wait for the build out of a new wireless network or the issues discussed in the first part of this message. A good part of Palms success is K.I.S.S (Keep it simple, stupid). Turn the unit on and go strait to the information one needs.
The other issue not discussed in the article is real time e-mail. Real time e-mail means even with the unit off it will beep or shake when one has a new e-mail. This has been shown by RIMM to be a must have application. Palms at this point can not do this. This is a large hole that needs to be filled. From what I understand Palm OS V4 will support this type of application.

There are very few good wireless options in Canada Palm VII is not possible, OmniSky isn't. The only reasonable choice is Canada-based RIM BlackBerry.

I think the 7 addicts its owners. I have a friend with a 7 and his only complaint is the 2 MB of RAM. (His company paid for the unit and usage, so at least it wasn't his mistake...)

I'd like to see what the m505 will offer.

Anyone who tries to tell me that the Palm VII series was a secret success has got to be a Palm PR employee. Face it, like the IIIc, the VII was a complete and total flop...plain and simple. It was the wrong form factor with the wrong features at the wrong price. Palm deserved exactly what they got. They thought they could come up with their own (proprietary) wireless solution and charge whatever they like for both the hardware and the service, and it bit them in the ass. They got what they deserved, plain and simple.

We'll see if they have learned anything with their new upcoming devices. Palm is becoming every bit as arrogant as Microsoft!

Granted the Palm VII series was created for a specific audience, I love my Palm VII and would use any other Palm device. I do not know what I would do with the wireless access to my email, my finances, directions, my calendar updates, and the lst goes own. With the VII I can have a calendar at Palm.Net that is used by my office and send/receive updates remotely without my laptop or a wired connection.

Beyond the current benefits, I believe that this is the future of handhelds. Not just the web clipping, but the easy integration with business application using a proprietary network. The use of a proprietary network offers a level of security, a standard for business applications, and ease of use across the different level of users.

For instance, I have recently started a new ASP that markets our own products. We provide our customers with an interface to our products using the palm.net network. This gives us the opportunity to market this advanced technology to a low-tech industry without the frustrations of different types of equipment, different services coming in and receiving data, etc.

Anyway, in a few words, this is the future!

For $9.99 a month I want a bit more k. That is why I dropped the service. Up the k, and I'll be back.

The VII is great for what it is. It allows me to access my email wirelessly (all my POP3 accounts and even my hotmail). I can even recieve and view email attached word and excel files. You can surf the web with DPWeb or using the "easter egg" or with a number of other free apps. No you don't have a direct connect but you do have an all in one wireless solutions that does a great job of doing what it was designed for. Using a WAP brower I can even chat in ICQ. If you haven't used one don't bad mouth it and don't compare it to a wireless with a dedicated IP because its not.

Only Anonymous cause i'm too lazy to login....

I bought a VIIx shortly after they came out. (previously was using a IIIx)

I really, really liked the VIIx - where it worked. The wireless service was great, but unfortunetly, it was only great where their was a signal. In places where coverage wasn't listed as "excellent" (and even a few where it was) the service was pretty much useless.

I'd still be using it and loving it if the coverage allowed me to go pretty much anywhere, inside or out. I eventually canceled and replaced it with a Palm IIIc.

I use a Sprint PCS phone for both voice and wireless web access now. While I really am not fond of the minibrowser on a phone-sized screen (not to mention horrible input methods) I am able to use it whereever I want - their coverage is pretty much seamless.

Matt

hasn't the coverage and service issues just been resolved by the announcment that all of the future products will use sprints CDMA network. The Palm VII is now legacy hardware and i'll be interested to see how long palm keeps it's propritary palm.net up and running.

the Palm VII(x) itself is not the most impressive device ever. It's rather bulky as Palms go (although still more pocket-friendly than WinCE devices), and aside from Palm.Net offers nothing the IIIxe offers. Palm.Net is proprietary, slow, and expensive, and not that widely available.

The Web Clipping/PQA concept, on the other hand, is brilliant. I don't know why people keep insisting on full web browsing on a PDA. Try loading a mainstream website into even Pocket Explorer on an HP Jornada, and it looks like crap. 99% of web sites out there are written for people with 800x600x16bit screens, absolute minimum. Many require 1024x768x24bit with DSL or Ethernet to work right. There is simply no way any of these are going to fly on a PDA, either bandwidth-wise or screen-wise.

The W3C has for several years been pushing for better web design, using XHTML Strict, CSS1, CSS2, and Mobile Device Identification. These techniques, combined with just a little bit of server-side processing, allow you to retranslate a web site for a PDA or a desktop on the fly, completely optimizing it for the desired client, without the user taking any action. I've done some research in this field, and it works. The problem is (A) Most web designers are too lazy to write their pages properly, and (B) Most web browsers are too poorly written to take advantage of the W3C's proposals. It will be several years, if ever, before the web authoring community at large gets their act together.

Into the void steps web clipping and other channel-services like AvantGo. Channels flopped big time on the desktop, because people had no use for them. On a PDA, however, they are perfect. Who needs to load an entire web page to find out what the weather is? The formatting is the same anyways, just send back a few short numbers and let the client plug it into the page. Why bother with anything more than the stock code and current value when checking your portfolio? Why bother with fancy graphics when looking at the New York Times daily (via AvantGo)? Web clipping, even if its current implementation on the Palm VII is proprietary, is by far the best way around the bandwidth-blues and screen-squeeze of PDAs. The first may someday go away, but the second will always be with us, until someone invents the spatially collapsing pocket.

In an ideal world, web clipping will be replaced with new browsers for PDAs that use ONLY the W3C's standards. XHTML Strict is easier to parse than HTML, so the browser can be smaller and lighter. If the PDA market embraces the W3C's standards work, designed specifically for that market, then as wireless PDA use grows it can force the rest of the industry to change and grow up and use open standards. Of course, that's not financially advantageous in the short term, so the chances of it happening are slim unless some company actually gets the balls to do something for the community rather than stockholders.

For the optimist, there's the W3C standards. For everthing else, there's PQA-style web clipping.

--GrouchoMarx

The sales numbers are pretty clear about its failure. (Though I'm sure it's successful relative to horrible WAP service on horrible WAP browsing cell phones... just less hyped because it's semi-proprietary).

On the other hand, I think it's a great research success. Palm VII* and Palm.net customers are funding Palm's research into wireless services; essentially paying to be beta testers. They're getting value for their money, but it's obvious that this service isn't for everyone, and won't be until Palm continuously applies what they're learning from their customers.

And what might they be learning? Which applications customers run, what service plans people subscribe to, what information people customers access, when they access it, and how they use it. All of this is very valuable information that few other firms are able to capture because they don't have the same end-to-end integration that Palm has, combining control of the interface, hardware, network, and (relatively) content. They are gaining a clear view of what works and what doesn't that no one else is gaining, on a very large test group (over 100K users is HUGE for research purposes). If that's not a success, then I don't know what is.

Personally, I used to be a Palm VII user. In fact, I was a beta tester of the service. Web Clipping is amazing; right on target in terms of how I think the information can be usefully and relevantly presented.

I've since given my Palm VII to a brother of a friend, and I pay for his service. He's getting a lot of use out of it. I prefer my Palm Vx because it has more RAM and an outstanding form factor. If the Palm VIIx had the case of a Palm Vx, I'd get it in a second; it's just that the incremental benefit of wireless access isn't significant enough for me to give up the great feeling of carrying around the Palm Vx, particularly when most of the places I travel to have Internet access points nearby.

Plus, the bandwidth is much too low; it's most useful to me in its messaging capacity. I compromise and use the Multimail conduit with Multimail and my IMAP account; it's just about as good. If I needed wireless, I'd use OmniSky; in fact I can, as I have a friend who doesn't use his OmniSky modem. But in this case, I don't want to give up having my programs in Flash using FlashPro, which doesn't work well with OmniSky.

I guess it's just that for me, wireless access is an impulse kind of thing most of the time -- meaning that I don't need to know information immediately most of the time, I can wait until I HotSync or until I get to a computer that's on the net. For those times in which I need to know something now, I just pick up my cellphone and call someone. When I _need_ to have wireless service (which I don't project any time soon) I'll probably get OmniSky or hope that 3G stuff is out. In the interim, I'm pretty happy with syncing up...

Matthew

I think the VII/VIIx line succeeds in being the most usable wireless amoung all the selections available. I use my VIIx constantly; email access, chatting online, and web clipping are all very useful. When I shop, I take it with me and pull up price comparisons from Amazon and buy.com to see if something's a good deal. When I'm on the road, I can send off quick emails, something especially nice with the Palm Portable Keyboard.

Its biggest fault is the lack of push to the device, but its not too bad with clever software design. For example, in VChat, the VII-based chat room program my team distributed at PalmSource, we enabled a Star Trek communicator mode, where just flipping up the antenna had it go and check for new messages, enabling a very natural usage style.

Custom applications are what will make the VII's shine. Web clipping is nice, but getting the units hooked up into the enterprise is where Palm can win. With the critical mass of wireless programmers focusing on the Palm finally getting established, I think the VII's have a bright future

Especially if they can update them to color and add the SD slot with a new casing, :)

Now that palm made the terrible mistake of anouncing a NEW generation of palms, why would anyone buy a VII, if it's gonna be a piece of obsolete technology as late as may?

Palm's main strong suit over the pigs at microsoft was that microsoft products become old every six months or so, while products like the palm V, or the non color III series palms have been around for years, and they're still in the "main" palm lineup. Quoth the raven, nevermore! Now the new IIIc and VII/x will become OLD stuff by the time of may 20 or so.

So if palms are gona age as fast and ungracefully as microsoft products, why to buy a palm? People in general think "why to buy a palm now? Let's either wait until may and buy a new next gen palm that will be old in maybe 8 months, or buy a pocket pc that will give me mp3 player, pocket internet explorer and word, and that even if it will be old in 8 months, will be a good gameboy/mp3 player/palm substitute easily".

Either way, its the IIIc's and VII'S loss.

So its a no brainer, when palm recently gave up on their "products that won't become old in 8 months" philosophy, they competed peer to peer against microsoft's 200+ mhz product line (I want to see the new 40 mhz generation of palms compete to that)

If palm had holded on their new generation at least 2 years, people would have actually thought on buyin palm's current generation, but who will buy somethign to learn in may thta it's been discotinued/terminated/laughable?

Folks,

FYI, we (Palm) are talking with the Giga folks to get a correction. There are actually well over 150,000 palm.net subscribers from Palm VII and VIIx handhelds (actually, closer to 200k by this point in time).

You can form your own conclusions about the success of the product, but given the relatively high price of the VIIx compared to our other products, I think that's not bad at all.

We'd love to see broader network coverage, but that's a function of the Mobitex network, and the coverage is not bad in urban areas. You wouldn't want to use most of today's cell phone networks for the Palm VII as you have to dial to make a connection. The cool thing about Mobitex is that you connect almost instantly.

Mike

It's nice to see some real VII/VIIx users out there who appreciate their devices as much as I do. It seems like most of the dissin' that I see comes from people who don't even own wireless devices, and frankly don't get it. I know the points have already been made, but I have to say it anyway.

1. It's the only one-piece, out of the box solution other than Blackberry. The Blackberry is a nice device with a bright future, but I can do much more with my VIIx.

2. The Palm.net/Mobitex coverage is better than Omnisky. Incidentally, the regular Blackberry uses the Mobitex network, too. You can get Blackberry models that use the Motient network, but it's more expensive and burns batteries like kindling.

3. You CAN surf the web with DPWeb, KBrowser (WAP), and now with MyPalm's beta software. I do it all the time.

4. Aileron is a terrific full-function mail client that supports attachments. And, if you're a cheap bastard (not that there's anything wrong with that), you can get your wireless email with ThinAir and iPopper for free.

5. PQAs are the best way to get targeted content in a limited bandwidth environment. Even many Omnisky users have tweaked their configurations so that they can use PQAs.

6. Comparing the sales figures of the $400 wireless VIIx to the $150, entry level, small screen m100 and calling it a failure is like calling the Mustang GT a failure because Ford sells more Escorts.

All I want is more memory and color. If I can get that, I'll even keep the same form factor.

I was on the ground floor of the Palm VII debut and apparently one of the first of the 150,000 purported owners.

I like the VII for its wireless functionality and I'm not overly put off by the web-clipping type of interface as opposed to true surfing. I say this because I also have a Go America account with a Merlin Card which I use in my laptop. When comparing the two, I find that a form over substance analogy prevails here: in other words, it's nice the Merlin has the ability to not only surf but also display full web pages in their normal format, but the drawback is that it's a slow and arduous process. On the other hand, the VII tends to pull in only the information needed and ostensibly transmits the same. Of course, depending on location, the VII can be painfully slow for those of us who are spoiled, but all in all I feel it was a good technology for the day.

I would definitely like to see the VII incorporate CDPD tecnology and move away from the Bell South Proprietary network. This, perhaps would greatly enhance not only functionality but also coverage. It would also be nice to see the VII incorporate the SanDisk SD cards for added memory. Let's face it; Sandisk can put 340MB on a postage stamp yet the VII ships with 2MB. You do the math and the measurements. Overall, I'll give the VII a thumb's up...