Mystery Investor Loans Palm $50 Million

> In sight of the latest pocket pc additions [...]

Huggy, those $500-$700 devices aren't even in the market of consideration.

Treo has not yet support always-on e-mail and by the time it is avaiable, you have to pay extra fees each month. That's life.

On Handspring.com, the Treo never states that it has always-on e-mail. Why do you think it can?

Don't complicate simple things. Treo is just a PDA plus a phone and use the current mobile network.

"If this new wireless handheld comes out, I don't see it working out in any market at all. Treo will grab all market shares from it as it has all the features it has, plus voice and it seems to be about the same size and a keyboard. Really don't see this thing doing well at all, shame. Quite a shame."

There's always a Market for Wireless always on email/web browsing device like 7xx series. Most people already has a Cell phone plan that they love for maybe 30 dollars a month, so why should they change plans just for a phone. Also with 7xx series (palm.net) you'll have always on net access/email/ICQ/Yahoo messenger, isn't that just fun. You can't do that with Treo, well you can but that would be about 10-20 times more expensive. And it'll be a matter of time before peaple putting voice messages funtion into Palm version of ICQ/Yahoo Messenger.

btw: That keyboard thingy you talking about, you can only choose between keyboard or Graffiti, so that might be very good or very bad for some people. Shame, Quite a shame.

I think many of us have misintrepret the meaning of auto-notifying of email and auto-syncing.

Always-on email means that you do not need to do anything, so that when an e-mail arrives, it will notify you. Just like dialing to a phone, and it rings.

But the Treo has never talked about the auto notification any of you have mentioned. It may be possible, but from any articles you guys refer to have not stated this function. Rather, it only says it can to an auto-sychronize with your corporation's Exchange server if you have installed Visto's solution.

That's it. Nothing more. Due to the fact that the GSM network Treo used to connect to the Internet is not built for it, it is assumed that Treo can do only things that a PDA with a cell-phone can do. If a PDA and a cell-phone cannot have always-on e-mail, so does Treo. It's just that simple.

Pushed or not, it is still automatic regardless on how you look at it.

GPRS will enable automatic email (according to your definition). I have a GPRS-enabled GSM phone (Ericsson T68) and it receives my email automatically.

Ill wait for the colored version. Monochrome simply wont make the internet fun.. even if its wireless. :)

peace

COINCIDENCE? The timing, the players, and the method lead me to think otherwise.

The AOL to invest in Gateway
By Reuters
December 7, 2001, 5:20 p.m. PT
The new agreement will see America Online, the nation's leading Internet service provider, invest the $200 million in Gateway Series A convertible preferred stock.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-8105813.html?tag=lh

IBM is a good guess, but I think it comes from a
pool of Palm devices manufacturers. Besides the
competition, they are tied to the success of Palm,
if Palm goes bad obviously they go bad also, and if
Palm dies, all their investment (specially from Sony)
will be lost...

The PalmOS is very bind to Palm,Inc. It is too much
for a small company to fight in two different
battle fields, hardware and software. I would like
to see Palm taking care of the PalmOS uniquely,
leaving the devices to Sony, Handspring and others.

> Palm will burn through this money like a bunch of drunken sailors.

The quote of the year. Unfortunately, everything you said is true.

Actually the new ceo, benhamou, is doing a good job. muich better than carl! He has already had the company have better stats in their recent Quarter and Beos is already close to being intergrated into os 5. He is doing wonders compared to carl ofwhich sat down and watch palms stock sink below the dollar point! Just think about it. They are doing better than they were months ago!
PDANature - http://pdan.has.it - Great hourly refreshed pda news, discussions, chat, reviews, commentarys, software, software update notices, features, and what not! Simply the best. http://pdan.has.it

And yet, Palm OS based products continue to outsell PPC. Why is that I wonder?

Anyway, we will find out who this investor is when the quarter ends. They have to report to the SEC where the funds came from. You know, federal law.

PPC fails primarily because of one thing - price.

Look at Mircrosoft's past victories, we can find a trend that:

1) Word is cheaper than wordperfect because of bundling with Excel in Microsoft Office

2) I.E. is the same price as Netscape

3) Win NT is cheaper than Novell on licensing

4) PCs are cheaper than Macintosh

From the data bove, Microsoft won because their products are cheaper. They may not be better, but they are definitely cheaper.

So now do you know why PPC flops?

From: [RE: The problem for Palm is that MSFT spent $50M on toilet paper
[Posted by: I.M. Anonymous @ 12/9/2001 8:47:23 AM

"When Palm and the rest of the licensees move to OS 5 and ARM with more features like a PocketPC, the prices for the new PDAs will increase quite substantially. I don't see a future OS 5/ARM PDA from Palm costing less than $500, which puts it into the PocketPC range."

From: [Another important goal/market.
[Posted by: Alan @ 12/9/2001 6:53:58 AM
"Why is this so important?, well the GBA uses an ARM processor just like all new PDAs
including PalmOs5 but unlike the PDAs, the GBA runs at only 16Mhz!. The PocketPC so far has
206Mhz, with talk of 450Mhz etc..."

It's not the numbers. The only place anybody cares about numbers is on boards like this one.
It's the UI. Palm's interface is tons faster than the PPC's.

You'll notice that, untill VERY recently, Microsoft diden't /MAKE/ computers. They like to point at the hardware and go 'It's slow! That's why your user experience sucks. Yeah! It's not OUR fault! Honest!'
Palm diden't cheap out that way - They bit the bullet, and wrote an OS that fit good, cheap (Pager! The DragonBall was originally made for chineese pagers, dontchaknow) hardware. The idea is so totally alien to Microsoft that they're STILL getting slapped in the face with it.

It's entirely possible to make an ARM platform in the same spirit as the DragonBall platform. Hell, I'm sure that the unit pricing on that 16mhz ARM is cheap as it gets. And you know what, with a little work, the UI would be light years faster than WinCE.

Whether Palm is willing to be bright about the ARM transition, or if they're going to chase Microsoft's Swamp Gas operating system off into the bog of system performance remains to be seen, of course.

From a recent conversation:
"...Yeah, I've had my Journada for about a year now."
"What do you do with it?"
"Scheduling. Read E-books. Phone book. Some games."
"No MP3's?"
"I had a few on there. Had to delete 'em to make room. Only time I'd listen is in the car - and it's easier to burn the music to CD's."
"Movies?"
"It took an hour to get a movie clip onto the machine, and five minutes to watch it. No point, really."

The guy seemed pretty happy with his machine. But not 3x happier than a grayscale palm owner.

A few things:

I think Palm could come out with an ARM-based PDA for at least $100 less than a comparable Pocket PC device. They have much better manufacturing know-how than the US PPC manufacturers, and their ARM-based OS should be much more lightweight than Windows CE.

Also, they've said they will support all variety of ARM CPUs -- why not have a 66MHz ARM7 CPU device to replace the m125 on the low-end of the market? It wouldn't cost more than the current Dragonball devices (it may even be less!)... Nintendo has already shown that they can get cheap ARM-based devices out there with the GameBoy Advance, and Sony used ARM7 CPUs on their PocketStation game cards that were sold for $40 in Japan.

I belive that the Current DragonBall VZ processor that the Palm, Handspring, and Sony are using, can handle a Max 16MB of RAM. Handspring has defintly been leading by makeing the 1st move from 4 to 8 and now from 8 to 16 so i think palm and sony will just follow, like they always do.

Palm m505 user

I'm sick and tired of people here saying "Business users don't want or need color." This is BS! If this was true, companies would all still be using Black & White PC/Notebook Screens!!! I am a business user with 1,600+ contacts and I want COLOR! So the self-described "Geeks" should stop proclaiming what we business users want and what we don't. My prediction is that within 3 years, your chances of finding a B&W PDA will be about as easy as finding a B&W Television set or Computer monitor/Notebook! COLOR IS KING AND BLACK & WHITE IS DEAD!

I wonder what kind of technical reasons might make a color i705 difficult. To me you plug in a different screen and/or controller and go. All i can think of are battery life and external form factor issues. but handspring's already announced a color treo, so if they can do it...

Regarding the difficulty of making a color i705...

Sticking a color screen onto an i705 isn't difficult. Giving it acceptable battery life is. Remember, with the i705 we're dealing with wireless. Wireless sucks a lot of battery life.

Scott

I don't know how to respond to this (or why I am at all).

I am a business user, so I think I can speak for business users. I don't even understand the point you're making? First you talk about business users, then you state that "most consumers want color". When did I ever state anything different from that? Of course, everyone wants color. The question is, are most business users willing to pay extra for color and lose battery life to boot? Palm OS devices continue to outsell PPC devices by a huge margin. I think that answers that.

Scott

No, it couldn't be Sony. Sony's mode of operation is not to take over an entire market, but rather to milk a market of what it needs and keep looking for the next big thing. Sony would benefit if a Palm 5.0 OS were shipping in the very near future, but this loan doesn't address that. Sony is hurt by a competing hardware standard in the abscence of software around which it can out-innovate its competition. Look for Sony to release a T-615, similar to the Japanese T-600 early next year in Europe and the Americas. If Palm OS 5.0 is in Alpha stages by that point, Sony will stay with Palm. If not, look for Sony to turn *quickly* to Pocket PC, with a product introduction by Q3. With Sony's handheld infrastructure already in place, that money would be enough to make this happen.

Sony is just about the only company around that can spin on a dime like that and it does so again and again. It will happily stay with Palm only so long as Palm gives it something to work with. Sony has no need to invest that kind of money into a third-party OS.

You'll never know...