PalmSource: The Future of the Palm Platform

Both CDMA and GPRS technologies work great with Bluetooth.

Qualcomm Bluetooth Solutions
http://www.cdmatech.com/solutions/bluetooth.html

Ericsson, Qualcomm let Bluetooth meet CDMA
http://www.idg.net/idgns/2000/02/02/EricssonQualcommLetBluetoothMeetCDMA.shtml

Ericsson makes GPRS and Bluetooth a reality
http://www.computingsa.co.za/2001/03/26/Topnews/top01.htm

Palm eyes Bluetooth, GPRS wireless connectivity
http://www.idg.net/idgns/2000/07/10/PalmEyesBluetoothGPRSWirelessConnectivit.shtml

Plextek combines CSR's BlueCore2 with GSM/GPRS card
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020211/110323_1.html

Am getting real tired of all those whining people who just whine about all sort of things like "why no grafitti?", "how about a keyboard", "i like treo", "treo? palm is a winner" blablablabla

What's the future?.......WIRELESS. Exactly.

Next Question. What do we know about WIRELESS?

Not much if i read the messages and boards. A lot of "X is much faster/better/secure etc." stuff. What are the Wireless Standards, what can you do with it and what are the different needs.

Tip: Read before you yell.

Since we are dealing with a touch screen on a Palm OS device, graffiti becomes second nature with a stylus. I have tried different keyboards ( including the one on Treo 180) and find them quite challenge, except with the Stowaway for large document editing. Besides, a keyboard still cannot replace the stylus to do selection and drag & drop on the screen.

Seen someone typing on the keyboard with the stylus in his mouth ? Sounds familiar ? This is where graffiti (or Fitaly for that sake) stands out.

Francis Lo
Hong Kong

You do this all the time on your PC. Notice how you have to take your hand off the keyboard to use the mouse.

I've been trying for a very long time not to figure out how to not have to move my hand back and forth between the keyboard and the trackball.

If any of the other Palm licensees decide to go keyboard I am going to get worried.

"You do this all the time on your PC. Notice how you have to take your hand off the keyboard to use the mouse."

Right, but you have a nice huge desk to lay both on. try holding your mouse in your hand when you switch to the keyboard.

Granted, a stylus isn't nearly as cumbersome, but it's a point.

(albeit a rather drastic example of one...)

I'm also confused about the move towards little keyboards. Granted, I think it is better for e-mail, and it therefore makes sense on a blackberry, which is basically an e-mail only device (I don't know anyone who thinks the blackberry PIM functions are worth anything). Swapping back and forth between a stylus and a keyboard doesn't seem to make much sense for a handheld. And using just a keyboard strikes me as akin to using windows without a mouse. Is Handspring taking us back to the DOS days?

About Graffiti vs Keyboard version of Treo.

Usability aside, one have to note that with the keyboard version a lot of the hacks which activate by way of stylus stroke through different region of the silk screen will no longer work. Off my head this will include McPhling, Multiclip Hack, all of PopUp hacks by Benc, Pop and certainly many others.

The Keyboard version incorporates some "fn" key to allow switch to the original silk screen apps.

Also, users of Fitaly Stamp will be out of luck on the keyboard version because there will be no place for the overlay.

Using the Graffiti version in conjunction with Word Complete and hopefully Fitaly Stamp (still checking if the M100 series will work for Treo), will most likely provide the fastest input without external add-on.

Francis Lo
Hong Kong

I would like to see enhanced character recognition in the next generation of graffiti - more freedom, more accurate, and more intelligent. With ARM processor power, I guess it won't be too difficult to revive what we have seen on the Newton.

Francis Lo
Hong Kong

I agree with the pro-stylus people. There should always be a Palm device that uses stylus-only input. This is one of the great strengths of the Palm platform: it's Zen-like simplicity.

The problem is that the thumb keyboards are too slow, yet a full keyboard (e.g. Targus/Palm) is too large to always carry.

Until our Palms can read minds, the hardware manufacturers are against a wall.

I use my Visor constantly and own a Targus keyboard. I don't carry the keyboard around with me all the time, but it's indepensible for traveling. It makes typing in data a much easier job than the Visor's own keyboard. I use both the Visor's keyboard and the Targus depending upon the task. The thumboards' keys are too small to be useful to me when transferring a large amount of data away from my main computer.

I think the Sharp Zaurus has the best medium. http://developer.sharpsec.com/

If we could graffiti if we want, and also slide out a thumb keyboard, that's the best of both worlds.

Add a stowaway for long text entry and you have only 1 extra peripheral to carry since the thumbpad is built in (but hidden when you don't need it).

I still haven't really decided regarding thumb-boards, and graffiti. I carried a RIM for a while, and never really got into the keyboard on it, but it didn't have a touch screen anyway. I also like being able to use my Palm with one hand instead of needing two hands to get any "typing" speed.

The issue is that for exclusive keyboard usage (not having to use a stylus) you either have to have a lot of dedicated function keys, OR you end up with a lot of multi-key hotkeys to do things that are simple with the stylus. A normal Windows machine will do everything with the keyboard, yet for most things it's far easier to do it with the mouse. Some notable exceptions might be cut/paste (ctrl-c, ctrl-v), but I still use the mouse for the selection, and then the hot keys for the function.

Obviously switching between KB and stylus is not going to work. I know that I would constanly drop something. Possibly the addition of keyboard and "jog-dial" technology would solve some of these problems. That would allow for quick navigation and selection, with the added speed of a keyboard.

It's likely that we are going to have to go thru another generation of keyboard and stylus systems before someone really comes up with a smooth way to combine the functionality of both in a small package.

Mike
miknny@yahoo.com

Great discussion.

Ok, a couple of points. To the guy who commented about moving your hands off of the keyboard and onto a mouse when using a desktop computer, I have a couple of comments:
1) On my IBM Thinkpad this is a non-issue because of the pointing stick. I love the pointing stick concept.
2) As someone else alluded to, you "have more space". I'd modify this argument to say that your computer is sitting on the desk. When you're using a handheld, you have to juggle your stylus to change to using the thumb-board without dropping everything.

To the person who talked about the Blackberry: You have to remember that the Blackberry was designed from the ground up to be focused around a thumb-board and a scroll wheel with specialized buttons for certain tasks. With a thumb-board on a Palm, you're trying to graft this concept onto the Palm and it doesn't always work. As someone else pointed out, the Palm has a touch screen while the Blackberry doesn't. More to the point, you can navigate anywhere you need to with a Blackberry using the keys and scroll wheel, while on a Palm, I'd imagine, you'll often *need* to pull out the stylus.

Finally, I think it's interesting that Handspring is going towards the thumb-board while Palm is staying loyal to Graffiti. Palm is the one who stands to lose big time if the Xerox lawsuit doesn't go their way. Ironically, if the idea *was* stolen from Xerox (and I kind of think it was), Hawkins is the one who ought to foot the bill, or at least part of it.

Scott

I prefer using my palm with one hand because my other hand is usually busy with coffee, or child, or phone, or food, or wife...

I agree. It took less than a day to learn the graffiti strokes and now it is second nature. Hunting and pecking on one of those tiny keyboards is not for me.

Graffiti for me please. I researched before i bought my first palm (instead of a psion) and the thing that worried me the most was that you had to learn this 'slightly different kind of writing'. I went to the trouble of finding out all the characters to see how 'different' it was. I thought I would go for the palm and that i would master graffiti after a while. after using it for a very short time i decided that graffiti was the best feature of the device, so intuitive and easy to use. don't know a letter/symbol? slash the screen and they're all right in front of you. Graffiti went from almost putting me off a palm to being one of my very favourite things about palms.
Of course if the makers want to comprimise, all they need to do is make a handheld with a keyboard and soft graffiti. I know it's not quite the same as a silkscreen, but i think i could live with it...

"...something that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion "graffiti vs. keyboard" is the topic of international keyboard layouts: For example, in Germany we don't use the QWERTY layout, but a QWERTZ layout instead (not mentioning the "umlauts")- simply because "z" is far more often used in German than "y"."

I don't understand this. For touch-typing, I'd say that the "Y" is actually a bit harder to press than the "Z" on a standard QWERTY keyboard because you have to reach for the "Y" with your right index finger, whereas you only need to move your left pinky finger a shorter distance to reach the "Z". Your argument would make sense on a QWERTY vs QWERTZ "virtual" Palm keyboard, however, because here you wouldn't be touch-typing but, rather, moving a stylus and under the layout you mention the "Z" would now be moved closer to the center.

Scott