PalmSource and Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Deal

You could use 802.11a for that if you REALLY wanted wireless, but you'd need trancievers in all of the components -> $$$

First you are right. €200 extra for BT card is steep. But for me the biggest problem with the NX series BT policy is that when in use you have very little memory capablility left. eg: taking a high rez. picture and sending it via your BT enabled phone?? If you are a power user then your builtin 16Mb will be close to choking and the memory stick slot ocupied with BT card That picture will never get taken let alone sent. If on the other hand sony opens up their new CF card slot to memory or make a new wi-fi/BT card for it then the NX series becomes interesting. If not I think that the palm TT has the versatility edge if not all the gadgets built in.

-->palmpilot > palmpilot 1000 > palmIII > palmV > palmVx > palm 505 > ???

ciao,

felix b.

As for using BT in home entertainment, TVCompass in the UK are due to launch a digital TV set top box for around £30 that includes a BT remote control and colour TFT screen -- the control communicates with the box via BT to show adverts, programme listings, quizes, etc. All sounds quite cool. Find out more here: http://www.tvcompass.com/Corporate/home.asp?content=wireless&parent=wireless

FBN

Bluetooth Online
http://www.4cellular.com/search/item_browse.cfm?table=phones&hasbluetooth=true (US)
http://www.ustronics.com/bimborsrchtt3.html (US)

"There are 2 kind of people my friend....those with wires and those without"

Sure the options exist on the top dollar models, otherwise you can enjoy a stack of cards, dongles, antenae, hello kitty's etc hanging out the side of the computer.

Cheers

Matt

Already people are dialing a number on a BT enabled phone from a BT enabled Clie, then automatically talking via a BT enabled headset. It's all possible but you just have to be willing to spend on the Clie, spend on the BT MemStick, spend on the phone and spend on the headset. That little outfit could cost you $1500!

I think that is the rub with no BT support with the new Clie. I think I'd use the CF slot so nothing against that, its just paying $200 for BT connectivity when a USB dongle only costs $30.

Cheers

Matt

Robman:
I can do everything (though I don't actually bother with making a button initiate a Hotsync, that would be trivial, because battery life is finite and when I'm not using it's charging, so I use the button on the cradle - incidentally, isn't that Speaker on the new Clie cradle a great idea? ) as described (really), apart from:

- When incoming calls make my phone ring, use caller id data to automatically search my Palm for matching records and display name

Great idea on integrated devices (like the Treo or XDA) - and already works on them - but not a great idea on two physically separate devices.

This is because to do this would require the unit to be on*all the time, which would give you a ~two hour battery life. There are no solutions to this on the horizon.

Additionaly I suggest it makes much more sense, from the perspective of optimal usability, to look at the phone when deciding who's calling. After all if a user does want to take the call, they will have to go get the phone anyway (and it will be the phone they go for, as it is the 'object' the user is trying to interact with - it will be the one ringing and vibrating for their attention and will be the device that they use if they decided to take the call).

To add to that, personally, I also think I'd be irritated by this feature and want to turn it off, as even if it only occurred if I was already using my Palm, it would kick me out of the application I'm using to display this message, which might cause serious problems if I was doing something imporant, like entering a web based form, or jotting down a really important number.

I think this is a 'cool idea' but not in reality a desirable feature that would be useful and that phones already do this amicably.

- Both my phone and my Palm should "become concerned" and give warning messages if they are out of Bluetooth range with one another.

This doesn't happen at the moment, but this would not be too hard to write (for an example as a toolbar app on a Sony NR70V's virtual toolbar at the bottom of the screen) and could be done in the same fashion as the 'Airport' indicator in Apple's Toolbar....but it begs the question....why?

Bluetooth is for short range networking. You don't need an indicator to tell you if your with in ~20 feet of your phone (or a base station). That is appropriate for 802.11, and although it's absolutely possible with Bluetooth, it's not really relevant on a PDA so no one has bothered. This is also why phones do not have this feature.

As for how hard it was. Well it varies, as I've mentioned below (altenative thread) it's very easy with a Clie due the bundled software, but Palm bundle some more practical applications (like the modified address book where you can just click numbers to dial).

As an unqualified oik, if I can do it, Bubba, the 300 pound trailer trash gorilla can do it to - but I think it's more likely, like a lot of people, he will just look at the two, go 'Uugg, complicated! Me no try! You do it!' and smash them into the floor before turning either of them :-). Which sadly, is what a lot of people will do, even if you make it _really_ easy.

Case in point, I'm passing someone's desk, I never seem them before, they don't know me, they say 'So how I send and receive email?'. I lean over and click the big button on the already open mail window that has a big picture of a mail item and the words "Send And Receive" on it. True.

*I* found it easy and very little setup, but I can't account for lazy people.

Off Topic:

I think the whole complex but clearly necessary (for security/abuse reasons) concept of Bluetooth pairing is going to confuse people for a long time to come, though it's easily explained. People will learn about this when they have to - that is when it becomes a feature of their television remote, MP3 player, phone and PDA and they have no choice, and then it will a skill we all learn, like how use a coffee machine, remembering to always dial 9 from an internal office phone system, and to press the Big Green Button whenever a printer says 'PC Load Letter')).

Having had a m500 with Bluetooth SD Card and a Clie NR70V with Bluetooth MS here are some relevant observations:

Palm:

The Palm offering comes with some really good SMS and Addressbook software that works brilliantly with a BlueTooth Phone, it's great.

I can use a headset and dial the number with the Palm, without having to touch the phone at all. It also comes with a very nice, but stupidly large (1 MB!) Wap browser, not that I ever really used it (too large :-)

Setting up the BlueTooth software required be to find instructions from the web on how to reconfigure my Ericsson T39m was a pest, due to the lack of knowledge of Vodaphone about using the two together at the time, I had to reconfigure the network accounts built in to the phone before I could get them to work together. It was pretty fiddly.

Vodaphone UK tried their best and returned all my calls after they had done a bit of researching but didn't know how to make it work! Thanks to Google I eventually found a PDF detailing how connect the two that was aimed at Vodaphone New Zealand users, and I just adapted it accordingly for the UK (fortunately for me Vodaphone have followed the same implementation in both countries).

I know my parents wouldn't have been able to get this running, though I imagine almost all PIC readers would have been all right :-) Bearing in mind I got mine the week it came out (and before it was even available in the US) I didn't mind the grief over the setup (it's mostly Vodaphone's fault anyway, because of the silly way they pre-setup the GPRS accounts to work for WAP only, like anyone would get a GRPS connection just for WAP :).

Sony:

The Sony offering was a very different experience. It doesn't come with address book integration or SMS software! That's really dumb!

The only real piece of Bluetooth - using software it comes with was a high-res copy of Reversi which works over BlueTooth, but you can *only* play it over Bluetooth, not against the computer, so I ditched it fairly quickly! :)

Ooops, that's a lie it did come with Clie Mail too, which is okay, but *not High Res* (never mind High Res +!)! Duh, Sony? *bangs head against table* It should be High Res +! :) Clie Mail works fine, but Eudora mail is a little more sophisticated, and will probably stick with that.

PS: Iambic's have a mail client that supports Hi Res+, but it's horribly buggy (keeps dropping out of Hi Res+ mode).

The one (and, apart from the Blue LED :) only really good thing about Sony's offering was the superb CoMa software, which allows you to setup your phone and PDA, even if your a complete muppet. Now the first thing I did when I got my card installed was set the connection up manually (I knew the details off by heart, as I had already reconfigured my phone a while back, it was easy), so I didn't use the software at first, but I since have, just for fun, and I was really impressed.

You just run it, it asks you what network you are on (e.g. Vodaphone, Orange, etc, it was customized for the UK) and then it asks you to set your phone to pairing mode and *wham* it works! It set's up pairing, the connection and the Internet account details automatically for your chosen network provider (and set it's to the default dial out account)! It configures the connection at the appropriate speed and even configures it to work around the default 'broken' Vodaphone GRPS setup (by sending extra parameters in the connection string)! It takes about 10-15 seconds to setup the connection this way.

Bearing in mind the problems I had at first, this was superb. A 5 year old child could set up any Bluetooth phone with any Clie using this software. The reason why I think this is a PR exercise it because with the Sony Clie Bluetooth offering it's already as good as it gets!

Hope that comparison is interesting for some one!

Bell Canada pulled the same sort of crap when i got my kyocera 6035 - what the $#@% are these idiots thinking??? Finally an OS that can handle true TCP/IP protocol and they set it up to do.... crappy WAP stuff that was already a joke on cheapo cell-phones. Yeah Bell, thats why i got a Palm OS smart-phone - to run WAP (and only WAP until you kill their confiuration and set it up to use a standard dial-up ISP). Anyways - with a nice, fast, 1x networked Kyocera 7135 - i fully expect these morons to sink their own ship by dissapointing newbies (who dont know any better about what these devices can really do) with a similiar lame approach. Are the telcos trying to cut themselves out of profits, or are they just stupid? my experience with Bell tells me its the latter. All telcos - at least in north america - seem to be scrambling to come to terms with the new century we are living in. The software is there, the hardware is now here, the potential is there - but these idiots honestly don't know how to sell it.

The phone cannot 'wake' the PDA via the BlueTooth card (ala the 'Wake On Lan' on PC Network Cards) .

HTH!