Palm.com Gets Overhauled

For all intents & purposes, the 800w is a dead smartphone walking, so it's as good as gone after the CDMA Treo Pro breaks cover.

Palm's "active" lineup for the first half of '09 will basically be: Centro 64mb GSM & CDMA, Centro 128mb CDMA, Treo Pro GSM & CDMA. And that's all they will continue to have until whatever is announced Thursday hits the market in May/June/July/August (take yer pick!)

On a related, I LOVE the new site facelift. Great sense of design and style given the rather bland topic of candybar smartphones. I really like the direction Palm is going aesthetically starting with the Treo Pro. Let's hope they can keep it up and translate it to Nova and new product(s)!

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

I bet it's gonna be a hip, slimmed down Martin Luther King into February, then on to a hip, slimmed down Leprechaun, then a hip, slimmed down Easter Bunny, on through the year. As long as it's young, hip and slim - Palm is gonna be there!

Office Depot, Office Max, and Circuit City ceased offering Palm handhelds in 2006ish. CompUSA is just a shell of its former self so I cannot comment on them.

That leaves Best Buy (now apparently in the process of removing the PDAs on a store-by-store basis) and some Staples locations as the remaining purveyors of Palm handhelds.

And yes, the Z22 & E2 are sold in hanging, blister-packed retail-oriented packages. The TX is still being offered in Palm's traditional square cardboard "cake box" packaging.

My theory is that the PDAs have been out of production for some months now but there is still sufficent inventory in the channel to carry Palm through the next quarter or two. Expect another palm.com "Free Z22 w/ purchase of TX" type blowout pricing and/or a myseriously large quanitty of like-new refurbs appearing on Overstock.com in the coming months...

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->?

Colligan, the spotlight is ALL ON YOU, now.

Cue the gold threaded Carl Yankowski suit!

MikeCane, have you seen the new AMD-powered HP 12" "not a netbook" ultraportable? That one has a high likelihood of being my EEE replacement! They can keep their silly external Blu-Ray drive though!

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/06/hps-12-1-inch-pavilion-dv2-dont-call-it-a-netbook/

If only it was offered with these specs & price in convertible tablet form...sigh.

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->?

There will be no Jeff, no Donna, no Rob Haitani, and probably just token appearances from Ed. This is Palm in pure survival/circle the wagons mode, plain & simple.

I do, however, have a sneaking suspicion that these hipsters will be on hand handing out autographed Centro brochures and posing for pictures. They should provide more than enough star power for the event:

http://blog.palm.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/01/img_00181.jpg

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->?

Even if Hawkins were involved, I doubt he shows. His last gig did not up his star power too much.

http://tinyurl.com/7cgexv

Pat Horne

Don't any of you get the frikkin Numenta emails? Hawkins & Dubinsky have their own gig over there now.

That new hp 12" = FAIL. 12" is too big for a netbook. It's not the first 12" they've had - and I've seen that older one.

Ed Colligan is the Point Man. He'll be the main cheerleader. Maybe someone from OS development and some others from specific app developments will demo. But this will be ALL ED COLLIGAN.

"Breakthrough level of innovation" - if it's not THAT, Colligan, the audience will drag you out of the hall and beat up your ass. Either way, I wish *I* was there to see.

Hey, Ryan! Are YOU going? I don't want to have to look at those snarks at Engadget!

Ryan and I will both be there to cover as much as humanly possible. If there's ANY hands-on time to be had with ANYTHING, it'd better expect a fondling thorough enough to make Palm's event look like a bordello filled with geeks.

And 12" is FINE for a not-a-netbook ultraportable. From the initial stills & specs, that HP is the screen size, formfactor & price I'been begging for since the original Toshiba Libretto AGES ago!

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->?

1. But they claim Nova was already well in progress deep in the Palm skunkworks long before Rubinstein's arrival

2. And isn't Rubinstein a "hardware" kinda guy? So far all that we've heard from accurate sources about his Palm involvement are 11th hour tweaks to the Centro in '07 (from the NY Times piece done shortly after the Centro's debut IIRC) and the Treo Pro. And one of the recent articles-SF Gate??-said that Nova will bear "some" stamp of Rubinstein's influence but is not his "baby" per se from what I gather.

3. They don't NEED anyone to really show. Palm has never really had the obsessive cultist thing going on ala Apple or John Romero & John Carmack or John Mayer + RIM etc. A small handful of PR drones showcasing some tantilizing hardware & hands-on time with Nova is all they need to generate a huge buzz!

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->?

I will say this about the gas guzzling chevy coupe pulling into CES - it better have teeth. Apple and Google have lured away developers and buyers alike - and let's face it - "PalmOS developers" have long since left for greener pastures. With carriers consolidating on fewer platforms, the sad reality is that it may already be too late. Nova will be starting from a zero sum position - square one. Classic PalmOS apps are obsolete and the fact that Nova will run then will in no way entice. We need NEW APPS. Since developers follow consumers, not the other way around, Palm will face an uphill battle getting its platform off the ground. If their first (and only) handset goes carrier exclusive with a CDMA network Nova will be stillborn, tied to an already shrinking market and limiting its customer base (at least you can UNLOCK a GSM smartphone).

We'll see what happens. The nostalgic side of me wishes the very company that first kindled my love for mobile technology will once again blaze trails and take a leadership position, but then again, having followed this company for the past decade that seems highly unlikely.

Oh well. See you at the craps table. Drinks are on me.

----
Web Designer,
Tech writer for weblogs inc. @ http://www.tuaw.com

>>>Why in the world would anyone be interested in Numenta emails?

And thus your limited appreciation of intelligence is again revealed.

Next!

Jeff Hawkins is no longer on Palm's management page.

[his last SEC filing (for his "Insider stock sales" was made July 1st and noted that he was a "former exec" so it's about time Palm updated their management page to show he wasn't there, huh?]

> ...and has the brains to create *another* one....

Ahem...you need to study Computer Science a little more.

May I suggest something out of ... say ... the 1970's?

> ...Let's just kick that whole Foleo thing under the rug...

What is the device in front of the CFO?

I am comparing what Hawkins is "doing" with circa 1970s stuff.