Palm Treo Pro (aka Treo 850) Uncovered

1. evaluating a company/stock performance by picking selective past time periods in an attempt to validate your conclusions is called data mining and it really shows your bias and you lose all credibility when you do so.

2. no, palm stock has not almost doubled in the last 55 days.

try to be honest, objective, and critical for once.

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=palm

i have no bias. i just bought a centro.

7-2-08 = $5.18 (60 day low from today)
8-14-08 = $7.93

hardly even close to a double, despite selective data mining.

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=palm

My point is not about stock fishing but that investors see Palm turning around too. And during a time when many other stocks have been struggling. Palm stock is growing during a down cycle in the market overall.

Long standing Palm stockholders are certainly in a world of hurt still. However, people who saw Palm stock as a good risk buy following the transitions last year are happy with 60% or higher profits.

Your #s keep changing with every post. Yes, in a perfectly defined gap of time a tanking stock actually has rebounded. They always do whether recovering or spiraling to zero.
Unfortunately for stockholders, perfectly defined gaps of time only work in the past. The only two difficult things about stock investing is when to buy and when to sell. They don't let you trade based on last months charts, but only on the fly.
I'm happy for anyone who has gotten a bounce recently including you. I hope it's a trend even greater than your projections. I hope against hope that Palm turns things around. That being said Gekko is absolutely positively correct in his definitions and comments. IMHO, you should just chalk it up as a learning experience and enjoy going forward.
People who have been investing as long as you have been living know better than to give a seconds attention to this kind of thing.

Pat Horne

High points:

1. Best looking Palm device EVER (well, since the IBM Workpad c500 which was just an m500 in black)

2. If the 3.5mm stereo headphone jack spec is NOT a typo and it's really NOT a conventional 2.5mm jack designed to keep the legacy wired headset crowd happy, then that's a HUGE IMPROVEMENT! If it's REALLY there then MAD PROPS & thunbs-up to the Podfather for ramming that one past Palm's beancounters!

3. I'm stunned to see the reset button back. I wonder if the carriers complained about it (ie some customers didn't like having to take their battery out to reset their device)?

4. IR is kind of surprising but a welcome inclusion. I guess Palm wants to keep their realtor customer base happy!

5. 400mhz CPU is nice. Not going to set the market on fire but it should be enough for a slim 320x320 device. It's 67mhz of a bump up from the 800w's CPU (plus the usual software optimizations from being a new WM build) that it should drastically lessen the performance hiccups that Adama & Ryan commented on.

Potential Problems:

1. The downward-pointing stylus worries me tremendously. I can just see this thing coming loose over time ( a problem on the older 6xx/7xx series Treos) and sliding out if one doesn't wrap a piece of masking tape around the stylus barrel. I'd rather see the stylus in its conventional spot up top and the wi-fi button/power button/IR port moved to the bottom if necessary.

2. I'm worried about battery life. I a guessing the standard 1150mAh Centro/800w battery makes a triumphant return here. This thing really needs no less than 1500/1600mAh, especially with the faster CPU and wi-fi. GSM vs. CDMA isn't gonna help that much.

3. That d-pad looks atrocious. It looks mildly uncomfortable for basic navigation and nigh unusable for any kind of gaming. Once Apple starts getting "real" game developers onboard, I wouldn't be surprised to see phone/smartphone manufacturers paying attention to their devices' gaming capabilities to try and remain competitive.

4. I'm worried we're gonna have a real "slick" device here (ie hard to hold securely). Where's the soft-touch rubberized paint!?!

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

Excuse me, I think I've got something in my eye. Sniff. (runs off)

and it has an on/off button too. wow.

Colligan: Sure. Can haz!

Rubinstein: WTF? NO can haz!!!

Well, I wouldn't be quite so harsh as Gekko but for the most part I do agree. A year ago, this would've set the industry on its ear (heck, even the 800w would've been phenomenal HAD it been when it SHOULD have (supposed to?) been released in summer '07).

6 months ago, this "Pro" would've been a very strong entry (even with WM 6.0). But now it's just a slightly better-than-average WinMob handset. For a TREO, it's superb. Definiitely the best looking & best spec'd Treo ever. But what is a strong entry relative to Palm's other feeble offerings still doesn't offer enough to stand out from the pack of WM clones and RIM's increasingly strong designs.

Now, Palm, bring this thing out with a "smile" keyboard, some kind of POS (either a highly tweaked/optimized Garnet or NOva) & in CDMA flavor and you'll have perfected the SSS (small square screen) QWERTY candybar phone. Then please proceed with all possible haste to large-screened phones!

P.S. This is defintely the first smidgen of the Rubinstein influence. Who wants to be that Palm had a mediocre 800w-style GSM successor in the works for the 750 and Rubinstein said "make it music-friendly), thinner, more stylish, and juice up the CPU"

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

2. See above

Don't forget a 3rd potential category:

3. The usual batch of Palm OS converts may want to jump ship to this one from ,say, a Treo 650/680/Centro if they simply love Palm "stuff" and the formfactor.

Remember, Palm doesn't care if you stick with FrankenGarnet or Nova or WinMob. They just want you to buy Palm as in "Palm Inc.", not "Palm OS".

Basically, if this Pro/850 is attractively priced (ie undercuts iPhone & BB Bold in every market) then I can see it picking up some Centro users.

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

Meanwhile, guess who, after blasting the Foleo, is considering the Dead, um, Redfly:
http://www.jeffkirvin.net/2008/08/10/leaning-to-the-redfly/

And if you can make sense of this, I think you need brain surgery:
http://www.jeffkirvin.net/2008/08/14/redfly-foleo/

Why? You must be real bitter and have alot of time on your hands.

In a better way than it already aims to be.