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Handhelds Hardware

PalmPilots like Sheep: Cloned 58

Posted by Hemos from the everywhere-everything dept.
Wah writes "Story on C|Net about 3Com licensing manufacturers to make Palm clones "Palm signed licensing deals with cell phone companies such as Qualcomm and pager companies, which used the OS in devices that were different in design than the Palm. ". Uber-devices forthcoming... " Hopefully this means they can continue to pound the tar out of WinCE.
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PalmPilots like Sheep: Cloned More

PalmPilots like Sheep: Cloned

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  • right! ;) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i'd like that 32" folding color display, at least 1gig, smp, fast ether as well the new wireless thoughtread(tm) interface... otherwise i'm going with the blimpomatic 2001!

    ;)

    get real - the pilot is a great platform and reasonably open. that is the secret of its success and that should not be messed with. once you load it up with all those features, all you have is a useless bloated bloody slow appliance that is controlled by some large empire.

    --

    stop - or i'll shoot this pilot!
  • The main things that distinguish the Pilot from WinCE are Graffiti and the Pilot's spartan interface.
    Those are precisely the two things I like most about the Pilot, and I'd like to see them on a zillion other devices, including phones for a start.

    And hey, it wooden hurt to build in Jini, either.

  • Qualcomm is not only the people whi make eudora, but they have a product line of digital PCS phones. Last I heard, they are making a digital phone palm pilot combo device.
  • I've been telling everyone for months that Palm was going to fail because of this very issue -- they were going to end up like Apple did in the PC market with 5% of all sales or somesuch, just because WinCE devices would be so prolific and so cheap.

    Teaming up with cell phone companies, on the other hand, is a stroke of genius. Wireless... Yum. They're going to leave WinCE crap in the dirt. I mean, compare the sales pitch: We let you schedule yourself, plus access your computer from anywhere vs. we have color!!!

    Except for that one gomer who posted a while ago saying that he wanted his palm to act like a mini-PC, and thus had to have color, I thing the choice is pretty clear...

    ----

  • and withdraw the licenses when it looks like things are picking up...
    Skip
    --------------------
  • Posted by resu_xinul:

    I agree with you... but real innovation would be porting flavors of Linux to it so it could communicate with my box!

  • huh? (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    Palmpilots like cloned sheep?

    But seriously, folks, I wouldn't want a handheld device, because... what would I do with it? Laptops are bad enough with their small keyboards and funky hardware. I'm not about to pay money for a gameboy that tries to be a computer.

    Hmm. But I might pay money for a gameboy. What games does the Palmpilot run? ;)

  • Funny... (Score:1)

    by tak* ( 1121 )
    Funny you mentioned Apple. Apple will be one of those licencees that clone the palm. Would be wierd (or poetic justice) is Palm pulled thier licence. But AFAIK, 3Com has no animosity toward Apple....now that they killed the newton.
    It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.

  • YES! (Score:1)

    by jonr ( 1130 )
    I hope to have a real choice when I upgrade my trusty Professonal. The Pilot is one of the best designs of the decade! (IMHO, of course)
    J.
  • I'd like 2 know what tools yr using...(win CE sdk)....one of the advantages of palm, development wise is the availability of free/high quality development tools (as well as a lot of commercial ones). I was reading in a visual bastard journal ( VBPJ, AUG,98,V8 #9)the other day about the inability of MS to create a VB dev environment for development....

    another advantage of palm developers is they are also advanced enough to programme in c and handle gcc, gdb etc...betcha MS is kinking themselves at the moment 'cause there's a lot of VB programmers out there in win32 land a heck of a lot more than there is VC++ :)


  • as soon as we have a terminal working.


    --
  • That's what it's looking like- and I hope the prices on these are reasonable and my carrier decides to offer them; it'd be a GREAT reason for me to upgrade my current phone... ;->
  • And how many MP3s are you going to be storing on your PDA?

    Keep in mind that it can't get any larger than the current Pilots/HPCs, nor can it cost more than $500.
  • I agree. The problem with the Windows interface is that it was *not* designed for a small screen, and pens. The PalmOS was. So is the Newton OS (which is bloody great, pity the machines were so bulky).
  • Palm-top computing is a strange thing. Most people just want to be able to do addresses and schedules, and have thse synced with their desktop. So therefore, colour would be superfluous, and a waste of battery life.

    On the other hand a good section of customers want colours, advanced features like mpeg audio playback (Use your palm as a walkman? heh) and photo capture (aka digital camera). I think the key is making the Palm OS as flexible as possible, so that when people propose building these pieces of hardware, they can be built and the code will be able to do it.

    -I- certainly would like to be able to walk into a meeting, take a photo of someone, write their address in beside their mugshot, send them an email of the notes I took down in the meeting, then walk out with my Palm Pilot in my pocket listening to NiN. I probably dont want to watch movies on it though. :)

    I cant wait to see how this technology evolves.
  • Along with the beeper and the cell-phone.. its fashion accessory of the late 90's.. early 00's I guess.. I mean when Glamour magazine is showing models using them .. and showing how they make "special purses" for them.. you know its "hip thing" or something

  • I think it's great that they are cloning the units. Any move towards putting technology in the hands of the masses, I support. I don't own a palm or a WinCE but do own a 50meg newton 2000. Your comment at the end, I am curious, states that you hope they crush Microsoft (well ce). I think the palm is using nasty technology for the price. Why have they not gone to something a bit more elegant. For the money they charge, you think they could invest in a GUI. I like the size and weight of the palm, but at least you can see the effort in terms of GUI. From the first palm pilot, I can see no great leeps of GUI, just networking milestones. (** ps, I'm having trouble submitting if this gets posted more than once **)
  • I think it's great that they are cloning the units. Any move towards putting technology in the hands of the masses, I support. I don't own a palm or a WinCE but do own a 50meg newton 2000. Your comment at the end, I am curious, states that you hope they crush Microsoft (well ce). I think the palm is using nasty technology for the price. Why have they not gone to something a bit more elegant. FOr the money they charge, you think they could invest in a descent GUI. I like the size and weight of the palm, but at least you can see the effort in terms of GUI. From the first palm pilot, I can see no great leeps of GUI, just networking milestones.
  • The palm is intended to be a supplement to your computer, not a whole new one.
  • >Why the hell would I want to play MP3s on a tiny
    >(and tinny) little PDA speaker?

    Headphone Jack...
  • Qualcomm signed on the better part of a year ago. The pdQ will probably ship in quantity around midyear. Symbol has been shipping a ruggedized Palm with a built-in barcode scanner for a few months. Handspring signed on as a licensee before they were even called Handspring.

    AFAIK, IBM is in more of an OEM deal as far as the actual devices go, but they too are a technology licensee, most notably having provided the de facto standard IrDA syncing software and contributing related code to the extended IR libraries (for dealing with IR pagers and phones, mostly), and some research stuff (bioelectric data transfer) that hasn't gone public yet.
  • There was an IBM PalmPilot that Palm manufactured for them and silk-screened an IBM logo onto, and supposedly a ruggedized Pilot for inventory that I never actually saw (was it ever released?).

    Now they're licensing the Palm OS out to companies who are going to build entirely new devices themselves. It could be a very good move, if it makes the Palm OS the de facto standard, and if it brings about a greater variety of Palm devices.

    Jon
  • I'm hoping this will lead to more diversity in the Palm OS platform. With the exception of the PDQ cellphone and the ruggedized Pilot for inventory, Palm has stuck pretty closely to their original design, making only gradual improvements along the way.

    This is smart of them. How many other PDAs have come even close to the Pilot line in sales? Other companies had been trying and trying, and failing and failing. Making radical changes in the PalmPilot would have risked alienating their original user base. What if they had gone over to color screens and noone wanted one with the short battery life color screens entail? They were wise not to risk everything on a roll of the dice, and there's probably a limit to the number of models they can put out themselves.

    Now, by licencing out the Pilot for other companies to build, they are FORCING companies to add new features. Forcing, because those other companies MUST differentiate their products from 3Com's in some way, or people will just buy the "real" Pilot. So hopefully you'll see the Pilot with flash memory card slot, the MP3Pilot with the headphone jack, the Color Pilot, the Big Screen Pilot, the cheapass Pilot, the wrought-iron GothPilot, a range of colors, etc.

    And if the experiments fail, 3COM will still be selling their original successful model (as well as picking the most successful of the new features, no doubt).

    Jon

  • I may be a bit biased, since I'm a WinCE developer at work, but how can one defend the PalmOS? Both, being commercial operating systems, are to be faught against, not just one because it's from the evil Microsoft. And besides, the comment above is very true, that Palm devices are *way* too expensive! I can get way more functionality from a 4M $199 Casio E10 than I can from a Palm X or whatever they're calling them... And those sell for what, $500 or more? I think we should all be focusing on a FREE/OSS realtime-OS development effort (of which I know there are a few), and not this stupid "palm will kill wince" nonsense. Palm isn't going to kill WinCE, they've stayed the same for years. The only way to kill WinCE is to make something better, which means free, small, and fast.
  • Has anyone out there heard anything about putting a
    real os (i.e. anything but windoze :) on wince devices?

    Hell, is there a GCC available for any of 'em?

    Some of those new ones (esp. the 16 bit color one) sound pretty damn spiffy,
    and I hear they have the processing horsepower to decode MP3 too...
    The only problem is WinCE and it's closed/non-free (as in beer) dev tools...
    (Last I heard ya needed VC5(6?) and winNT to write for CE...)


    =-=-=-=-=-=
  • Anything going to stretch beyond the current palm specs [like COLOR??

    That's something I have been wishing for for a while. a colour palmpc that doesn't use WinCE.
    I wish 3com would give up the useless Palm VII "web clipping" crippled wireless networking design and spend the time on more interesting features.
    I'd rather have to hook a palm to a cell phone and have more memory and colour than have wireless data from a handful of American companies. No offense to the Americans who might find that useful, but I could care less what ABC.com, ESPN and Moviefon have to say... even if I could get access to it here.
  • I was offered one at work, and turned it down. Couldn't see any use for it.

    ....THEN GEEKHOOD STRUCK....

    I had a chance to get a III when everybody else had II's (pro's). So I just had to have it. After I started using it, it became absolutely indespensible. I'm addicted. I even scrounged up a black case and a IIIx screen (ultra-cool!) for it, so I can remain uber-geek of the department.

    I store:
    Phone numbers
    IP addresses
    Notes "go and do blah, blah, blah. Not today, but tomorrow after you forget"
    DNS server configurations
    Directions to friends houses
    Cool web sites, as in "dude, next time you're surfing check out www.pcxl.com"
  • Hmm, true enough. The faster processor is nice. AFAIK, the screen just has better contrast, it's not actually higher resolution, am I right? Still, though, I don't really consider the changes to be revolutionary. I would be completely stoked if the next Palm had

    * good 16 bit audio, and either dedicated MP3 hardware built in(probably cheaper), or enough processing power to decode in software,
    * much more screen resolution, even if it was grayscale,
    * A standard expansion slot, hopefully CF

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not very enthused about WinCE either. I played with a Nino for about 20 minutes at an electronics store. The machine itself looked nice, but the interface seemed really clunky and slow compared to my Palm. I'm hoping that the e100 won't suck THAT bad. If it does, well....my pro's got a lot of miles left in it still :)

    --John Riney
    jwriney@awod.com
  • ...this will encourage some *real* innovation. Adding 2 extra megs, or putting the old hardware in a shiny metal case is not innovation.

    My trusty Palm Pro has served me very well for the past 2 years, but if something much better dosen't come along soon, I'm seriously considering a Cassiopeia E-100. 16bit color, twice the resolution, a CF Type 2 slot(Microdrive anyone?), and MP3 playback?! I'm there.

    --John Riney
    jwriney@awod.com
  • Several things I think we really should see...

    Palm aligning themselves with ISPs, which give away free PalmPilot VII or something for 2 years of paid Internet access.

    I really don't understand why some of them are giving away free PCs that probably cost then 600$, when a PalmPilot seems much more reasonable and useful, though I guess you can't sell advertisement through a Palm...

    But it's like the programs where you get a cell phone for free, and are required to sign on for access for like 2 years or something...

    I'm waiting for an iPalm. I wan clear smokey grey and black, with shiny chromey bits!

    When are they going to get a voicePalm? Or a Palm with dictation capabilities? Or heck, I wonder about a Nintendo-3Com alliance, the gameBoyPalm; their screen size is very similar, and a PalmPilot with gameBoy functionality! Woohoo! Points to lost productivity!

    AS
  • Symbol technologies manufactured their own versions of the palm III (actually they still do)

    both of them modified to use a barcode laser scanner (one ruggedized and having rechargeable lithium batteries)
    the line is called PDT (portable Data terminals)
  • For a seriously cool wireless Palm, check out Qualcomm's PDq, a CDMA cellphone eventually upgradable to 2mb web access. This is significant, since Qualcomm's superior tech has just won a big victory here in Europe - it looks like CDMA will be the new world standard for wireless telephony. (My source here's the new subscriber-only Gilder Technology Report, which I certainly wouldn't email to you if you asked.)
  • >good 16 bit audio, and either dedicated MP3
    >hardware built in(probably cheaper), or enough
    >processing power to decode in software,

    Why are people screaming MP3? Sure on the surface it may be a neat idea, but lets face it, even with 12 megs of memory how much music will you be able to store? 2 or 3 songs at acceptable quality at the most if you still want some space for apps. Either that or boost memory to 40+ megs and send the price through the roof.
    No MP3 is still more of funky gimmic than a useful feature.
    The only possibility would be to implement some kind of removable memory cards, but even that would cost a lot.

    KillRaven

  • So, PalmOS has been licensed to Qualcomm. Wow.

    It really dismays me sometimes how Slashdot has almost completely ignored Symbian's EPOC [symbian.com] operating system, developed by Psion and now also part owned by the "big three" - Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson. With these behind it, do you think that CE, or even PalmOS for that matter is going to suceed in the mobile information device arena?

    Take a look at Ericsson's R380 [ericsson.se] to see what a real smartphone should look like! :-)

  • But ... (Score:1)

    by W3S ( 24423 )
    I was under the impresion that the strengh of the Palm was that it didn't try to do any thing other then the few tasks it is so good at.
  • I've seen the IBM WorkPad (i think they called it that) and another one with a built in barcode reader.
  • I saw a picture of the qualm pilot in an Entrepreneur Magazine at my dentists office.
    Apparantly they will be introduced to the public later this year.
  • Yes, EPOC and EPOC32 have been unfairly ignored by just about everybody. Check out the Psion 5 - it's got a great keyboard, it's fully functional - and it runs DOOM. No joke.

    The Psion 5: http://www.psion.com/series5/index.html

    DOOM on the Psion 5: http://www.palmtop.nl/encore.html
  • I am always up for competition....its part of capitalism...so I say good job to 3com for letting other people compete with them. They proved they made the newest best product that is too damn expensive...now lets improve it and lower the price.
  • I am very tempted to buy a palm pilot just so that I can port nethack to the platform. Anyone want to help?
  • I think some people are seriously missing the point here. The Palm was created to be a simple, fast, and efficient personal digital ASSISTANT. If it were meant to be a toy, you'd find it in Toys 'R Us. If it were meant to be a computer that you could take pictures with, play MP3s with, etc..., you'd find it in a computer store. But this is NOT who the Palm was created for.

    It was designed to be an ASSISTANT... a method for tracking a limited amount/type of information in an unobtrusive way. You shouldn't have to think about the amount of RAM your ASSISTANT has. You shouldn't have to wait for your ASSISTANT to boot up so you can enter an appointment.

    While for some people, the Palm is seen as a new technology or toy to be experimented with, my Palm is a tool. It allows me to organize and simplify my life. There is a threshold... if your PDA becomes to bloated with features and software, it takes more time to do basic functions than the organization saves.

    I hope neither the Palm of WinCE dies.. both have their target markets. If you'd like to buy something that can play MP3s, fine, buy a CE device. If you want something that does a few simple things extremely efficiently and is a true business tool, buy a Palm. I don't want MP3s... I want a fast and reliable organizer. That's it.

    And to the person that said "nobody would buy the Palm V"... I'm sorry, but I'm a very happy Palm V user. I don't need to expand my Palm. I play games on my computer. My Palm is a tool. The weight saved, and the time saved with the excellent Li-Ion batteries truly makes this a useful product for me. 5 minutes on the cradle, and my goes for days....

    It's just like the idea behind Open Source and alternative operating systems... one size does NOT fit all. It's about a choice. Palm Computing should not try to make a PDA for everyone. WinCE is great for some people, Palm OS is great for some people, and an old-fashioned day planner is great for some people. Just like on the desktop.... no single OS can do ALL applications well... every platform has its strengths and weaknesses.
  • sounds like you want a laptop, not a PDA. Why the hell would I want to play MP3s on a tiny (and tinny) little PDA speaker?

    Have fun with Wince.

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