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Handhelds Hardware

Color PalmOS Screenshots 113

Posted by CmdrTaco from the definitely-maybe-real dept.
Echoloc8 writes "PalmStation.com has posted two screenshots of a color-enabled PalmOS running in a PalmOS emulator. Authenticity of the shots has NOT yet been confirmed. The site is heavily loaded already, but the shots (referenced from PalmStation's index page) make for excellent viewing. "
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Color PalmOS Screenshots More

Color PalmOS Screenshots

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  • Nice, but... (Score:3)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Thursday October 21, 1999 @07:09PM (#1595500) Homepage
    It's good that they're getting a color version out the door; it'll be worth it to stop hearing by smug coworkers talking about how their CE devices all have color.

    Really, though, other than as a status thing, how does having color really benefit you from a personal organizer standpoint? I like my Palm V because it's very very direct about getting places and doing things, really easy to use and because it fits neatly into my pocket (wallet-sized!). I can generally have an appointment set up with an alarm to remind me before the CE boys have managed to get their date book applications to launch.

    I can think of one good use for a color screen, however: A faces database. It would be *really* nice to be able to enter a few basic facts (eye color, hair color, skin, etc) which would pull up a bunch of photos to choose from the next time I can't remember the name of one of my clients. Of course, it would be a memory hog, but I'll bet that the average palmtop will have hundreds of megs of memory within the next few years...

    ----

  • If color icons is all I get out of a color Palm I'll pass. Unless somehow they can make it not eat batteries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and until I see a real application that actually uses the color for something useful, I'll stick with my black & white (or black & green I guess).

    I still haven't heard of a handheld app (and nobody needs to run Photoshop or Paint on a handheld as one person suggested in another forum) that would actually benefit from color. The closest idea I've heard is a datebook that color codes appointments and that's not even close to useful enough to make up for the size/power consumption increases.

    If you have an idea for a useful handheld app that uses color effectively, please post it here as a reply. I'm really interested if there is one.
  • Jeez, is that website running on a 486 with Windows 95 and Personal Web Services???

    Unfortunately, it is not running Windows 95, but Linux and Apache 1.3.4. Not sure of what processor. The details are from Netcraft.

  • Why color? Quake 3 of course.

  • One problem I've noticed with colour screens (at least the active-matrix type) is that they don't work well in bright sunlight. When I first tried to use my laptop outdoors (I thought it was a good idea, given that it's portable and all that), I found that the screen was nigh-unreadable.

    Perhaps the Palm display is a different, more light-friendly technology. Though in any case, I can't see many applications where I'd want colour on a PalmPilot. More pixels would be much more useful.
  • I've been holding out for a colour screen Palm and I have managed to resist the temptation to by a WinCE device.

    Bluetooth will make me buy one over colour any day. If not the Bluetooth spec exactly at least something like WAP or TCP/IP over IRDA. These features are selling points as far as I am concerned.
  • I wouldn't think it would be necessary to fake; the new PalmOS 3.3 ROMs have color APIs built in now, so the emulators would have a fairly easy time imitating a colors screen. Some developer could (and I'm sure the Palm Emulator developers could) write a color application to test out.

    Getting my money saved for a Palm X ;-)

    --

  • mirror anybody?
  • Sorry about the lag on palmstation folks. The link can handle the normal traffic I get (just about) but when I get hit this hard, things get all buggered. I guess it's time to add mirroring to my code and get the site mirrored somewhere as well. In the meantime, some kind soul has mirrored the images to the slashmirror, you can find them at:
    ftp://128.253.254.56/upload/p ose30-palmos35-color-1.jpg [128.253.254.56] and

    ftp://128.253.254.56/upload/p ose30-palmos35-color-2.jpg [128.253.254.56].

    Sorry about the delays..... ;(
    -Hal
  • I bought Sega's handheld, because of its colour capabilities. It killed batteries like you wouldn't believe, and I never found a single game for it that didn't suck.
    I had an Atari Lynx. Ultimately it got stolen, but it rocked. Batteries weren't a problem, but it was HUGE. Had great games - I think it failed mainly because of its size.

    I now have a CGB, with just a single game - the Pokemon Pinball thing (I'm addicted to pinball games on computers, I must have at least one for every platform I own). One game. The CGB is so damn cheap that I'll buy it for one game.

    I think the moral of the story is; Build portable devices small and cheap, then one killer app will sell it. Build them too large or too expensive because you've tried to do too much and they will fail. At the risk of repeating what's already been said, compare the GB(C)/Lynx/GameGear/etc market with the Palm/Wince/Psion/Newton market and the Palm is pretty much a shoe-in.

  • I've posted copies of the two colour OS screenshots to my PalmV/8810 club on Yahoo [yahoo.com] - They're in the Photos section, default album. You might have to join the club to view the photo album (I forget). It's up to you, you're all welcome.
  • If you have an idea for a useful handheld app that uses color effectively, please post it here as a reply. I'm really interested if there is one.
    Any database with photos - People, property, cars, other items - would benifit from colour. Browsing the web (Basically viewing any content created by someone else). RED for critical alerts or missed appointments. How about managing Digital Cameras (IR transfer combined with storage on a TRG with a Microdrive - use colour to preview and erase duds)? Maps - anything with groups, categories or regions. And that's just off the top of my head...

  • Legit? (Score:3)

    by Mad Browser ( 11442 ) on Thursday October 21, 1999 @07:02PM (#1595514) Homepage
    Supposedly the shots are from the POSE (PalmOS Emulator) and alpha ROMS that 3Com seeded to developers at PalmSource...

    Too bad the site is Slashdotted...

    if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
  • Colour would be very cool, but I'd be happy if they'd just put a backlight behind the damn silkscreen (the area where you draw graffiti, etc). It's really hard to find in the dark!

    The screenshot looked like they might have actually done this, but since it's just POSEr and not a real device it's hard to tell.

    /peter
  • Big deal. The Palms have backlighting, too. My beef is that the silkscreen isn't backlit (only the LCD). Do the Visor's backlight the silkscreen?

    /peter
  • I understand why they're adding color. But I'm not sure color would add much to the usability of the device. I guess it would make the pilot games more interesting.

    I can think of a list of other things I'd rather that they did:

    -- make it rechargable, so you can drop it in your cradle to let it recharge rather than using a set of batteries every 3 weeks. that's the only thing i like about my dad's WinCE device that I wish I had on any of the palm pilots I've owned.

    -- make it easier to disassemble the unit--these new units are harder to disassemble and tinker with.

    -- add a big red button on the back that says "don't panic".

    -- change the buttons so they look like the gameboy. there should be a directional pad, then an a button and a b button. it seems silly, but i think that's navigationally more useful and allows many applications to be more natural in their interface. like when you're writing in Memo pad, you could move the cursor with the directional pad. that'd make editing those little spelling errors SO much easier.

    -- two electrodes at the top of the palm pilot like little horns. so then i can run a whopping 3 volts through whomever tries to pick at the tape on my glasses!

    /will

  • Here is a different shot [tripod.com] that I saw when I originally submitted this story yesterday. Guess Slashdot didn't think my post was good enough. :-P Anyway, I've got to admit that I find the resolution a bit disappointing. The color's still not too shabby, though.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • I bet these are fakes..
    But I must admit, they look great. If they're faked, Palm should use them as a template. :-)


  • Mirror on ye' olde Slashmirror (Score:3)

    by Serk ( 17156 ) on Thursday October 21, 1999 @07:42PM (#1595520) Homepage
    I don't run Slashmirror, I've just seen it used here, and as I managed to get the pictures from this article, I put them up on Slashmirror:

    ftp://128.253.254.56/upload/pose30-palmos35-colo r-1.jpg

    ftp://128.253.254.56/upload/pose30-palmos35-colo r-2.jpg


    Enjoy.....


  • The 60 Foot Palm
  • No,
    (if it really is the emulator,) it's setup not in "realistic" mode, so the silkscreen is white too.
  • I've got the images before the Slashdot-effect :) If you are in Brazil, You can get it in my site at PontoBR [pontobr.br], both of them.
  • ok, the gameboy focused on gameplay and useability and all that, but mightn't it also have had something to do with the fact that it was the Nintendo product, and Nintendo was the game system at that time, and thus had both the name recognition and the ability to market the heck out of it? Maybe that's just my cynical assumption that the biggest corporation always makes the winning product, and only sometimes the better one.

    heh, I guess a notable example of that would be Microsoft. They were tiny compared to IBM. It's probably some combination of big assets, little scruples, and foresight (though you can add some more assets and kill the remaining scruples to substitute for this).
  • I meant that Microsoft was a counter-example. Doesn't really make sense the other way, now does it?

    "these kids these days! they hit enter before they even know what the heck they just typed! and then they wonder why the world's going to heck in a handbiscuit.
  • I use the palm IIIx with a GPS for a) mapping and b) pocketAPRS [pocketaprs.com] using a GPS and amateur radio packet frequencies. The two things I want to have are color and a GPS module :-)
  • Having owned a variety of Palms over the years, I'm all for color with a few conditions:

    a) Don't make the devices any bigger or heavier
    b) Don't reduce the battery life appreciable (granted, not a big issue with the V and Vx, but I always seemed to only be able to find one fresh battery when I had to replace them on my old Palm Pro.)

    Other than that, I'm always for better tech just for the sake of having better tech.
  • Try looking just below the big glowing main screen area. =)

    I was looking at getting a Windows CE PDA (my Palm III was stood on in a pub and the screen replacement seemed too much hassle), and the battery life *really* sucks on the color ones.

    Also the average weight is much higher than a Palm device. Once I have my back pockets laden with a mobile, my wallet and a minidisc player, I don't want a housebrick in there as well!
  • But please, tell me why PDAs have to be strictly PDAs?? Why does it matter what the original design spec is?

    True, but the added functionality should not sacrifice the original design spec. I guess for most PDA users the main wish points are:

    1. Smaller
    2. Lighter
    3. Longer lasting (off one charge or cell)
    4. More resilient

    That's why so many people went for Palm V's, even those with existing Palm III's.

    You try fitting color in there too, and one (or more) of those points above will be sacrificed.
  • >I can think of one good use for a color screen, however: A faces database.

    Oh. My. God.

    I would kill for this. I can't remember a name to save my life (maybe had a /little/ to much fun in college). Maybe mix this with a gameboy camera type thing (Hello Handspring, you people listening?) and that would be perfect. When you're getting someone's contact info you could just innocently raise your palm up an snap a candid photo of the subject. Next you are at a meeting you could just whip out you're picture DB and know everyone in the room. Just a thought but this has potential.

    Pete
  • Check out ebay. You can pick up a PPPro or a Personal for a hundred bucks easy. Really, no shit.

    Pete
  • God, I am DYING to see this screenshots. Hope they are no fakes. I am a big palm, and it 3com succeds on implementig color with the usual PalmOS speed, harwawre size, and battery life, I will love it. Everybody speaks about how much it would suck with a low battery life, but I tell you something. The battery on my Palm Vx are lithium ion, as many should know, and they are rated for over 2 days of continous use! But, if they 'only' lasted 10 hours I wouldn't care, or notice, because I always drop it on the cradle at night when they recharge. And when I travel, which I do a lot, I take the charging cable (and hotsyng with my laptop via IR), and there is even a car recharger available. So, if they do a good color implementation, with decent battery life, I bet it will be a hit. At least I would buy it. Hope they can keep the size down, would love color on a Palm V size. For those that have never touched a V, you should, the small size is amazing. Get the hard case for $30 bucks, and you can carry it around in you pants, your blue jeans, seat on it, abuse it, put it anywhere, the hard case is HARD as hell. I threat mine as shit and the palm itself is in mint condition. And, with the hard case on, it is smaller than a Palm III, smaller than my wallet. Love this thing. :) Just my 2c worth. Go palm!
  • Jejejeh.

    You guys dont miss one, dont you?

    I am a big palm fan....

    And thanks to the people who placed the mirrors.
  • I think color could be a useful thing - in a screen the size of a Palm, adding color could really inrease the amount of information one could convey in the same amount of space.

    But I have to say the reason why I actually use my Palm V is that it only needs recharging every couple of weeks, often longer (as many other posts have mentioned). In addition I can hold it in the same jeans pocket my keys are in (thank goodnees they sell the hard case!!). If either of those attributes are comprimised then I think it'll be a pretty niche product - since all we have are the emulator shots we have no idea what form factor they might be thinking of (though you'd think it would look about like a III).

    How much battery life would people be willing to comprimise for color? I myself think battery replacement/recharging would have to be at least three weeks before I'd go for it.
  • Guess what?

    ****NINTENDO THREATENED THE AUTHOR OF THE GAMEBOY EMULATOR "GAMBIT"****

    I have it on good authority (from friend of the author), that Nintendo has threatened action against the author should he release the code. Yes, I know there are 10,000+ other gameboy emulators out there, and yes, I know they emulate Color Gameboy when it came out. There are only two known copies of the emulator. One is my informant friend, the other the site of palmpilot news. Don't bug them. The author will get in enough trouble if it gets released.

    Don't blame them. Blame nintendo and their crusade against emulators, for the sole reason that they promote piracy. [I don't know, but using Palm OS Emulator was useful in determining if a new app will kill my pilot. And Basilisk seems useful in running MacOS apps on other platforms.]

    Thus, I am principally opposed to anything nintendo sells (as are several other people). I like to play games on my PC (less equipment to worry about), plus, when I'm sitting around, it's a lot easier to stare at a 17" monitor than a 1.5" green screen. Oh well. Not like I'm missing much.
  • ...I just got my IIIx in the mail. Every time you upgrade....

  • They don't just make Ethernet cards, they were the first networking company in history: Bob Metcalfe (3Com's founder) is acknowledged as the *inventor* of Ethernet. For those too young to know, Ethernet in its very earliest days was supported by three companies: Digital, Intel, and Xerox. Sometimes in very old Ethernet documents you can find references to DIX Ethernet, which standardized the AUI connector. (Some AIX or RS6K documents contained references to DIX until about 1994, at least...)

    Oral history alive and well, educating the newbies... :-)

    P.S.: If you haven't worked with 3mbps Ethernet, you're not really a network old-timer. (Yep, it was 3 mbps for a short time before they moved to 10. If you ever get to see a Sun 1 up close (they're antiques now, and fairly rare), look at the back - they usually have a plate/sticker there showing they've been upgraded to support 10 meg Ethernet.)
  • Sorry, something went horribly amiss there.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Well even that is useful. Not that there was anything wrong with the way they had it before, but screens look much nicer to to eye (and are therefore easier to read) when they're in color, mostly for contrast reasons. This is especially true if these colors are customizable.

    I wonder if we could port E to the Pilot? :)

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • I'm not sure what you're referring to by that. My score? It's karma-related, but controllable. I suppose that post wasn't really deserving, but I forgot to disable the +1

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • You make a good point - there's a lot of things that color really is unnecessary for with a PalmPilot. However, it is good to know that color is available should it be needed. The PalmVNC project could definitely benefit from color and I'm sure there'll be some palm-games out there that use it. I guess the real question is "Why not?" As long as I don't have to pay extra for it, I'm not against color. It certainly can't hurt.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Re:mirror anybody? (Score:3)

    by Foogle ( 35117 ) on Thursday October 21, 1999 @07:43PM (#1595542) Homepage
    http://foogle.dynip.com/palm.jpg

    don't hurt me

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • http://bluething.dhs.org/~craig/pose30-palmos35-co lor-1.jpg
    http://bluething.dhs.org/~craig/pose30-palmos35- color-2.jpg
  • Now all we need is a Color Gameboy emulator, and the era of palm computing will have truly arrived. ;)

    Seriously, those, these do look quite nice; Palm will finally get rid of one of WinCE's more glaring advantages with this, if in fact they are legit (which is very much in doubt at this point).

  • Not fakes (Score:3)

    by firewood ( 41230 ) on Friday October 22, 1999 @12:20AM (#1595546)
    These are screen shots of a new Mac hosted version of the Palm OS Emulator running an early developmental version of PalmOS 3.5. They were shown in a public demonstration by a Palm employee on Tuesday at the PalmSource developers convention. The presenter suggested that some licensee may come out with a unit that uses this OS possibly in the first half of 2000.
  • The three things that I can't believe 3com/palm has taken forever to develop are:

    1. color.
    2. decent sound
    3. ethernet.

    ..Doesn't 3com even MAKE ethernet cards? Why the lag? Competitions coming...
  • 2? I wonder 'bout you cats sometimes.
  • Widcomm is coming out with a Bluetooth Springboard for the Visor.
  • Wow, Dave Fedor. There's a name from the past. He
    used to work at DEC a million years ago and then
    went on to work on Newtons at Apple.
  • I tend to agree with the original post. Gameboy won because it had games worth playing. I bought Sega's handheld, because of its colour capabilities. It killed batteries like you wouldn't believe, and I never found a single game for it that didn't suck.
  • And then Gameboy went color, taking lots of games with it. (the older color systems ATE batteries alive and were REALLY expensive. The technology has matured a LOT).

    And it rocks, nice color, long battery life, less requried batteries (from 4 AA to 2 AA!!). Gameboy went from good to great, and popular, to popular and technically impressive. I do hope this happens to Palm (err, Handspring. I don't think 3COM has the innovative sense the old palm guys did!)
  • Beacause a comparable CE machine is clunkier (interface wise), and is more expensive.
  • Well thank K&R for that! Early in its life cycle I forked out way too much for a HP 620LX. A fairly competent machine, I was pretty impressed the first time I used it for reading email with my PC-card modem. I had a nice leather case, a classic silver Newton 2000 stylus and a 32M CF card for backups. All pretty hot technology back in early 1998.

    Then after using it for a while I realized it kind of sucked... The keyboard was just not useful. Apart from being slow, Windows CE was also painfully ugly. What could be more clumsy than switching between a gnome-size keyboard and a more or less vertical stylus screen? Rather than color really adding to the experience it made the whole device look like Windows in 640x480 mode right after an install. First thing you do is install video drivers, right? Except that the HP never got any better.

    Strangely enough the main reason I had paid so much for this thing was the color screen. It made web sites look nicer but not $800 nicer.
    Later that year I got involced with a Palm project and had to use a Palm III. The thing about the Palm is that it just works. No frills, just function.

    The big worry was that Palm would lose in the marketplace to Windows CE. Windows CE had a lot more money behind it, and for a while looked like it might go through the Microsoft 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 cycle and finally mature into a barely acceptable but market dominating standard. Palm would go the way of the Amiga.

    And now the only worry is that Palm don't submit to creeping featurism - what good is color if the device gets fat and slow? May as well have Windows CE then.

    Another question is what good will color be? One friend says she would love to replace her File-o-fax with a Palm, but the photos can't be stored like they can on paper. If the screen is good enough, maybe it could replace the folio. What if they produce accurate 24-bit screens one day - a Palm could serve as a color chip! Hold it up to your wall to see how the new paint will look :-)

    I'm going to see about getting those ROMs and ramp up my Palm programming again. It's a fun platform, and color adds a whole range of applications that will be needed in 2000.

    Right now I am trying hard not to wonder where my Handspring order is, I know it will be here soon.
    And the HP620LX? I swapped it for something else. The guy who got it was ecstatic - but then he hadn't had to use it for months. I was happy to see it go. And of course I kept the Newton stylus. There hasn't been a better one made yet.
  • (As an aside...I find it disturbing that I see "The site is heavily loaded already" from the person who SUBMITS the article.

    You say that like Slashdot is the only site on the internet that gets any hits. It really IS possible for a site to be crowded before Slashdot gets ahold of it. Especially on something this cool.

    As far as the 256 color screen, I think with a resolution of only a few thousand pixels, 256 colors is plenty. And I think keeping the OS simple and non-bloated is a good idea.

    I think that they should be able to implement this in such a way that battery life is not a problem. Maybe a rechargable battery that is removable to put in AA batteries. I had a Motorola walkie talkie that was like this. You use the rechargable for day to day use, and AA batteries if you need to take a long trip into the forest or something.

    A couple of years ago I had a Compaq Aero 486/33 with a 340 meg hard drive. It was a really useful machine. With this screen and an IBM microdrive, I could have the same power in a PalmPilot.

    Now all we need is to port Corel Draw to the palm.... (That's what I usually ran on my Aero.)
  • Sorry about the italics. I forgot the cancel tag, and the preview button.
  • Couldn't this be done automaticly.

    Mirror the page automaticly. Possibly even have that the default page. Have all links still go to the original site.

    If you kept track of what links were followed on the mirror page You could absorb the commonly followed links into the mirror.

    Another possiblity is to just have some software snoop the server type and do the mirror if it guesses that it is likely to be slashdotted.

  • /.ed (Score:2)

    by Duxup ( 72775 )
    /.ed already :-(
    Sometimes I think checking out the links in the Older Stuff section is like calling my old ex girlfriend.
    It might not be new to me and all my friends have already been there, but man, at least she answers the phone and shows up for dinner!
  • Do you work for Microsoft by chance?

    First of all, something is not bad strictly because WinCE tries to implement it. It just means it could be implemented better. We don't shun operating systems just because Win98 is "clunky, annoying, and slow" -- we strive to outperform it.

    But please, tell me why PDAs have to be strictly PDAs?? Why does it matter what the original design spec is? The personal computer was designed strictly for business use. There were no multiplayer games, rendering programs, and web browsers -- but I don't see you complaining about these "novelties"!

    What do you see wrong with a pager, voice recorder, and music player in the palm of your hand? Too compact for you? I for one would prefer not to carry a separate pager, CD player, daytimer, laptop, atlas (vs GPS), and web browser in my pocket.

    Tell me also, how can the Palm become a "better" PDA by enhancing only core functions? How good can an to-do list get? Aren't they pretty thin already?

    If my palm computer can offer me twice the function in the same package, I'm not going to complain. You may see nothing but novelty, but I assure you that the features you listed above are critical to many (including me).

    I will, however, be laughing at you.
  • YES!!!

    See, there are plenty of uses for color... you just have to expand your imagination a bit.

    People are so bent on black-and-white because "it was designed to be black-and-white".. good to see your enthusiasm for a change.

  • Simple, when the color models hit the market, the B&W version prices will drop and make them much more affordable to those of us who think color on a palmtop is just flash for weenies who are more concerned with being bleeding-edge than actually getting practical use out of the things.

    I've avoided Palms up 'till now because I just can't imagine that I could get more than a hundred dollars or so of use out of one. (I admit I'm very tempted by the Handspring however, mainly because of the price point.) I don't give a wet slap about color on it, but if I could pick a B&W version for about a hundred bucks because the colors models have taken the high end of the price range, I probably would.

    -=-=-=-=-

  • rewrite the interface for CE (it's not hard)...or have the CE machine run the PalmOS edmulator full time, you can switch over whenever you need more power like sound, video etc.

    It's not very hard to replace the CE shell
  • If that happens, it will get pulled before anyone can download half an mp3 and the person who uploaded will get reported to the RIAA/SPA.

    I am relying (perhaps naively) on the good faith of the /. community to not abuse it.

    Also this offer has been standing for over a month, and it is only just now being taken advantage of.

    SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers

  • In less that 24 hours >15,000 downloads

    Over 1GB in 60-80k chunks

    I predict a bright future for the color palm :-)

    SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers

  • I certainy can't watch /. 24 hrs/day, so if something needs to be mirrored, feel free to put it up.

    Congrats on being the first person (besides me) to post stuff to it.

    SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers

  • But, if they can cram more cool stuff in there but keep the basic requirments(Size Weight Power) the same then great!

    I'd love for my Palm device to play dvd's if they could do it without increasing the size of the Palm. (Well mabey the tray would have to fold out or something.)

    The point is, as long as the size,weight,power stay the same then great! This is why the Visor will be so cool. With the add-on modules people will be able to have whatever features they want, and not be dragged down by features other people want. It'd be even cooler if the color ones let you swap out the screen if you wanted.
  • "I am a big palm"

    Oh my god! Everyone run for their lives!

    =)

    - JoeShmoe

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
  • (As an aside...I find it disturbing that I see "The site is heavily loaded already" from the person who SUBMITS the article. Jeez, is that website running on a 486 with Windows 95 and Personal Web Services???)

    Anyway, color is the natural order of things. Television became color...laptops became color...printers became color...and yes, GameBoy became color. Color is ALWAYS preferred to black and white or greyscale because (drumroll) color as a feature includes both black and white and greyscale.

    Think about it...if color is truly unnecessary to a program...then a color screen can always display the information in black and white or greyscale (like a word processor).

    So what stops someone from using color from the get go? Answer: price and performance. If color is too expensive, people will not choose it over pure greyscale. If the color screen tears up the battery, people will not choose it over the more efficient greyscale screen.

    The companies who win are the companies who add color when the time is right. GameBoy came out at the same time as both NEC's TurboGraphix portable, Atari's Lynx and Sega's GameGear. Customers flocked to the GameBoy because it was cheaper, had better software, and long battery life. The other devices failed to hold onto their place in the market and were discontinued.

    Now...ten years later...there is a ColorGameBoy. Why was this not done from the beginning? Well, because ten years ago there was no way Nintendo could put a color screen in a $69 device and have it run 30 hours off two double A batteries. But now that technology has improved to the point that this is possible...it makes sense to do it.

    Despite the fact that there are other color portables...like the NeoGeo portable...GameBoy is still selling better because the new color portable can run all of the existing software.

    To review...Nintendo focused on growing the platform in a cheap, efficient state and then introducing color after they had proven to be a winning device.

    Now look at Palm...while WinCE devices have jumped right away to color, Palm focused on growing the market in a cheap, efficient state. People obviously want handhelds...Palm is giving them a tool while WinCE is trying to give them everything.

    Palm is clearly the winner...now Palm wants to make a color model and I, for one, think it will be a success. Because technology exists that can make this color Palm do everything the orignal Palm (if it had been color) could not.

    Consider that the screen is only 256 colors. this pales in comparison to the 16-bit 65556 colors for some WinCE devices. Yet, it will probably be MUCH cheaper and much more energy efficient than those screens.

    Consider the new injection molded lithium ion batteries. Companies can now develop their entire product without allocating any space for the battery. After they are done, the remaining airspace can be filled with a gel that, once solidified, becomes the battery. This is what is allowing Erisson to design a cell phone that is as thin as a pencil.

    In summary, I think color is a necessary step and I applaud Palm's decision to hold off on color until they had gotten a lot of developers and software to support the platform. About the only thing Palm could do to screw it up is not make the color Palm backwards compatible...but since they are using the same Motorola chip family, I don't think this is a realistic fear.

    Just my opinion...please treat it as such.

    - JoeShmoe

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  • Aside from a novelty, what's the point? In a PDA that stores appointments, to do lists, etc., what do you need color for? THe way I see it color gets in the way. Sure it looks purety and everything, but it doesn't make me any more productive. The reason most of us like Palms better is because the interface is tailored for exactly what it does, and nothing else. It was designed from the ground up to be a PDA -- not an MP3 player, a voice recorder, a pager, or what have you.

    Don't get me wrong, Color Palms are cool and all, I just question why 3com is adding this. Microsoft added color to their WinCEs to make them look cooler, not to make them more useful. It'd be a shame to see 3com, which so far has kept Palm Computing useful and productive (as opposed to clunky, annoying, and slow, a la WinCE) go down that same road. I'd love to be wrong on this one, but somehow I just wonder why in the heck they spent all their time doing this instead of enhancing core functions to make Palm a better PDA and forget about what WinCE does.

    Just my own slightly off ideas...
  • being moderated down to end up there with them. As pathetic enough as it is to AC post a "First Post!!! Yeah!", my question is, how much more pathetic is it to make that post and be third?

    Anyway, back on topic. (Kind of) I dunno if I'm for color. Battery life is so critical with me as it is, and (believe it or not) I really like the color of my Palm III. Makes me feel digital, in a way. Color would actually DEtract from its beauty in this sense. ('least I think so)

    Also, and this probably has nothing to do with anything... but why did the GameBoy win over all of its COLOR competitors??? Seriously, the Lynx rocked. (When I was 10 anyway. Kicked arse) How exactly did the GameBoy win? By NOT being color, and focussing on EVERY THING ELSE... Gameplay, usability, and, of course, getting games ported to it.

    I only hope the PALM engineers can carry this concept with them. I'd hate to lose out on ANYTHING, in order to gain the color I don't really need.

  • The palmpilot series has been out for about 4 years now, and not one GB emulator has been released. Unless a new color Palm has sufficient extra processing power, a color GB emu isn't any more likely to happen.

    What does the GB have that the Palm doesn't? Simple - a sprite-rendering engine. The Dragonball processor is easily a match for the CPU of a GB, but an emulator on the Palm would also have to emulate the sprite-pushing hardware of the GB. All that extra software work means tough times for a Palm trying to keep Wario's elbow smash going at top speed.

    Does anyone know of any attempted GB emulators for the palmpilot? It'd be helpful to know just how close a palmpilot could get to full speed emulation with current hardware. That way, if the processing in the next Palm is 2 or 3 times as fast, we could give it another shot!


  • -- make it rechargable, so you can drop it in your cradle to let it recharge rather than using a set of batteries every 3 weeks. that's the only thing i like about my dad's WinCE
    device that I wish I had on any of the palm pilots I've owned.

    You mean like the Palm V? hmm...

  • :( but what about those of us who have ftp and clever stuff like that blocked by firewalls?
  • I mirrored the images for anyone interested. This server should be fast.

    http://cranesrus.net/pose30-palmos 35-color-1.jpg [cranesrus.net]
    http://cranesrus.net/pose30-palmos 35-color-1.jpg [cranesrus.net]

  • Damn, wrong file name. http://cranesrus.net/pose30-palmos 35-color-2.jpg [cranesrus.net]
  • The screen shots that I have seen, through the mirrors, have a white background is that just because of the emulator, or would the palms actually look white? White would probably improve the readability. Nate
  • I'm obviously waiting for a palm pilot with a pink leatherette carrying case with a section for my lipstick and also perhaps a battery-charged vibrator option.

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