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Handhelds Hardware

Palm Moving From Dragonball To ARM/StrongARM 145

Posted by Hemos from the moving-things-up dept.
mikefoley wrote to us with some interesting news from the PalmPilot folks regarding chips. They'll be moving to Arm/SA as the title indicates, but the story also contains some cool information about their wireless plans. Looks like I'm going to need a new Palm soon.
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Palm Moving From Dragonball To ARM/StrongARM More

Palm Moving From Dragonball To ARM/StrongARM

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  • As great as wireless computing sounds, anyone know when it will get cheap enough for the rest of us to pick up?
  • This seems like a great move. If I recall correctly, this is what the old Newtons were using. I remember the last Newton that was made (right before they were canceled) was really quite fast. As a saddened Be PPC user, I know the pain of being on left on a chip that doesn't get supported anymore. I hope the same thing doesn't start to happen to Palm. I hope it won't create many ARM only apps. This is mainly dependant on the developer though, whether they decide to compile for the old platform. ---Lane
  • One thing that has probably hurt Palm a little in the past is the perception of a slow processor. I can't even imagine how awesome a Palm with an Arm/Strong Arm processor will be! The awesome PalmOS on a processor that WinCE devices have usually had.

    If every unit is going to have internet connectivity (be it two way radio, or bluetooth) I think Palm will be able to make it affordable. Otherwise they will lose the low end of the market that is currently made up of the IIIxe.
  • I wonder at what point does a fast-and-furious upgrade schedule, like Palm seems to be engaged in ("wireless! color! new processor!") become a problem for revenue. I was going to upgrade my Palm IIIx a couple times, but have held off, wavering between getting a Handspring (has anyone used the mp3 module on those?) and waiting for Palm's Next Big Thing. I wonder - I'm not a MBA type - at what point does that sort of upgrade cycle lead to "consumer paralysis."
  • "Will it run Linux?"

    Correct me if I'm right, but I believe one of the drawbacks to Linux on current Palms is the lack of a MMU (memory management unit). The ARM has one (?) so maybe we'll see Linux really take off here?
    --

  • Arm (Score:2)

    by philj ( 13777 )
    More info about ARMs [arm.com].

    Current ARM powered [arm.com] products.
  • The problems is, I keep waiting to see what the next generation of stuff has to offer. Then when that comes out, it's too expensive, so I have to wait for prices to come down, at which point they start marketing The Next Big Thing(tm). It's a vicious circle.

    What can you do with a 400mHz Palm Pilot?

  • Linux (Score:1)

    by jrs ( 27486 )
    I wonder if we could put linux on it :) Seriously! Netwinders use ARM cpu's. Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
  • Wow... looks like ARM has captured the majority of the handheld market. Wince devices [hp.com] use the StrongARM processors as well. Is ARM the next Intel??

    -rt-

  • Quiet revolution (Score:4)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2000 @08:41AM (#1111083)

    So, the StrongARM processor chalks up yet another adoptee. Ever since Acorn Computers spun off Advanced Risc Machines (ARM) as a separate company, ARM has made progressively more and more inroads into the embedded processor market. Today there are ARM chips almost everywhere I look, from ATM routing systems to palm-helds to the odd desktop PC or Net box running either RiscOS or ARMLinux. And this has been a fairly quiet revolution happening out of sight of the general public, who neither know nor care what sits inside that little black organiser. When there is so much noise happening in the desktop PC CPU market, this is an almost refreshing change.

    Now - the real question is since there is a port of Linux on the StrongARM processor, how long will it be before we can attach a microdrive to this baby and run a pocket Linux machine?

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • Ah.. I was a bit worried there that the MS machines may be getting an advantage over the palms.. Glad to see they are moving on to a faster processor.. And if they can drop the price on wireless access (so I'm not paying big money to recieve spam) I'm replacing my old pilot.

    BTW-

    "If Palm doesn't come out with a voice recognition handheld, someone else will," Gwennap said.

    Um.. Does anyone really want this? Do you want to be in a public place talking to your palm? ug.

    -
  • Yah, the Newtons were ARM610/StrongArm based. This is ironic as hell. (I definitely preferred ARM assembly and C++ hacking over 68K, any day).

    I guess that Palm is going to seriously screw with their user base in terms of compiled code, unless they do a DragonBall emulator (I guess that for most applications, you don't need balls-out performance for this to work just fine).

  • voice recognition?! heavens, please no (Score:4)

    by Hollins ( 83264 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2000 @08:47AM (#1111086) Homepage
    They're going to put voice recognition in all palms. I can't think of a worse idea. Isn't it bad enough that we can't go anywhere without having to endure listening to people yell into their cel phones to affirm their perverted self importance, or walk through an office without passing at least one fool listening to voicemail over speakerphone? Now we're going to have a whole new breed of idiots speaking loudly and s-l-o-w-l-y into their handhelds, repeating everything because the first try didn't work.

    "FIND MOM'S PHONE NUMBER

    ...

    no

    ...

    FIND MMMOMMM'S PHONE NUMBER"

    over and over again.

    please help me

  • It seems like the Palm CEO is referring to Palm competitors when he says this, but if he is, it doesn't seem to make much sense, with the way about one-third of the Palm's supposed screen size is wasted with the silly silk-screen thingy.

    The extra processing power is nice (I think the real reason behind it is a plan to catch up with the WinCE devices' multimedia capabilities), but that Voice Activation is not a good idea if it's anything like the current voice technologies. The last thing I need is to have a bunch of jokers activating my Palm willy-nilly, like the way everyone has fun screwing with the poor folks who bought The Clapper to control their lights and televisions.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • "Will it run Linux?"

    I believe the appropriate spurious response to this is "Blah blah Linux blah blah Crusoe blah Linus Torvalds blah blah Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Natalie Portmans blah blah blah."

    Now that that's out of the way, the just-plain-flippant response: Well, there's always Andrew Tanenbaum's MINIX OS, with microkernel and separate memory-management and fs processes...

    Oh, and if someone can remind me some time not to post at six a.m. with sleep-dep up to my eyeballs, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
  • ARM is in WinCE, except for all the WinCE devices
    that instead use the MIPS processor. Which is also in your Playstation (1 & 2) and N64. Between them MIPS and ARM have pretty much got the embedded market sewn up. Although maybe Transmeta will change things.

    (yes I know the PS2 is not a pure MIPS design anymore but at the heart of the fabled emotion engine there is still a MIPS cpu core.)
  • ARM used to be owned/manufactured by DEC, but when they were bought by Compaq, the ARM division went to Intel. See Intel's product page on them here [intel.com].
  • What can you do with a 400mHz Palm Pilot?

    Play PocketRogue [highway.ne.jp] really fast...


    ---

  • Newton binary compatibility!
  • I don't think any MP3 modules exist... yet.

    But since you brought up Handspring, I wonder what this means for their future devices? Because they use Palm OS, and future versions of Palm OS will run on different chips, will Handspring be forced to change chips to keep pace?

    What if Palm managed to get a volume or other business deal with the new manufacturer, and Handspring can't produce their devices affordably anymore? Would handspring be forced to scramble to change their vision? "Sure PalmOS was good for starters, but now we're moving in a whole new direction!" or "All future handspring devices will be identical in function because we are unable to upgrade the operating system... but look forward to some funky new colors!"
  • The early Clappers were more fun.. They picked up RF noise like they were designed for it. Take a lantern battery and a 12v relay and you could make them flick on and off crazily from fifteen feet away..

  • Binary Compatibility (Score:3)

    by darkwiz ( 114416 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2000 @08:55AM (#1111095)
    One thing that doesn't seem to be addressed in the news item is binary compatibility. Palm has an enormous library of software that is compiled and matured on the Dragonball MCU. For the most part, this software is written in some form of C, so should be cross-compilable, but will require motivating anyone with closed source to recompile [in the very least].

    Less obvious is how they are going to keep all of that straight. Hopefully they will[have] develop[ed] some kind of binary signing standard so that people who unwittingly download the Dragonball version don't install it on their ARM version [or vice versa]. I seriously doubt the two are that binary compatible... In some cases, the CPU may see that it has been handed an invalid opcode, and will branch out to a handler (if that has been implemented... that is a design subtlety that I know that I wouldn't normally worry about), but there are only so many opcodes, and there are bound to be overlap.

    Anyway, the point being: trying to execute binary code for the wrong archetecture would probably have rather catastophic results. Does anyone know if there already exists a mechanism that could handle this in the Palm? I'm not aware of how application loading occurs on the platform.

    Besides, I won't buy one until I can play FreeCell on it...
  • No no no... that's certainly not true. The page you reference does imply that Intel owns ARM.. but it fact it just licenses the rights to manufacture the StrongARM processor from ARM.

    Check out Hoovers company report on ARM Holdings on Microsoft Investor [msn.com] and CNBC [cnbc.com]

    -rt-
  • Are they going to phase out all their 68k stuff? All older palm will get obsolete quite fast now, un less they do like apple and include emulation in the OS, but i doubt it.

    ---
  • They should have used a low-power Crusoe processor.

    CT
    ============================================ ==============
  • I've heard ARMs are famed for low power consumption, but wonder if someone who knows more than I do about it might comment on what kind of battery life we might expect from an ARM-powered Palm.
  • A question relating to this item...

    Currently, HP and Compaq use ARM... also, they are running WinCE (or whatever MS has decided to call it this week). As a result, could a marketplace open up for these devices where you could choose the OS to run on them? Clearly, the OS would have to be overwritable in the system (flash, or some other chip storage), but there could be a blossoming of this market on this fact alone!
  • What can you do with a 400mHz Palm Pilot?

    Not much, I assure you. You probibly wanted to use MHz, meaning millions of cycles per second, rather than mHz, meaning thousandths of a cycle per second.

    A 400mHz processor would have 1 clock cycle every 2.5 seconds. Not exactly the speed demon that *I* would spend my hard earned pennies on...


  • Alright, the decision to use an Arm processor is a good one, but has Palm really thought this all out? They'll have to port PalmOS to an entirely new architecture, and every program available for the Palm 1000 all the way up to the Palm VII will have to be recompiled. Also consider that many coders in the Palm world (especially the 'OS enhancement' people) code in assembler to get to the bare metal and achieve speed increases/bypass the operating system. Assembly language is not especially portable...

    Am I worrying for naught? Is Palm going to announce some kind of 'binary compatibility' built into Arm versions of PalmOS? I *very* seriously doubt it; that would be to daunting a task. I personally don't want to have to track down all of the programs that I use on my Palm III if/when I buy a new Arm-based Palm. I wonder if they've considered all of the implications of this decisions...

    Having a nice new, fast PalmXVI will be great, but will there be any applications for the beast? I can't see Palm developers dropping support for the huge installed base, and I also can't see them snubbing their noses at a product that might potentially change the way handeld computing/information management works. I guess only time will tell.
  • Low end ARM chips are cheaper.
  • My favorite quote from the article...

    "I think we all know that the screen sizes suck, and that the
    drop-down menus are the road to hell," Yankowski said.

    Finally, a CEO who just comes right out and says what he thinks. I'm tired of all of the posturing and marketing hype that we're always exposed to. I'm sure Palm's PR department dropped a bomb in their collective pants when they heard that one.

  • Power (Score:1)

    by bfree ( 113420 )
    So the palm is going ARM, is this a good thing?
    Are we not going to see the Palm battery life drop significantly when the CPU gets a 4-8 times speed increase? How does an ARM processor stack up to the Crusoe for performance and power consumption? How hard would it be to port the existing Palm line to a Crusoe and retain total compatibility with a faster processor? Why wouldn't Palm do this?
    How long can I wait for a crusoe webpad, and is it longer than I can wait before I buy a Palm?
  • There really is no good reason for running Linux on these palms (tho I'm sure you will see some sort of port floating around eventually). I think the effort would be better concentrated on making an ssh client and X11 server to give you the ability to view programs run on almost any UNIX-like OS. I don't know if wireless has enough bandwidth for something like X (it would definitely need low bandwidth X), but it shouldn't require too much with a lower resolution screen. Another challenge would be getting it to work with the touchscreen as a pointer and having some sort of onscreen keyboard. Would this be possible on a palm with an ARM processor and wireless?
  • http://www.ximuoi.com/ has an impressive mp3 player comming out for the palm sometime this year i think... It can work alone too! (and do many other things, gimme!;-)

    ---
  • >Now - the real question is since there is a port of Linux on the StrongARM processor

    Indeed. Here [linux.org.uk] is the place to start looking.

    There is also a NetBSD port in progress here [netbsd.org].
  • When I read the article, it looked more like he was referring to WinCE devices, who use ddm's far more. Don't know about the screen-sizes though.
    ------
    James Hromadka
  • I recently upgraded from a III to a Vx, and even though the III is light, the 2oz. shaved off the Vx is really nice. If they keep the weight down on the next gen, it'll be cool. My friend was showing me his new Cassiopeia, I don't like CE, but the "photo album" effect was cool. But MAN was that thing heavy. You need a holster to carry that bugger. What I don't like about the CPU change is I'm willing to bet my copy of SimCity won't run on the ARM. :( Think they'll make an emulator? Personally, I am going to think twice before buying any more Palm software now. This announcement is going to play hell for Palm developers. History has shown that getting developers to write to your platform is key to it's success.

    I suggest that we not be so quick to assume that the voice processing capabilities are strictly for voice recognition. This could be their move to run end-around Nextel. Wouldn't that be cool, I mean, with a flip-top case like the Palm III - life will be that much more like living in a star trek episode.

    I have really mixed feelings about this move. What made Palm is that they did not attempt to make a general purpose computing platform. Instead, they chose a simple data acquisition device. Being nice to developers has helped them as well. Even if a porting kit is made available, it will still be a nuisance for developers. I'll probably wait until the first or second price cut to jump on board.

  • I have owned two difernt models of Newton MessagePads- a 120 and a 2000. The 120 would last for about a month under normal usage on 4 AA batteries. The 2000 would last a couple of weeks if you used the backlighting a lot, or about the same as the 120 if you kept the backlighting turned off. The Palm should be about the same or even better.
  • Kudos to the Palm team for moving to the ARM processor family. Of course, it also runs NetBSD - check out: http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/arm32/ [netbsd.org]

    Now all we need is a way to get Ethernet into a Palm to have the ultimate portable rescue device. Imagine coming to rescue a down system and just plugging in your Pilot to restore basic service.

    It doesn't get any cooler....
  • Hear, hear.

    So nice to see 3com come to the party years after Apple dropped the ball.

    Not sure what all the fuss about Transmeta is when we've had ARM all along... oh yeah, x86 bugulation. :-)

    ARM's a nice architecture. Low power consumption, decent performance, big- or little-endian modes (take your pick). Lots and lots of general purpose registers.

    Now, if 3com can convince Apple to license the Newton OS... there'd be a real handheld computer once more.

    I can dream, can't I?
  • It seems like the Palm CEO is referring to Palm competitors when he says this, but if he is, it doesn't seem to make much sense, with the way about one-third of the Palm's supposed screen size is wasted with the silly silk-screen thingy.

    I'm pretty sure he's referring to Palm screens.

    And if you think the silk-screened digitizer area is silly, you haven't owned a Palm for any length of time. After a year of heavy use, the only area of my Palm V screen showing wear is in the silk-screened Graffiti area. The same was true on my Pilot 5000. If this area had more LCD screen area underneath it, it'd be illegible by now.

    It's details like this which set the useful devices apart from mere gadgets.

    -Isaac

  • It's so damn funny how Apple could have been Palm. An ARM based Palm would be Newton Jr in all respects -- less flexible, less expandable, less recognition capability, but most importantly SMALLER. The handwriting stuff was annoying, but the real reason Newton failed is that you can't fit it in a normal-to-small pocket.

  • What they don't mention in the article... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What they don't mention in the article is that Qualcomm has been one of the main companies pressuring Palm to switch from the Dragonball to the ARM. Now Qualcomm can offer a Palm PDA (hopefully not as pathetic or expensive as the pdQ), 64k packet data, GPS and a multimedia core for mp3/mpeg, etc. Check out the MSM3300 chip from Qualcomm.

  • Aside from the processor info, this article and doesn't really say much. Is it just to steal some of the spotlight from the PocketPC?
    • For its part, Palm says it will gain popularity through its design, which executives say is better and more stylish than the offerings from competitors.
    It's always astounding how clueless executives can be. The cases are nice, but nothing special given the form factor of the many WinCE devices. I would argue that the popularity of the Palm is the relative ease of use of the OS, how easy it is for folks to write apps for it, and how cross-platform it is.
    • "I think we all know that the screen sizes suck, and that the drop-down menus are the road to hell," Yankowski said.
    Yeah, so what is Palm going to do about it? Double the screen size? Replace drop-down menus with voice commands? *shudder*
    • ...by the end of the year, all of the company's handhelds will be able to connect to the Internet.
    So when should we see these? In 6 months?

    Incidentally, I wonder about the use of Transmeta processors in these. Surely someone who reads Slashdot on the inside must know someone who's toying around..

  • Doesn't anyone here get it yet? As soon as some smart person realizes we don't want to carry around all these DIFFERENT devices, no matter how connected they can get to be, and no matter how small each separate item is, they'll build my next computer.

    Meanwhile, I'm researching how to build it myself. It will be a modular (no more ridiculous complete replacements every two years) wearable PC with connectable/disconnectable options for voice (replace cell-phone, using voice over IP); screen (use "embedded" screen in glasses except when I'm presenting); additional storage devices; AND (most importantly) a single, foldable (hinged, to wear while walking), weather-proof keyboard with light action, power-generation (it's been invented already), and excellent layout. The first version will feature the Crusoe 5400 chip, which I expect to be able to run all day on a widely-available ordinary 9-volt battery.

    Is there anybody out there interested in helping me build this? I could raise money so we could both have them by next fall, if we can find a suitable keyboard manufacturer.


  • As some of you are aware, there have been rumblings for some time now that Apple will release a new PDA... Rumors range from it being a MacOS or MacOS-lite kind of device (like WinCE but Mac-themed), to a Palm/Handspring unit with Apple bells n' whistles.

    Hypothesis: Apple sunk a ton o' cash into the Newton, and especially with version 2.0 of NewtOS, came up with some really interesting technology. All ARM native.

    See where I'm going with this? Could this be evidence that Palm and Apple are swapping technology? Granted PalmOS and NewtOS are very different beasts, but moving from Dragonball to ARM would seem like the first logical step. Apple loved writing in Assembler Language in those days.

    // END RUMORMONGERING

  • Precursor to a move to EPOC? (Score:3)

    by Colm@TCD ( 61960 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2000 @09:34AM (#1111120) Homepage
    I know I go on and on [slashdot.org] about Symbian [symbian.com]'s EPOC [symbian.com] operating system, but this ties in nicely with the earlier rumours about Palm possibly using EPOC as the low-level OS for next-generation Palm devices - the ARM processor is the "home" CPU for EPOC, as used on the Psion [psion.com] Revo [psion.com], Series 5mx [series5mx.com] and Series 7 [psion.com]. EPOC has a lot of OS-level features which the Palm OS doesn't, and there's already a reference design [symbian.com] for Palm-like devices...

    It's easy to write EPOC off, as its share of the PDA market is still pretty small (although it's quite high in the UK), but its inclusion in smartphones from later on this year could well see it being widely-adopted at that end of the market, with consequent "sudden" demand for compatible PDAs...

  • Personally, I can't stand grafitti. Everyone with a Palm tells me, "Hey, you get used to it." The hell with that. I want it to get used to me.

    I hope that eventually the Palm catches up with the Newton and lets me write more than one character at a time. Maybe going to the ARM will help that out.

  • Try a Yopy (Score:4)

    by K-Man ( 4117 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2000 @09:39AM (#1111122)
    Here [samsung.co.kr] is a pocket ARM Linux machine. No HD, but Flash, and a CompactFlash slot.

    Sorry for the formatting:

    Display
    240x320, Bright Back-light, True Color TFT Iiquid
    crystal, 65,536 color
    CPU
    206MHz ARM RISC 32bit Microprocessor
    OS
    ARMLinux
    Interface Serial
    RS232C & USB Serial port
    Memory
    32MB RAM, 32MB(64MB) Flash Memory
    Built-In
    Internet Web Browser & E-mail S/W with Mobile phone
    or Wireless Modem
    MP3 Player Function
    MPEG Moving Picture Function
  • I'm sure its just a twist of fate that this announcement comes right on the heels of the release of the PocketPC. They can call the processor anything they want, but its still a damn 68k. About time they decided to upgrade. MS is also making noise about combining your PDA, cell phone, and MP3 player. You can dismiss MS if you want, but Compaq and HP carry serious weight in the corporate world. Palm is gonna have to seriously fight to maintain their position.
  • If you got 7 palms together could you summon Shenron and wish people back from the dead?
    ----
    Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
  • Actually, in Europe they're coming out with a lot of multi-function devices, such as wristwatch cell phones and PDA/cell devices.

    I know that I bought my Palm V because I was sick of carrying around a pocket day calendar, an address book, and a calculator.

    Of course, I own Palm stock from the IPO, so I'm biased.

    An interesting point made in the news item was that they're thinking of phasing out the roman numerals. Maybe we'll just get arcane glyphs instead.

  • It almost sounds like they're copying the "Apple way": Use 68k, get some market share, license partners, switch to RISC, and then drop your licensees. Oops, got that "license partners" part in the wrong place.

    Anyway, if they were really silly, Palm could adopt an Apple-like fat-binary: create a file type of something like "fatb" for it, "rapp" for the StrongARM-only code, leave "appl" for the Dragonball applications and let the device figure out what it can run. I figure the other file types are merely databases so they don't need to change.

  • Change for the better? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I really hope they don't kill Palm's great battery life when they start using 400 MHz processors. Then they would be sacrificing one of their major selling points -- for what? To become more like the MP3-playing PocketPC?

    I really think that Palm currently has a good product that they should be building on rather than scrapping. Unless their new architecture is exceptionally wonderful, they risk losing market share, because they will be launching a new product that competes against their own firmly entrenched installed base.

    Such is The Innovator's Dilemma [harvard.edu] -- long-term success may sometimes require pissing off one's current customers.

  • why does slashdot make such a big deal of anything to do with Palm? Psion have used ARM processors for years. (and they are a lot better than Palm too, but that's not the point)

    Abashed the Devil stood,
    And felt how awful goodness is
  • Stop complaining about how we now need to recompile all of our chess programes so we can run an the new chips. Forward progress means that yes some times we need to recompile or even sometimes rewrite our apps. But this is the price we pay for newer, faster, better. Unless you want to go the x86 way.
    What? I can't spell, wow, I had no idia. Thanks!!!
  • Seems like he would be a great person to interview. Anyone have an in with him (or the other Palm gurus?)
  • I agree with isaac about the usefulness of the silkscreen graffiti area. On the more general issue of the limited display resolution, that is being addressed. No official announcements, but at least one Palm engineer has been observed saying that one or more near-future devices will have resolution higher than 160x160.
  • I guess that Palm is going to seriously screw with their user base in terms of compiled code, unless they do a DragonBall emulator (I guess that for most applications, you don't need balls-out performance for this to work just fine).

    ...especially when you consider that the Dragonball in current Palms is only running at 16 MHz (just twice the speed of a Mac Plus from 15 years ago). If they're going to run the ARM or StrongARM at a speed somewhere in the hundreds-of-MHz range (which they'd need for voice recognition), there ought to be more than enough horsepower for them to do a 68K emulation at least as fast as the real thing.

  • Considering that the DragonBall code base is written for a processor that runs at 50 Mhz, it should not be difficult to emulate it on a 200 Mhz processor. Probably the API won't change much, so a simple recompile will do for many apps.
  • Heh. "Think of it as evolution in action."

    See, hopefully the voice interface will be optional, so it'll only be losers babbling at their PDAs, so it'll be easy to weed them out of the herd before they breed.

    Seriously, though, there is for some bizarre reason a perception that voice-interface would be a good thing, so devices with it may sell better than devices without it. Unfortunately.

  • Personally, I'd love to have a Palm V-sized system (or slightly larger) that could do limited voice recognition.

    This could be something as limited as understanding the months, days of the week, numbers (possibly as high as the millions), years, AM/PM, morning/afternoon/evening/night, and maybe a few commands or other keywords like "with, alarm, minute(s), hour(s), todo, folder" and the like.

    I even know how I'd use it - hit the record button, record a quick note or reminder ("Meet with Scott on Project X"), hold the record button, tell it where to store the recorded item: "Calendar May fifteenth at one pm with fifteen minute alarm" or maybe "Third Monday of every month at nine AM". Or maybe record "Listen to album by Artist X", then store it with "Folder music," or maybe "Todo purchase."

    An awful lot of functionality could be managed with just a little bit of voice recognition and a small pre-defined dictionary of words. With the hardware available, enhanced dictionaries would be an obvious add-in, and as faster processors came along the number of distinct words that could be recognized would go up.

    Overall I'd classify this as a win - if I was looking to purchase a new PDA right now I'd probably get a Palm Vx for its size, but I'd be tempted by some of the lighter CE handhelds for the recording capability. After all, I'm carrying a little digital voice recorder right now for notes when I can't write things down - should I carry two small pieces of electronics that rack up to about 8 ounces or one larger piece that weighs the same?

  • "I think we all know that the screen sizes suck, and that the drop-down menus are the road to hell," Yankowski said.

    Yes, Palm (and WinCE) handhelds have really small screens. But, what's this deal about the pull-down menus? One of the reasons I like my Palm organizer so much is you don't have to worry about the pull-down menus because you rarely use them. And, with MenuHack or PalmOS 3.5, to pull down the menus you just tap the application tab at the top of the screen; what's so hard about that?

    I had been thinking lately about how Palm was going to take that next hardware leap. As much as we all like it, let's face it: the DragonBall is a 20Mhz 16-bit processor in a world that is demanding 32-bit processors more and more. So, the StrongARM sounds like an OK choice. But, this new CEO dude sounds like he doesn't care about the famed "Zen of Palm." It sounds more like he's willing to sacrifice the simplicity and elegance of the Palm design to get a few lame options like "voice activation." If that happens, I think he'll find a lot of Palm faithful going somewhere else (or buying up old Palm units!), and those new users he's trying to attract buying PocketPCs.

    My $0.02, of course.
  • I find this move to the StronARM *very* interesting. Here's why:

    1) Ever since Apple EOL'ed the Newton, a lot of Newton engineers went to work at Palm.
    2) The Palm is going to this new processor.
    3) The Newton had full-screen handwriting recognition.
    4) There's been rumours for the past year that Apple and Palm Computing have a tech sharing deal of some kind in the works.

    Do you think maybe this move is in preparation for a real handwriting recognition feature coming soon to a Palmtop near you? Hmm...
  • There's no doubt in my mind that the ARM is a great chip for PalmOS. Having used Newtons from quite some time, I can attest they have both great battery life and excellent performance. Combined with reasonable color, this will extend the reach of the Palm line into many interesting application spaces, such as palmtop mapping.

    I can forsee this getting a bit rocky, however.

    Remember the last great CISC->RISC migration undertaken by a consumer device company: Apple's move from 68K to PowerPC. One of the things that really hurt Apple was their CISC->RISC migration was managed very poorly and in my opinion set back developer innovation on the Mac a good two years.

    Palm's situation is different; it is unlikely they'll make the same mistakes Apple did; I'm just hoping they don't dream up new ones of their own.

    The sooner a commodity hardware market for Linux PDAs exists, the sooner we can take control of our own destiny. Individual companies controlling platforms are just too untrustworthy.

  • Palm needs a USER programmable wireless device! (Score:3)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2000 @10:26AM (#1111139)

    What the real killer application for the next generation of wireless palm devices should be is wireless communication over about a 10-100m radius. This would allow the USER to own the base stations that the device communicates with - who is going to use wireless internet billed per KILObyte? Not me. Not a lot of people.

    Make the palm have a wireless serial connector - like an RF serial port (Bluetooth, ahem, vapour, ahem), then all sorts of control applications will spring up. Applications to automagically download the weather and slashdot whenever you walk into a micro-service area. If the devices can talk to each other, you can synchronize schedules by walking by friends in the office. The applications are endless!

    If palm doesn't do it, RIM or someone else will. People are in love with 100% connected internet, but that's missing the boat. Remember what made the palm great; It was cheap, and did what you expected it to.

    The trick will be doing it without losing that V form factor.. my Palmpilot Professional looks obese next to the nice shiny new Palm Vx. The microsoft offerings are too fat to get into my pocket; I had a Newton Messagepad (Not the latter generation, though) and it had no-fit-in-pocket-itis.

    Get us programmable wireless palm, with lots of $75 base stations, and you'll see applications pop up everywhere. If bluetooth would ever become available, I'd do this myself. :)

    Kudos

  • I guess that Palm is going to seriously screw with their user base in terms of compiled code, unless they do a DragonBall emulator (I guess that for most applications, you don't need balls-out performance for this to work just fine)

    I'm going to cover a few other points here... I'm a longtime ARM user (back from the Acorn days) and I'm also writing apps for Palm OS right now.

    Palm have always had a history of NOT being a "Microsoft". Their SDK is open and free. You can get a good-quality open and free C compiler: gcc. (It's also maintained by Palm) You can get a good-quality emulator for Mac, Windows and UN*X, partly supported by Palm (they don't support the UN*X version, AFAIK). They document their stuff well, and they answer technical questions.

    You can develop for Palm without spending any money on software -- you don't even *need* a Palm -- you can download the ROM images from Palm if you sign an agreement.

    So, not supporting the Dragonball is not an option. They will. It's as easy as that. Even if they didn't, since they use a pretty high-level API (it's C, but about as high-level C as you can get), targeting more than one processor isn't going to be a problem. Palm apps end up at a maximum of 64K in the large part (okay, some are bigger, but most are under 10K!). So what's the big deal of a recompile and distributing both? Most apps don't use any assembly -- the only time you need it is when there isn't support under your compiler of choice for, say for example, shared libraries.

    I think a move to ARM would only affect about 2% of developers -- writers of hacks and things like Dreadling (www.dreadling.com).

    On other notes, Palm have started bloating their range with color and other whizzy features -- mostly due to customer demand. What they haven't done is abandon their old models: the Palm III and V are still going strong, and the ranges have been enhanced with other variants. I have a IIIc, and color doesn't add much advantage (I bought it as a development platform, so it doesn't really matter to me!) They've also licensed Palm OS to others -- like Handspring, so they can concentrate on their core competency, the simple PDA. It's also pretty interesting that Palm have licensed to Nokia -- I guess that's thanks to the Symbian relationship.

    Well, I digress. Bottom line: a month ago I left my contract job at HP and started working from home writing for Palm OS. In the past month, I've come to realise how much I hated the work I've been doing for the last five years. Writing for Palm OS has rejuvenated my enjoyment of programming. It's wonderful. (Oh, and the fact that I can write code for money while drinking beer at 1 a.m.) The pure satisfaction in writing for a well-designed API is the reason there's so much shareware/freeware for Palm, and hence, why they've got serious market share: three of my friends have recently bought Palms based on seeing how good mine is. Part of that is the wealth of good software -- the thing that's always nobbled Psion.

    I'll shut up now. (Score: -1 Verbal Diarea)

  • Re:Try a Yopy (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sadly, the release date for the Yopy has been pushed out to August. However, a pre-release SDK will (supposedly) be out April 30th. It will be on the Gmate [gmate.co.kr] site. They already have Doom [gmate.co.kr] running on it. If they ever get it out, the Yopy will be a must-have Geek toy! Cpt_Kirks
  • REBEL.com [rebel.com]'s NetWinder [rebel.com] (originally designed and formerly made by Corel's hardware division, which REBEL bought) runs an ARM port of Linux.

    These are nice little boxen. They run off a 9v AC adapter, and supposedly will run off a 9v battery if necessary for a short period.

  • I suggest that we not be so quick to assume that the voice processing capabilities are strictly for voice recognition. This could be their move to run end-around Nextel. Wouldn't that be cool, I mean, with a flip-top case like the Palm III - life will be that much more like living in a star trek episode.

    You say that as if it'd be a good thing. [grin]

    Really, try listening to the human-computer voice interfacing in Trek. It's screamingly unrealistic. Which makes sense, because they weren't going for realism, they were going for a quick&lazy way of presenting information for the audience.

    Voice interface may become useful at some point, for some uses. But it won't be like Trek.

  • ARM kicks Crusoe's butt for low power consumption.
    It's speed/power ratio is much higher.
    The only thing Crusoe has over ARM is x86 compatibility.
  • THANK YOU!

    I've been telling people this for ages, but since the PDA 'revolution' with these devices is really just starting to catch on widespread, not a lot of people have had their particular device for more than a year or so. Wear & tear? What, it's brand new?

    But a few of my co-workers and I have had various incarnations of Palms for years, and had each one for at least a year or more. I had a Palm III for two years, and through dedicated, heavy, extreme use (I used it for EVERYTHING), it has a dime-sized thick patina of wear on the silkscreen part. I am SO glad that that wasn't part of the display.

    Yeah yeah, when it wears out, just upgrade... but that's falling for the old PC fallacies-- I mean, do you really need to double the memory and processing power of your PDA every 6 months? These tend (at least in my experience) to be more for the long haul.

    And as for writing all over the screen, I really wouldn't trade that dime sized spot of wear for a fog of scratches ALL OVER the screen.
  • An interesting point made in the news item was that they're thinking of phasing out the roman numerals. Maybe we'll just get arcane glyphs instead.

    The PDA formerly known as Palm ...

  • How long will it take to get the GCC/PilRC toolset working with PalmOS on ARM?

    How long will it take to get a working PalmOS Emulator using ARM?

    Oh, I'll be able to buy MetroWerks Code Warrior? I see... That means I'll have to buy a Mac or a Windows PC. I won't be able to use my preferred development environment and I'll have to use an IDE which I don't particularly like.

    I don't mean to complain (much) -- Palm has been great at making developers happy. I'm just a little worried about when or if a Free Software toolkit will be available.
  • Assuming they go with a StrongARM chip no slower than 200MHz at launch, one nifty thing is that the increase in power and speed over a 16MHz 68020-family chip like the Dragonball is so great that you could run the Dragonball-based Palm binaries on it at full speed in an emulation harness easily.

    This should be fun.

    So much for 2-month battery life from a pair of AAA cells, though.
  • How about a Slashdot interview with Jeff Hawkins?
  • That MSM3300 chip has got to be one of the most impressive chips I've read about in a long time. It has just about everything built in. Bluetooth, GPS, memory card controller, ARM7, etc..

    Phones in 2 years are going to be SO different. I can't wait. My StarTac digital (pre-WAP enabled. Damn!) is feeling long in the tooth already.

    mike

  • Re:ARM? (Score:1)

    by dne ( 10173 )

    Dear AC, get some clues: StrongARM SA-1110 Linecard [intel.com].

    Hint: ARM is king of power-efficiency in the (high-end) embedded world.

  • Good one!

    Perhaps the new one will be called "head" instead. (And I'm certainly not going to do any riffs on that one!)

  • Palm Inc. won't move to EPOC because they've positioned themselves directly against it. One of the goals of the spin-off from 3Com was to focus Palm more on developing PalmOS and licensing it to others. Now, OTOH, if ARM PalmOS ends up having a lot of EPOC-like pieces, well, there you go.
  • the real killer application for the next generation of wireless palm devices should be is wireless communication over about a 10-100m radius.

    You mean . . . like AirPort [apple.com]? Its range is several times wider than Bluetooth. Lucent makes an Airport-compatible card. Hmm . . . how long until a Springboard module is available?

  • Don't post at six a.m. with sleep-dep up to your eyeballs.

    Neil
  • I remember a while back a guy from a mobile phone maker commenting that they used either WinCE or EPOC instead of PalmOS because "the screen size couldn't be changed." They may have decided they were going to have to handle different size screens anyway so they could license to other mobile device makers.
  • This is slightly inaccurate. The StongARM was not an ARM design it was an evolution of the ARM designed in cooperation between Digital and ARM.

    When Digital was bought by Compaq the the rights to the processor reverted to ARM. Intel bought Digital's fabrication facilities unfortuately for them that entailed also having to make StrongARM and Alpha even though Intel have competing processors.

    As for ARM being the next Intel this won't happen for two reason. First ARM is fabless and will remain that way. Second ARM's stated aim is to make money for it's employies in the best way it can rather than to dominate the processor market which is Intel's mission :)

    -dp
  • Remember the last great CISC->RISC migration undertaken by a consumer device company: Apple's move from 68K to PowerPC. One of the things that really hurt Apple was their CISC->RISC migration was managed very poorly and in my opinion set back developer innovation on the Mac a good two years.

    Wha?

    Apple has been roundly praised for the seamlessness of their CISC->RISC migration. I am able to run crufty Mac desk accesories from 1985 on my iMac DV without problem, even though there isn't a single bit of hardware in common between the machine that software was developed for and the one on which it is currently running.

    What (nearly) killed Apple was the release of Windows 95 and Apple's piss-poor response to it. Rather than actually develop a modern operating system which had interesting (to end users) differences from Win95 and a spot-on marketing campaign to advertise this, Apple ran a stupid ad campaign saying that Win95 was just like a Mac (well, gee, it was just like a Mac, and the machines were compatible and cost hundreds less! Why buy a Mac?). Apple had wasted hope, money, and time on the half-promises that were Copland, and then spent effort on OpenDoc, even though the only possible end result for OpenDoc would be to hurt the large developers that had kept Apple afloat in the first place (Microsoft and Adobe/Aldus, especially). Setting up a cloning system that actually managed to lose them money was the next brilliant mistake.

    -jon

  • "all ARM native"

    Actually, almost all of the NewtonOS (everything except for basic hardware interfaces, and apple's hwr) is in newtonscript. There haven't been any implementations of newtonscript anywhere except on arm cpus, but there is no reason for this (the two are completely unrelated). Apple's HWR is in C++ actually (and designed and coded under unix).

    GNUton is a project to implement the NewtonOS in python, check out http://archive.dstc.edu.au/AU/staff/david-arnold/n ewton/gnuton/
  • My first thought when I say the mention of voice activation was "Who the hell wants to talk to their palm pilot?!". Yeah, the stylus input is irritating at times if you have to click a lot of buttons or you write a whole lot, but having known a number of friends with RSI that have tried voice recognition, I am really not eager to have my text undergo additional garbling at the hands of a pilot in need of a miracle ear. Hopefully, Palm will have the sense to keep voice activation as a disable-able option, or maybe relegate it to a particular product line (Palm IV? Palm VIII? Palm ((6!) + 8?))?), which I will then proceed not to buy. Does anyone out there see a rampant demand for a voice activated handheld?

  • Newton used ARM, Newton engineers at PALM.. (Score:3)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2000 @12:55PM (#1111174)
    The DragonBall has a 68000 history behind it, so it was a simpler move for a number of embedded engineers.

    When Mr. Jobs cancelled the spin-off of Newton Inc, within 2 weeks 32 of the engineers from the Newton Project left in mass to Palm.
    They followed a few others who had left eairler, and I'm sure told the 32 how wonderful it was to work at Palm.

    As for the Newton technology in a Palm....
    1) The original Graffitti authors are gone. So the sacred cow of graffitti can go. Same for the Dragonball.
    2) The authors of rosetta are at Palm. They COULD do the handwriting on the palm (and rumor is this has happened...;-) ) BUT the Apple lawyers would sue.

    SO....If Apple wants to market a re-labeled Palm, and Palm wants handwriting, the simplest way is to swap IP.

  • That is just a pointless troll. If you had the courage of your convictions you would identify yourself. British technological innovation is alive and well thank you very much.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • I'm not saying the emulator wasn't technically brilliant -- clearly it was, and a good thing too because it took Apple forever to get all the 68K code out of the OS (if it is all out).

    The really stupid thing they did in the transition was not porting Lisa pascal. You had to convert to C. For chrissakes, with all the ingenuity and effort that went into the emulation and fat binary formats, they couldn't spare a few man years for their developers? This set a lot of innovative small developers back a year or more. It took forever for native applications to come out, and in the mean time they ran slower on the newest hardware.

    You may not have been around long enough to remember, but MacOS in the early 90s was a hotbed of innovative software development. This was a terrific blow to people who didn't read the tea leaves and jump ship to Windows. Of course, this was followed up by the Copland and OpenDoc fiascos. I disagree with you on the OpenDoc issue -- it would only have hurt the big developers to the degree it opened the door for small innovative competitors, which would have been good for Apple and for the users.

    So, mistake #1: during the CISC->RISC transition, Apple brazenly and wontonly pissed all over their developer base.

    Apple in the corporate market today seems like an oxymoron, but back then there was a significant presence at the higher corporate echelons. In the RISC to CISC move Apple dropped their Unix, A/UX. Darwin/shmarwin -- A/UX rocked, ten years ago. And don't tell me Unix won't fly in the small server market. Their was no reason they could not have grabbed some of Microsoft and Novell's market share, but they blew it in the CISC->RISC transition by killing their most promising product. If they supported A/UX and had developed something like Samba, the corporate IT market might look very different today. But not only did they drop A/UX, they also dropped Appleshare Pro which ran on it (and had the advantage of the Berkeley file system which was better than HFS). In another short term profit maximizing move they didn't give any of these high end server customers any upgrade path -- everything had to be done with new virgin licenses at new software costs. It was a complete slap in the face to people who'd gone out on a limb to advocate Macs as servers.

    So, Mistake #2: Key products and market segments got lost in the CISC->RISC transition, and Apple responded by milking what was left of them for short term gain.

    Finally, there was mistake #3, which was everything at Apple got more complicated around then. Apple's CPU product line multiplied, their software projects mutiplied, their OS gained major cruft, major projects started to be announced and cut in aimless patterns. The worst thing is that the least brainwashed people went from loving to hating their macs because the crufty OS became an order of magnitude worse in stability than Windows has ever been. This is not a CISC->RISC thing per se, although I don't doubt that it added to the problematic cruft. PalmOS is starting to sprout new features and the product lines are going to be shook up -- it's something to watch.

    So this thread isn't totally OT, the point here is that in a closed source world, if you are a developer you have to have a lot of trust in the vendor when they make a move like this. Your fate is in their hands.

  • Just what I want... more wasted cycles.

    The reason the palm pilot can compete with WinCe is that Wince systems are so full of crud that they burn power for no reason. I like not having to worry about batterys for months at a time. If they want multimedia put in a second cpu and swtich off the fast one most unless its needed. Considering the only multi-media feature I would use is a tone dialer I wouldn't buy one of the new devices.

    What I would like to see is a palm in a watch. That would be useful.

    -tim

  • ARDI [ardi.com] would be happy to license Syn68k [ardi.com] to Palm. It requires a little effort to add Dragonball support and to write an ARM back-end, but we already have a fast portable back-end. My guess is we'd have apps running quickly and correctly in under two weeks and blazing in under two months.

    Connectix [connectix.com]'s Speed Doubler [connectix.com] also has a fast dynamic recompiling synthetic 680x0. Their target is the PPC, not x86. I don't know how much of their code would be useful for such a project, but they clearly have the experience.

    I can't speak for Connectix, but if anyone can introduce me via e-mail [mailto] to anyone appropriate at Palm, I'll make sure ARDI follows up.

  • If this is what I think it's about, this could easily be Palm's death sentence.

    Seriously.

    The Palm's setup is a very delicate balance of features and power, and changing it around needs to be done pretty carefully. Add a color screen, for example, and battery life might suffer. Change the serial port on the bottom, and suddenly several accessories don't work.

    Swap the processor chip for a larger one? You get a *big* ripple.

    Think about it. Yes, a lot of apps could be solved by a simple recompile. But what about those of us who use applications that are no longer being developed by the authors? We'll have to make do without those, which is one point against.

    If Palm does include an emulation layer, that's going to require an even stronger processor. Thus, more power to said processor. And thusly, less battery efficiency. Another point against.

    Consider, then, that there are three major things that get the Palm sold:

    1) The size and simplicity of the device;
    2) The gigantic number of accessories;
    3) The *very* long term reliability.

    Swap out the processor and 2 gets hurt badly, and 3 takes a hit as well.

    (Oh, and as a totally aside thought - I'm not a Palm developer, so i don't know for certain, but... what happens to HackMaster, and all the hacks that come with it? Would *they* make it with just a recompile? Would they work reliably on an emulation layer?)

  • I had to re-read this post several times before I was able to believe it.

    Palm must think very dimly of their HUGE already-established user base if they're trying to pull a stunt like this. Sure, whiz-bang new features are nice and all, but is the cost of an entire readily-available software base justifiable?

    I know that if I want some new kind of whiz-bang program right now, I can go off to Palmgear or Tucows or even Joe's Web Site and download a Palm app, and I !!!KNOW!!! it will work. The Palm architecture has remained extremely stable, between hardware and OS releases. Hell, I even have some PalmOS 1.0 programs, written for the old Pilot 1000 (BEFORE "Palm" came into the title)... AND THEY STILL WORK!!! But when the new architecture takes over, poof, there go literally thousands of perfectly good programs. Sure, some of the developers will port, but that will take time (during which you can't use the program), and for commercial programs, I'm sure they won't just *GIVE* the upgrades away, being corporations and all. And what of the shareware/freeware/GPL developers? Can they afford to buy whole new development environments? And those using the free/GPL dev tools, well too bad! They don't generate the right kind of code any more!! THOSE will have to be ported as well.

    I just went on a bit of a spending spree to outfit my new Handspring Visor Deluxe (GREAT machine, btw -- ignore the (mostly based on old/outdated information) reviews and get one today!) Got all sorts of cool goodies. Mobile WinFax, so that I can send FAXes from my new Handspring Modem module while on the go. Documents to Go, which lets me read those oh-so-common MS Office files. And probably my #1 most used program: Landware's Pocket Quicken. Since I use desktop Quicken to track my bank accounts, now I can have that exact same data on the go as well. Now I always know whether or not I can afford that new hard drive, or whether I have paid the phone bill already. The thought that I will most likely have to re-buy everything again, when I decide that I want the Next Big Thing, really irritates me. I've learned to expect this kind of behavior from Microsoft, NOT from Palm. Sigh, there goes the neighborhood.

    A while back, I was forced to use (ugh, gag, puke) Windows CE devices at a (former) employer of mine. This was probably one of the most confusing things in the Universe. HPC, HPC Pro, or Palm PC (now Pocket PC)? SH1 or MIPS processor? COlor or B/W? I wanted to use ACT! on my Palm PC, so I went looking. Yeah, sure enough, Symantec had a WinCE version of ACT! But it was only for Handheld PC. Boo, hiss.

    The new Palm IIIc has already helped start this type of schism in the Palm community. Now you have to know if your app is color enabled or not, before you know you can use it safely. The new CPU architecture will be even worse.

    Palm, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???!?!

    --
    Donald Burr of Borg
    WWW: http://www.borg-cube.com/
    [= Resistance is futile! =]
  • "Here is" is probably too strong a statement:

    "Here is a description of a not-yet-existing product, that the manufacturer claims will etc. etc."

    When something ships, or at least they announce a ship date and a price, then I'll be impressed.
  • They want a 0.4W processor, not a 4W processor. The Crusoe is too power hungry for this type of application - on e of the Palms biggest selling points was that it could run for weeks without recharging, and they don't want to get rid of that.

    Anyway, a 200MHz StrongARM/ARM10 would be able to emulate a 16MHz Dragonball in its sleep. Couple this with a 240x240 or 320x240 screen and things get interesting. I don't care about colour, but more contrast in the greyscale screen would be great. Personally, I just think that everyone will recompile their programs for the "ARM Palm", and losing programs that use 68k assembler isn't that much of a chore when you suddenly get programs written in ARM assembler! No more SimCity, more like SimCity2000 on your PDA.

  • The ARM will be 0.4W, not 4W. The ARM is a lot better design for a lot mess money - a Crusoe processor is going to cost $30, even in bulk. A 200MHz StrongARM can be had to $10.

    Anyway, ARM is fabless - want a 0.18micron 200MHz ARM processor doing 0.1W? Easy. Intel will release their StrongARM upgrade soon anyway - 400MHz StrongARMs!

    Anyway, the fact that the StrongARM is so low power and is still at 0.35micron is a testament to is great design.

  • The ARM is much lower power than the Crusoe. The Crusoe also starts at 400MHz and 2-5W, the ARM goes up to 200MHz and probably uses max 0.4W. The ARM is a licensable CPU core - very important in a Palm device because the CPU, Graphics, Sound, IO and everything else can be sqidged into one small chip - the Crusoe requires a large CPU and then more - not viable for a small device, and not Crusoes market.

    Anyway, Transmeta said that they wouldn't be writing a 68k emulation for the Crusoe, so it is all irrelevant anyway. I wish that people would research what they talk about before blabbing it all out here...

  • But, I too will miss popping in a couple of AAA batteries and not worrying about batteries for a month.

    The ARM isn't some kind of 15W monstrosity! It is an order of magnitude faster than the DragonBall, and fully 32bit, with a lovely ISA, but it probably uses up the same amount of power, maybe you will have to sacrifice 5 hours out of that month! Anyway, other technology will more than make up for that - lower power screens, memory, better batteries and more.

  • I'd have to agree with that.

    Speaking as a Palm user and a NaturallySpeaking user, I'd be delighted if they could be combined. It's far from perfect yet, but I'd say it's giving accuracy comparable to OCR programs 5-6 years ago. _Good_ OCR programs, that is. Certainly more accurate than Graffiti, which has started consistently misrecognising 'e', of all the letters to get wrong :(

    Dictation is a valuable facility that works well. It's certainly something I regard as a worthwhile addition, and I can type pretty well.

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