Flutterby™! : Palm OS 4.1

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Palm OS 4.1

2001-11-01 17:28:58+00 by TC 3 comments

Welp Palm OS 4.1 is out and has some niffty improvements but is it enough? Microsoft has had their usual 4 years of screwups and has probably become dangerous in the palm device market.
Long sigh...sometimes it's like watching a train about to hit a school bus. You scream for the driver to move forward but she's too scared

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Software Engineering moron ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment made: 2001-11-01 17:54:28+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

The mobile stuff seems like it's overdue (although from what I can tell, mostly a matter of providing documentation for turning stuff on). What I haven't seen from the Pocket PC[Wiki] folks yet is real battery life, or the form facter of the Palm Vx[Wiki] or the Sony CLIE[Wiki] devices. I'll gladly give up color for size and battery life.

As a slightly side note, for a few years I've been saying "I am not a market sample", because I simply couldn't believe that some of the crap that was getting developed was actually finding a market. I'm beginning to think that a good portion of that feeling was the whole irrationality of the .com boom. Now that my long predicted demise of Webvan has finally happened (if Schwan's couldn't do it in those markets, why did a bunch of nerds with no business experience think it was a good idea?), I'm beginning to wonder if my sense of what sucks and what rocks isn't actually fairly well calibrated.

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:33:09+00 by: Larry Burton

I'm still using the Palm IIIx and I'm still happy with it. I bought two Palm M100s for my wife and youngest son and really felt shorted by the notepad application they had. That seems to be the only reason for me to upgrade to OS 4.1. I probably will, but not today. $30 is cheap but I can always use it for something else.

I've looked at the Pocket PC but at about $200 more than what I've got invested in my Palm IIIx it just don't float my boat.

#Comment made: 2002-02-21 05:33:11+00 by: ebradway

Seeing how the 1GB DIMMs I have are priced at $136 at Crucial, I'd like to see a Palm device that has similar functionality to what we have now but also acts as a solid-state storage device for my 'critical' data. 1GB is enough for today's favorite MP3s, almost every DOC file I ever created, every line of C and Perl I've ever worked on, and enough support files to actually do something with it. What this would give me is a Palm device with my real data and eliminate 60% of the reason I have a laptop (essentially a big floppy disk).

Let's see a Clie in the form factor of the PalmV with wireless IP and 1GB of storage. Make docking stations at the malls and airports where I can drop my Palm in and have a fullsize color screen and keyboard with all my data. How 'bout letting me drop the Palm into a cradle in my car to play the MP3s stored on it and maybe access some other data. Further, how 'bout storing my PKI keys on the Palm - maybe even build authentication by capturing stroke data on my signature to unlock the keys!