Once Again, Sigh

Palm strikes once again. They just don't get it. Probably more like they just don't care. I have had problems with Palm software for several months syncing in virtual machines. I have abandoned Windoze software with the exception of about four programs that I have found no Open Source equivalent. One of these is a third party Palm program I have had for years and use frequently. I have had to jump through hoops to make it all work because Palm sync will not work in a virtual environment.

At Christmas I bought my wife a new laptop. Since she is a regular Windoze user both at home and at work, I decided to buy a machine with Windoze 7 rather than a refurbished unit with XP installed. The logic being she would be comfortable with W7 when her company inevitably made the switch.

All was going pretty well with the setup. I found one of her programs required compatibility mode settings, but did run OK once set up that way. I then tried to setup Palm for her to sync her AT&T Centro  phone contacts, calendar, etc.  No matter what, it wouldn't connect. The funny thing was it was acting just exactly like Palm in the virtual machines. It was an issue with USB connection.

I went to the Palm site and searched for W7 compatibility issues. Nothing. I dug around in the forums and finally found it. Lots of it. Straight forward search parameters wouldn't find it but it was there. Lots of people were having problems and it seemed Palm didn't want it known. The general gist was if you had a 32 bit processor there might be a way to get it to work, but no instructions or links provided. If you had a 64 bit processor you were just up a creek. It would not work. One forum user asked the moderator when they might have a solution? His response? “I doubt that Palm (or Access, the company that owns Palm OS and Palm Desktop) will be releasing any updated drivers for Palm OS devices.”   Link:  http://forums.palm.com/palm/board/message?message.uid=246625#U246625

Some of the users responses:
I have no idea when palm will have drivers for windows 7. You can't talk to anyone. No one can help. It is now 2 hours that I have been sitting home waiting for PALM "technical support" to call me back. Now I have a palm full of data and programs that I need for work that I can not use. I have spent eight hours of my day off on the phone with nothing solved.

Another: I have close to 10 years of customer notes and contacts in my palm pilot. This is indeed a disaster.

These are TX users and they were eventually able to sync with wifi. The Centro has no wifi. They say you can do it with Bluetooth, but the new laptop has no BT and there are apparently no W7 compatible BT adapters available? My TX died a crushing death and I am using an E2 for right now.  So, we have two Centro phones and two E2s that will not work with W7?

We have been Palm users from the start. We have had twelve Palm devices that we can remember. And they doubt they will develop drivers for “legacy devices”? What are we supposed to do? Oh, I know, just throw them away and buy new Palm Pre units. Right. So they can do it all over again? Besides the Pre is not available on my network, so they want me to change carrier as well? No, I think I'll try something else. Oh and don't get me started on Motorola. Maybe a Nokia. I had one of those a long time ago. It was a great phone. Maybe I'll  spend a little more and get an N900 (runs Linux, no connection to Micro$oft or Palm and is getting great reviews).

I'll be damned if I'll give them another chance to screw me up a third time and I'll bet there are many more who trust their business interests to M$ & Palm with the expectation they will not be abandoned. Not a chance, even if they finally decide to fix all the problems they should have already corrected (they've know this a long time). They just don't get it. Your customers are your most valuable asset. Without them, you loose. My Palm days are history. Just as fast as I can make it happen. I'm tired of spending money to be treated this way.

Generals running off at the mouth

    I'm having trouble with this open discussion about our military requirements in Afghanistan and Iraq. This often has allowed release of what seems like sensitive information such as troupe strengths and manpower deployment capabilities. There are others listening that might be emboldened by some of the data.

    Military men are subordinate to the President and as such need to keep their mouths shut about such things, instead of trying to sway public opinion to their personal agendas.

    How dare a U.S. Military General tell the world he has a limit of 8,000 men available to send to Afghanistan and then only if he pulls all of his men out of Iraq. This is so much like an idiot running off at the mouth and as a top level General should, of all people, know better. I think they need to be muzzled for security breaches.

Palm, the Pre and it's Abandoned Loyalists

According to the latest news, it looks like Palm is having problems selling the Pre. Imagine that. It's choice of Sprint as a carrier? It's failure to sync to individuals personal machines. It's lousy support for "legacy" applications. It all adds up to abandonment of its loyal fan base. I'd like to add my complaints.

As an early Palm adopter, I am disappointed in Palm's path of development. They think they know what's best for us, or is it what's best for them? A last ditch effort to survive? If so, they blew it. They never really considered what we wanted or needed. It looks like they wanted to be an Apple iPhone, failing to realize that if I wanted an iPhone, I'd already have one. I have issues with the iPhone and the quality of the applications. The iPhone appears to fail miserably at meeting my needs.

I'm afraid that the Palm Pre will fail at meeting my needs as both a phone and a PDA.  The limitation of Sprint as the sole carrier is a major obstacle. I have a long established relationship with a carrier that I know performs well. I have had an ongoing problem with Sprint that a couple of businesses I worked for selected obviously on the basis of cost. And when you need it most, will you be in one of the "dreaded dead zones"? My carrier never let me down and on several occasions worked flawlessly when Sprint failed. On a business level, I had problems using my personal system to overcome shortcomings of the company's Sprint relationship. I was aware the company was not that generous with personal use of their phone services. That's why I was carrying two phones in the first place. Other carriers appear reluctant to provide the Pre. There is no way I will switch to Sprint, no matter how much they lower the cost.

It appears that because of its web-centric nature, Palm has reduced the applications to the lowest common denominator, rather than using the opportunity for providing innovative improvements to its applications.

There are many third party programs for the original Palms that were written to correct the original Palm's applications. Palm could have made major improvements to functionality of its device rather than jumping on the iPhone bandwagon, hoping someone else will write programs that fill the gaps in what Palm provides. At its best it is a cheapest approach or an attempt at providing income selling components in the company store, oh, I mean Application Store.

I can name a few applications that need improvement. For example, an attempt at improving Tasks with indented grouping of tasks, good Task integration with the Calendar and reminders. And of course, my favorite peeve, an attempt at creating a universal full featured address book.

I am also opposed to having my information entrusted to others. I have too often watched "others" fail to protect that information. If you need an example, think about how often peoples credit card info has been breached. How many times have personal medical records been found in some businesses trash?

I finally switched to a combo device after years of refusing. The integration of the Palm OS with a telephone was a joke. They ruined the contacts application. They eliminated birthdays and their link to calendar reminders. I lost all birthday entries. They dropped Graffiti (I could write Graffiti faster than I could type). And because it is not a Multitasking OS it appeared to hang for seconds at a time (apparently doing telephone related tasks). I now understand why others (some that I recommended Palm to) have complained they hated the thing. So do I.

The end result of this rant is my extreme disappointment in Palm. I started with a Palm III. I personally used 10 devices, upgrading when I could and replacing when I damaged one. Several times I gave them as gifts. Over the years I have purchased and upgraded software to improve the units functionality, some of which have become essential and some of which have years of information in their data formats. Some of those developers have indicated they are dropping development for Palm. Others are moving their efforts to Windows Mobile in the next release. So, it has become obvious that Palm is dead and here I sit, holding the bag. This is company loyalty for their customers? I think bviously not from Palm.

What to do? I am no longer interested in Windoze having switched to Linux. Apple devices do not play nicely with Linux either. Blackberry? Simbian? Android? Maybe, but it appears to exclusively web-centric. Dump the phone and go back to two devices? Sooner or later the old Palms will no longer be able to be found, then what? Anyone have any ideas short of going to a Franklin Daytimer (no offense)? That just seems pretty outdated in today’s world even if it is still available.

Well, here we are again

It's been about 5 years since I last tried this. I looked back at the old posts and found them still pretty much valid. I was particularly amused about the search puppy. I had never forgotten about it and was really pleased Google had preserved the old posts and I was able to recover them.

The "Puppy incident" was significant in that it illustrates how childish Micro$oft views it's customers and how they make it so not obvious to make changes. Windoze has had all these things scrambled up with every release of the OS. I goes beyond the OS to the office suite, and every thing else they do. The incident was the turning point for me. While I still have Windoze on two machines and a VM Windoze on my laptop, my primary personal OS is Linux. Mint 7.0 to be exact. So, the Puppy became the final straw that drove me away. None of my systems have the new Windoze versions, they all run the X P versions.

In my world there have been several leaving Windoze, going to Linux and Mac. In spite of what M$ wants people to believe, Linux is growing up and Mac is gaining in use. The five hundred pound canary is loosing. More on this at a later time. I do like my system now and it is working great.

I am reworking the website and have plans for it and the Blog, including political comments, computer notes, and genealogy items. I hope others find it interesting and worth the read.

Fear and Loathing in Washington

Can you believe it? Bushes cronies are afraid of Cat Stevens? The man who has preached peace and love his whole life. The man who is a respected member of the academic world, who supports numerious charities and still preaches peace might be a terrorist.

He scares them alright, but I bet it is not about his support of "questionable" charities that they fear. More like they are afraid of what he might stir up in the in the flower children and the current younger generation. As a voice for peace, he threatens everything the Bush bunch stands for. Loss of all that military industrial money from war supplies.? And the Saudi connection with their ties to the 9/11 killers. and the French, Russian and Americian arms dealers who supplied Iraq for years in spite of the brutality of that government (if you can call it a govenrment).

The Patriot Act. What a name. What an insult, actually. There is nothing patriotic about it. It is a means for the government to undermine the fundamentals of freedom in an effort to placate the fears of the weak at heart cowards among the Americian people. Come on Americia. Stand up and face the music. There is a price to pay for freedom. While the attacks on us in New York are horrors none of us will forget soon, they pale in comparison to Pearl Harbor, Hitler and many, many other insults to freedom our nation has endured over the years for it's freedom.

From the same musical era; Paranoria strikes deep, into your heart it will creap...

Come on America, get a grip. Stand up and be strong and true to the rights of people. All people not just to the ones the govenrment thinks we should. We are supposed to believe people are innocent untill proven guilty. We are supposed to believe in freedom of speech. For all people. Including Cat Stevens or what ever the hell he calls himself these days.

Murder and Mayhem

I am so disgusted with the brutal murder of civilians in the name of Islamic causes. Not just Islamic causes, but any cause for that matter. It is a form of blackmail. It is nothing more than common street crime. It does nothing to advance their causes, it only offends the common decency.

I think criminals such as these should be hunted down like dogs in the street and if necessary destroyed to prevent their escape. While I strongly oppose capitol punishment, I find myself feeling these people are basically sub-human and don't deserve the rule of law. I know, I'm wrong. I know that's what is the real difference in our system (or is supposed to be), that all men are equil under the eyes of the law. But, crimes such as these are commited by the lowest form of criminal and all effort should be expended to stop them.

How many more people have to be killed in the name of God? What kind of God could approve of this kind of action? By now we should all realize it's just a man's excuse to vent his hate.

None of the Above

Just a little note on the current political mess. It's too bad our founding fathers didn't have the fore site to require a "None of the Above" checkbox on all political ballots. It would put an end to the common current practice of choosing the "lesser of two evils."

As I watch the goings-ons, One day I think he has got to go! He has no respect for the Americian way of law, freedom, equality and Americian pie. Especially when it applies to non-Americians. One of the problems the settlers had with the British rulers was the practice of locking them up and throwing away the key. Particularily effective with vocal objectors. Our current President seems to think it is not necessary to apply the rules of proper fair treatment to those he holds in cages in Cuba. He does not see the need to rigidly adhere to the rules of war, hiding prisonors from the International Red Cross. These are things we suffered in WWII. How is it possible to be guilty of those things today.

Then the next day, I look at the alternative and see a man who has almost no understanding of the normal Americian's reality of life. He seems to change from day to day. I swear this man scares me worse than the other angers me.

I want someone who stands for Truth, Justice and the Americian Way. As corny as that may sound today, it is more true than ever. So I wish there was a None of the Above box I could check and make them start all over.