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.