PalmBlog

From WSJ: Palmsource Elects New Board Member

This from today's Wall Street Journal:

"P. Howard Edelstein was appointed by the directors to the board of PalmSource Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., the provider of hand-held and smart-phone devices and a subsidiary of Palm Inc. Mr. Edelstein is president and chief executive at Radianz, an independent company with an Internet protocol-based network for the global financial-services industry. He previously served as an entrepreneur in residence at Warburg Pincus LLC, a private-equity and venture-capital firm. Mr. Edelstein had served as president and CEO of Thomson Financial Electronics Settlements Group, which he founded and later merged with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s Tradesuite business to create Omgeo, the securities-industry utility for straight-through processing. Mr. Edelstein serves on the board of directors of Alacra Inc. and Skillsoft PLC."

GPS: Global Palm Spectacular

Once upon a time I decided to connect a GPS (global positioning system) receiver to my Palm handheld.  Unfortunately, because the handheld in question was my old IIIxe (8 megs of RAM, 160 x 160 pixel monochrome display, 16 Mhz slow processor), that story had an unhappy ending.  The maps took forever to Hotsync onto the IIIxe, they did not display clearly, it was too slow for routing -- in short, $50 on the receiver wasted.

Fast forward to 2003.  I now have a Tungsten C with 64 Megs of RAM plus an SD slot for expansion, a 64,000-color 320x320 display, and (most importantly) 400 Mhz of processing speed to play with.  Having heard that Radio Shack was liquidating their Palm-compatible Digitraveler GPS receiver for a mind-boggling $40 including cables, I decided to give it a try.  I took the advice of various online forum participants and downloaded the beta of Mapopolis' new Navigator for Palm, bought the RS unit, loaded the three maps that would cover my trip from work to home, and gave it a try.  I clipped the Digitraveler to my car's windshield, gave it a fair amount of time to find the satellites the first time, and fired up the app.

Wow.

WOW!

The Digitraveler worked as advertised, and Mapopolis Navigator (a complete revision of their old software, and only compatible with OS5 handhelds like the Tungsten C) not only provides speedy route calculation, but actually does voice prompts.  Although the volume coming out of the T|C's speaker could be better, and I'd like an option to choose more highways (the route it gave me for my ride home had more local roads than I would have chosen), the fact is that it works and works well.  Highly recommended. {Jonathan}

New Handheld from Palm(One): Excellent Entry-Level Business Handheld

Palm (soon to be PalmOne) has been establishing a strong three-part brand identity recently: the Zire line is marketed to consumers; the Tungsten line for businesspeople, and the Treo line (acquired in the merger with Handspring) for those wishing phone/PDA combinations. Having already launched both low-end and high-end units on the consumer front (the $99 Zire being the former, and the Zire 71, with its stellar display and built-in digital camera, the latter), Palm is about to turn its attention back to the Tungsten line.

While there have been a number of rumors flying recently about three new Palm models, only one has been reportedly spotted (and photographed): the new business-focused Tungsten E.  Think of the Tungsten E as the business suit equivalent to the corporate casual Zire 71: twice the memory of the Zire 71 (32 megs to the Z71's 16), the same 144 Mhz processor (quite speedy, although not up to the 400 Mhz in the Tungsten C), stereo sound and a Secure Digital expansion slot...but no digital camera.  The Tungsten E also lacks both the slider of the Tungsten T/T2 siblings or the keyboard of the Tungsten C; it has the traditional silk-screened Graffiti area (Graffiti 2, actually), and neither Bluetooth nor Wi-Fi connectivity built in.  The price?  According to the person who found one, it will sell for an incredible $199!

To my mind, the Tungsten E is close to the ideal entry level Palm handheld.  It's powerful, simple to use, has plenty of memory, is expandable, and is affordable.  The one potential negative is that, for whatever reason, Palm has reportedly equipped the T|E with a USB connector rather than what has become the standard Palm Universal Connector.  This means that the many peripherals currently for sale for Palms (from cradles to chargers to keyboards to GPS navigation systems) won't work with the T|E.  For an existing user looking to trade up, this can mean extra cost, but a new user won't have a collection of now-useless peripherals.  Still, if the T|E hits the marketplace with the specs reported by Mobileslash today, I will certainly be recommending it strongly for my friends and colleagues looking to buy a new PalmOS handheld. {Jonathan}