Palm announced today that they were canceling the Foleo Mobile companion - see this entry in the Official Palm Blog and "Palm Cancels the Foleo" in Palm InfoCenter.
The Foleo - a small notebook device running Linux - was intended to be a companion product for the Treo line of smartphones. The idea just did not make much sense. Why carry a Treo and a Foleo when you carry a Treo and a laptop anyway?
Showing posts with label Palm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palm. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Switching ... migrating
Right now I'm in the process of switching from one Palm handheld to another. Migrating is probably a better word though, since this is taking weeks. Normally I would simply archive the previous Palm's data, uninstall the Palm Desktop, remove a few registry entries and install the Palm Desktop for the new Palm. Then I'd import the information from my previous Palm, reinstall some third party application and be "good to go".
This time however, I'm more cautious, probably because the Tungsten C I'm moving to doesn't have the same enhanced PIM applications as my current PDA, the Tungsten T3. Although I lose these enhancements I gain a QWERTY keyboard and Wi-Fi with the Tungsten C.
Of course if my Treo 650 had more memory (a lot more!), I would switch to it instead. The Tungsten T3 has 52MB of RAM available, and the Tungsten C has 51MB, but the Treo 650 has a measly 22MB of RAM. A new Treo 680 or 700p would have more memory, but would require a two year contract.
Oh well, on with the migration...
This time however, I'm more cautious, probably because the Tungsten C I'm moving to doesn't have the same enhanced PIM applications as my current PDA, the Tungsten T3. Although I lose these enhancements I gain a QWERTY keyboard and Wi-Fi with the Tungsten C.
Of course if my Treo 650 had more memory (a lot more!), I would switch to it instead. The Tungsten T3 has 52MB of RAM available, and the Tungsten C has 51MB, but the Treo 650 has a measly 22MB of RAM. A new Treo 680 or 700p would have more memory, but would require a two year contract.
Oh well, on with the migration...
Monday, July 23, 2007
Treo versus iPhone
I know the iPhone has been out for a while now, but I have hesitated mentioning the following article since there was a huge reaction to it - almost 400 comments, mainly from iPhone fans telling the writer he was crazy (among other things).
Editorial: 10 Rounds with the iPhone
Anyway if you feel you must comment, do it at the Palm Infocenter editorial here
Editorial: 10 Rounds with the iPhone
Anyway if you feel you must comment, do it at the Palm Infocenter editorial here
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Digitizer Drift
This is a dreaded phrase for some Palm owners particularly of the Tungsten T3. When a PDA has handwriting recognition it becomes rather aggravating when it no longer wants to recognize your "Graffiti input". This has been happening to me with my Palm Tungsten T3. Writing slower and occasionally resetting it seemed to help.
First I changed the screen protector, which didn't really help, then I tried calibrating the screen. This just seemed to mess everything up. Palm in their wisdom just calibrates the top 320 by 320 pixel area of the screen, and not the bottom 320 by 160 pixel Virtual Graffiti area. There is a program that does the full screen, called PowerDigi, but the website was down for a few days and appears to be up again. If that doesn't work I may be hunting through my collection of Palm handhelds for a replacement. The Treo 650 is out of the question, it just doesn't have enough memory for even half of my programs. Unfortunately this time I don't have a backup Tungsten T3, so the move won't be so easy.
First I changed the screen protector, which didn't really help, then I tried calibrating the screen. This just seemed to mess everything up. Palm in their wisdom just calibrates the top 320 by 320 pixel area of the screen, and not the bottom 320 by 160 pixel Virtual Graffiti area. There is a program that does the full screen, called PowerDigi, but the website was down for a few days and appears to be up again. If that doesn't work I may be hunting through my collection of Palm handhelds for a replacement. The Treo 650 is out of the question, it just doesn't have enough memory for even half of my programs. Unfortunately this time I don't have a backup Tungsten T3, so the move won't be so easy.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Motorola Q2? Nein!
Well, first some feedback about the Treo 650.
On my favorite podcast, Buzz Out Loud, it was mentioned in passing a week or so back that Treos are no longer the cool phones which everybody carries. I must agree that the latest sleek smartphones are much better looking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the sleek smartphones run the lighter version of Windows Mobile, which is also lighter on features. They also do not have touch screens - not in itself a problem, as most things can be done on the Treo 650 without using the touch-screen and stylus. It is just the occasional third party app which relies on touchscreen input. Third party apps and the Palm OS are what makes me not mind the extra bulk of the Treo 650. After going from a plain PDA to a Treo and back to a (not so plain) PDA, this time I decided not to try to use the Treo as my main handheld computer. Instead, the Tungsten T3 remains my primary handheld for now, with its superior screen, and I transfer the information I want to have at my fingertips to the Treo, which I mainly use as a cellphone, and to look up information copied from the T3 with a simple restore from a SecureDigital Card. Okay, the first draft of this blog entry was written on the Treo, but it was pretty easy to get it from the Treo onto the Tungsten T3 and up to the PC and onto the Internet.
Admittedly that is a multi-step process and I could post this Blog Entry directly to the Internet from the Treo 650 - if I was willing to pay Verizon's exorbitant data plan rates. Frankly it would be cheaper to write the blog on my Palm TX and post it via Wi-Fi on my home broadband connection. It would take the equivalent of 3 months or so of Verizon's "unlimited" data plan to pay for a bluetooth keyboard to use with the Palm TX - a keyboard being a lot faster for me than Graffiti handwriting recognition.
Oh, and Motorola's follow up to the Motorola Q, inexplicably called the Q9? The specs sound good, but it is only likely to get to Verizon at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. Maybe by then I may have tired of the Treo...
On my favorite podcast, Buzz Out Loud, it was mentioned in passing a week or so back that Treos are no longer the cool phones which everybody carries. I must agree that the latest sleek smartphones are much better looking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the sleek smartphones run the lighter version of Windows Mobile, which is also lighter on features. They also do not have touch screens - not in itself a problem, as most things can be done on the Treo 650 without using the touch-screen and stylus. It is just the occasional third party app which relies on touchscreen input. Third party apps and the Palm OS are what makes me not mind the extra bulk of the Treo 650. After going from a plain PDA to a Treo and back to a (not so plain) PDA, this time I decided not to try to use the Treo as my main handheld computer. Instead, the Tungsten T3 remains my primary handheld for now, with its superior screen, and I transfer the information I want to have at my fingertips to the Treo, which I mainly use as a cellphone, and to look up information copied from the T3 with a simple restore from a SecureDigital Card. Okay, the first draft of this blog entry was written on the Treo, but it was pretty easy to get it from the Treo onto the Tungsten T3 and up to the PC and onto the Internet.
Admittedly that is a multi-step process and I could post this Blog Entry directly to the Internet from the Treo 650 - if I was willing to pay Verizon's exorbitant data plan rates. Frankly it would be cheaper to write the blog on my Palm TX and post it via Wi-Fi on my home broadband connection. It would take the equivalent of 3 months or so of Verizon's "unlimited" data plan to pay for a bluetooth keyboard to use with the Palm TX - a keyboard being a lot faster for me than Graffiti handwriting recognition.
Oh, and Motorola's follow up to the Motorola Q, inexplicably called the Q9? The specs sound good, but it is only likely to get to Verizon at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. Maybe by then I may have tired of the Treo...
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The hunt is over...for now
I haven't mentioned my hunt for a replacement cellphone for a while.
This is because it ended prematurely (before my contract was even up). As I mentioned in "Cellphone Research Resumed" , I had seen a Verizon Treo 650 on sale. Anyway, after comparing the Treo 650 with the Motorola Q, and finding to my surprise that the Treo is actually slightly smaller than the Q in height and width (but obviously not depth) and reading numerous bad user reviews of the Q; namely about the poor battery life and slow data entry, I decided to give the Treo 650 a try. Since I would not be signing up for a new contract and could "simply" switch from my existing phone to the Treo 650, for not much more than I would pay for the Q with a one year contract, I figured it would be worthwhile. It may seem risky to buy online from someone advertising on a user forum, but after reading their posts on the forum, as well as a number of email exchanges I felt I could trust him, and bought the Treo. After paying for it on the Saturday I received it the following Wednesday, in its original box with the original accessories and a Vaja (expensive leather) holster.
The now defunct "Mobile" magazine referred to the Treo 650 as being so much better than the Treo 600 that it was "like comparing a sports car to a melon cart". There are a number of reviews comparing the two phones here and here, but since I still have my old Treo 600, I'll mention a few points.
First, two standard phone buttons (Send and End) have been added to the keypad, which also has been rearranged slightly so some of the buttons are more logically placed.
The 650 was the first Treo with a "user replaceable" battery - the back opens like a normal cellphone and the battery can be swapped out.
As a result of having this "user replaceable" battery it meant the 650 could not have volatile flash memory like the Treo 600 but used Palms new NVFS (Non-Volatile File System), a major hardware change - the battery could run down (or be removed) and the data wouldn't be lost. The touchscreen had been upgraded to 16-bit (65K colors) 320x320 pixels, a major improvement over (less than 4096 colors) 160x160 pixel screen. The processor was upgraded to 312MHz (from 144-MHz), making the performance quite zippy. The only downside was that the new NVFS (Non-Volatile File System) required more space to store the same amount of files, so although the available memory was appeared the same it was actually less than the 650.
The Treo 650 also has bluetooth, so I can finally use the bluetooth headset I got with my RAZR.
This is because it ended prematurely (before my contract was even up). As I mentioned in "Cellphone Research Resumed" , I had seen a Verizon Treo 650 on sale. Anyway, after comparing the Treo 650 with the Motorola Q, and finding to my surprise that the Treo is actually slightly smaller than the Q in height and width (but obviously not depth) and reading numerous bad user reviews of the Q; namely about the poor battery life and slow data entry, I decided to give the Treo 650 a try. Since I would not be signing up for a new contract and could "simply" switch from my existing phone to the Treo 650, for not much more than I would pay for the Q with a one year contract, I figured it would be worthwhile. It may seem risky to buy online from someone advertising on a user forum, but after reading their posts on the forum, as well as a number of email exchanges I felt I could trust him, and bought the Treo. After paying for it on the Saturday I received it the following Wednesday, in its original box with the original accessories and a Vaja (expensive leather) holster.
The now defunct "Mobile" magazine referred to the Treo 650 as being so much better than the Treo 600 that it was "like comparing a sports car to a melon cart". There are a number of reviews comparing the two phones here and here, but since I still have my old Treo 600, I'll mention a few points.
First, two standard phone buttons (Send and End) have been added to the keypad, which also has been rearranged slightly so some of the buttons are more logically placed.
The 650 was the first Treo with a "user replaceable" battery - the back opens like a normal cellphone and the battery can be swapped out.
As a result of having this "user replaceable" battery it meant the 650 could not have volatile flash memory like the Treo 600 but used Palms new NVFS (Non-Volatile File System), a major hardware change - the battery could run down (or be removed) and the data wouldn't be lost. The touchscreen had been upgraded to 16-bit (65K colors) 320x320 pixels, a major improvement over (less than 4096 colors) 160x160 pixel screen. The processor was upgraded to 312MHz (from 144-MHz), making the performance quite zippy. The only downside was that the new NVFS (Non-Volatile File System) required more space to store the same amount of files, so although the available memory was appeared the same it was actually less than the 650.
The Treo 650 also has bluetooth, so I can finally use the bluetooth headset I got with my RAZR.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Weird patch results
As mentioned yesterday, I applied Daylight Savings Patches to several handhelds.
Well, this morning I checked the results. First was my Tungsten T3, and I was initially dismayed - the screen was displaying the message "Please insert CD to continue with the installation". This was was fairly familiar to me as one of the screens displayed after the hard reset process (I've had more than my fair share of hard resets in the past month). Once I had verified that my programs and data were still there I relaxed a bit. How other Palm users would interpret this message I don't know (Apparently the Palm LifeDrive displays a similar message). Palm should have really tested this patch and advised users what to expect.
My wife's Palm Zire 72 only displayed the standard "Your clock has been adjusted for Daylight Savings Time" message. I had forgotten to turn my Treo 650 off, but it had not automatically updated its time from the wireless network. It only did so when I switched the phone off and on again.
Well, this morning I checked the results. First was my Tungsten T3, and I was initially dismayed - the screen was displaying the message "Please insert CD to continue with the installation". This was was fairly familiar to me as one of the screens displayed after the hard reset process (I've had more than my fair share of hard resets in the past month). Once I had verified that my programs and data were still there I relaxed a bit. How other Palm users would interpret this message I don't know (Apparently the Palm LifeDrive displays a similar message). Palm should have really tested this patch and advised users what to expect.
My wife's Palm Zire 72 only displayed the standard "Your clock has been adjusted for Daylight Savings Time" message. I had forgotten to turn my Treo 650 off, but it had not automatically updated its time from the wireless network. It only did so when I switched the phone off and on again.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
DST Patching Away
It has been called the "Mini Y2K" (Year 2000) by some, but to me the Daylight Savings Time changes have resulted in more applying of patches than changing software code. Even at home today I spent a fair amount of time applying patches to various handheld computers. I drew the line at patching my Dell Axim with its Windows Mobile Operating System though. Sure, Microsoft had a patch for it, but to apply the patch I would have to upgrade the ActiveSync to version 4.5 on my Desktop PC (ActiveSync being the utility which handles synchronizing data between the Desktop PC and the Pocket PC).
Typical for Microsoft, as the automatic Daylight Savings Patch for Windows PCs only works on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above - it will patch run Windows XP Service Pack 1 if run manually. If you have Windows 98 or Windows 2000 then a manual patch is required, unless you downloaded one of the third-party patches.
Back to Palm, their patch didn't work on my old Treo 600 (which they said should be patched), giving an obscure "Cannot update CityTime database" message - guess they never tested it. I got two emails today, one from Palm, and another from Verizon Wireless, both about patching my Treo 650. I didn't, relying on the network to update my Treo's time.
Typical for Microsoft, as the automatic Daylight Savings Patch for Windows PCs only works on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above - it will patch run Windows XP Service Pack 1 if run manually. If you have Windows 98 or Windows 2000 then a manual patch is required, unless you downloaded one of the third-party patches.
Back to Palm, their patch didn't work on my old Treo 600 (which they said should be patched), giving an obscure "Cannot update CityTime database" message - guess they never tested it. I got two emails today, one from Palm, and another from Verizon Wireless, both about patching my Treo 650. I didn't, relying on the network to update my Treo's time.
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