The Palm Experience......

Sammy and friends have been discussing the possibility of Palm abandoning its base of Palm handheld devices and going for the Treo Model. Certainly, there has been no official word from Palm in regards to this, but it would appear that Palm is embarking upon a road to Treoville. We have heard no word about a stand alone PDA this year. Normally about this time, the Blogosphere is filled with speculation, queries and sometimes smuggled pictures of Palm PDA devices.

Instead, blogs, including Engadget and Palm centered pages are salivating about the probable release of a new Treo. The possibility of another Windows Mobile or Palm OS 5 telephone device. In addition, said pages are now driven to write about phone programs and phone reminder programs with data collection tools and discussions about dropped calls, provider rates for phone usage consumption and antennae-free devices.

But something is missing! Something that has been missing ever since the Windows Mobile Treo came about. With the exception of Palmaddicts, which seems to have a host of stand-alone PDA warriors with separate cell phones, the reporting seems to be about TELEPHONES! It does not appear to be about the PALM EXPERIENCE. In short, does anyone remember the time when they picked up a device (for me it was the Palm V) and stared in awe at the ability to do calculations, store messages and be informed about events? It was an early time and it became a helpful tool for me - being able to practice medicine without having to remember every single piece of minutiae (ie. asbestos lung cancer incidence) or walking around without pockets filled with scraps of paper. It was in short - a revolution!

It was so compelling that even Bill Gates had to emulate the model with a Windows CE product to do just about the same thing. Now, I am not saying that those were the good old days, because the devices in those days were filled with flaws of their own, mainly processor problems, but it was a time when people concentrated on writing good software - lean and productive. The turn of a switch produced the opening menu without the need to warm up. That, appears to be gone now.

What we have is a margin question. What product produces the margins needed to be profitable? What if an experiment was done and a completely innovative device was released, can we - like Nokia - just throw it out there and see if it sticks? And what if that device is flawed, in ways that could be corrected, but in a time and financial frame that destroys our margins? Do we correct it or come out with a second version? Or do we scrap it and go for the product that makes us money? While we're at it, do we scrap the very thing that made us a leader in the first place -- the standalone PDA -- in favor of the device that produces earnings?

I believe that the answer has already been made. I have a wonderful device called the Lifedrive, but I believe that its days may be numbered. The TX was a success, but it too has a few flaws, mainly in its ability to handle the NVFS and so crashes a few times, but much less than the Lifedrive running programs trying to address nonexistent memory locations. The device is not as rich in function as the Lifedrive, but it appears to have caught the fancy of many, with its faster browsing and more rugged build. It does savor the PALM EXPERIENCE and will probably represent the new breed of devices coming from Palm. I would not be surprised to see an 8-GIGABYTE DRIVELESS DEVICE in the form of the Tungsten X, a complete solid state device. A hybrid could be another option, with a large ram of say 512k, immediate program memory of 1 gig continuous and a hard drive to store, but not run programs. Such a device would also be fruitful and probably impress the bottom line.

But before any of this can happen I feel that the one thing that Palm needs to do is come out with an operating system that can manage all of this. If anything, the TREO series of devices has shown that OS 5 .x in its never ending cycle of appearances in new devices is outdated and in need of a complete overhaul. The Palm Media says that Linux is the answer. There is discrepancy as to whether the Access Company will produce this or if Palm will enter the fray and produce a Linux based Palm device alone. The latter would be most appealing after seeing some of the cartoonish GUI's produced by Access.

However, CEO Ed Colligan in a conference call to analysts last year pointed out that Palm's concentration would be on Treo models this year. This would appear to be reasonable given the margins and popularity attained, especially by Windows Mobile devices. However, those of us not ready to jump on the Windows Mobile bandwagon or for that matter own a phone based PDA appear to be left out in the cold, wondering if we are in the possession of an outdated Model-T. There is no mention of a new stand-alone PDA - anywhere.

We are also left wondering if we will ever experience the wonderful feeling of holding a Palm device again that just does its job. It came to me again a few years ago when I picked up a Palm Tungsten. The sliding panel was a joy to behold. The device actually fit in my shirt pocket. To me, I still think that this was the most innovative Palm ever made. Yes, it was flawed slightly, but Palm again ascended to the technological high ground creating a product that few could compete with. Yes, multimedia almost killed the Palm and Windows CE made a run for the money tree, but it was that ability to pull out a Palm Tungsten that drew the most interest. In meetings, people wanted to look at this strange device that had a slider. They were even more in awe when I surfed the web via a bluetooth connection with my phone or sent a contact to my phone to call or transferred data to and from the phone without having to hire my work's IT guy to set up baud rates, string bits and hexadecimal init strings. It was Palm at its best.

So here is a request to Palm. Do not abandon the stand-alone PDA. It is the very soul of your company. It is the rock of Gibraltar that brought you the ability to produce the Treo. I am hoping that the lack of a release of a stand-alone PDA is indicative of a wait for either Cobalt or Linux next year and that our current OS 5.x NVFS devices will be able to be upgraded or better yet, have second editions that are far superior to their originals.


LDD.