[QUOTE=CPRich
Early '06? Are they insane?
Even Big Bill didn't look too excited at the launch.
I'm about ready to have a PPC-6700 shipped my way unless someone knows of something better out there - we have a much better corporate discount with Sprint than elsewhere, and I've confirmed our GoodLink infrastructure will work with it after next week's 4.5 upgrade.
It's sad - Handspring started off with a nice vision, and the 600 was a leap ahead of what else was out there. Not much progress in the intervening 2 years.
[/QUOTE]
Originally Posted by ScottC
I'm sure Bill G was laughing his backside off. Here he is, master of the universe sitting at a conference with PALM introducing a Microsoft powered product.
If he were ANY richer he could have purchased the live footage of hell freezing over.
Its been a funny year, Apple goes to Intel, Palm to WindowsMobile... I wonder what is next?
Windows will embrace and extend Linux via virtualization technology
In silicon valley, many high tech product development professionals view the Treo 600 and 650 and 700 projects as "what could have been". The Handspring team designing the Treo products are great at R&D and user interface, but made many poor design decisions regarding manufactureability and component modularity (e.g. unable to swap components easily and using many proprietary single-source components). This has led to very long design cycles and cost overruns for the complicated smartphone designs, and resulting in high difficulty to make power management tradeoffs of battery life against the latest features like WiFi and 2Megapixel camerphones for Treo 700 even though it took Palm 2 years to roll out after Treo 650 intro. The huge pent-up demand & backorder of each new generation invariably disappear all too soon for Palm to effectively capitalize on the initial buzz of the cool designs. Ultimately Palm Treo product lines end up not being able to sell what could have been many additional tens of millions per platform.
To add insult to injury, Palm's inability to sell the extra tens of millions Treo 600 & 650 products resulted in PalmOS falling behind in smartphone OS installed base sales compared to Windows Mobile and Symbian. So when Microsoft dangled some co-marketing dollars and development fees to port Treo to Windows Mobile, Palm ultimately succumbs to that "siren's song". You got to hand it to Bill Gates for his mastery in turning a former rival into YAWL (Yet Another Windows Licensee)
