Linux on a Palm (Almost here)

[morningstar1844]

Well good news is coming down the pipeline.

Check out the link!

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=8388


How long before they release this on a phone? Bye Bye Windows!!

[alex_mathews]

I don't know if it's necessarily good news. I'll wait until it's actually available to decide whether it's something good. At least their providing a direction and more information for what's coming in the future.

[Jordan]

Well they aren't releasing it to hardware companies until 2007, so we won't see any devices with it until mid 07 - 08! Not good for palm imo. Windows mobile will continue to see great expansion.... Palm's treo 700 isn't that big of an upgrade to the 650 so I don't see what all they have going for them

[Malatesta]

Well they aren't releasing it to hardware companies until 2007, so we won't see any devices with it until mid 07 - 08! Not good for palm imo. Windows mobile will continue to see great expansion.... Palm's treo 700 isn't that big of an upgrade to the 650 so I don't see what all they have going for them
This is my concern as well. I mean, lets assume that when it comes out, it's one helluva an OS--great, but in terms of business sense, they're going to give up a lot of market share to MS that will be very difficult to recoup (like the desktop OS wars).

It's even more strange that reportedly with one of the new models they are aiming at the "lower end" market, which is great to build market share (we need more 'normies' with treos, lol) but to what end? They become users and the OS changes...completely? We'll have to wait and see I guess.

Makes you wonder though what went so wrong with Cobalt? I mean there were semi-working copies around and yet the couldn't fix it. How does that go so wrong in the first place? (rhetorically speaking).

[MacPCS]

Palm's treo 700 isn't that big of an upgrade to the 650 so I don't see what all they have going for them
I would tend to disagree pretty strongly. how are these not good upgrades:

EV-DO
1.3Mpixel camera
>10MB DB cache
62~ MB of memory for storing apps
BT 1.2 (at least)
better keyboard (subjective, yes)
slightly newer version of Palm OS 5, which may fix a lot of the bugs, but does add some features you previously had to get other apps for (decline call w/ SMS for example).
possible support for WiFi cards.
high-capacity SD card support (Fat32 filesystem)

that's a pretty decent upgrade IMO. granted I'd love to see Cobalt on the thing, but you know what? this ain't bad in terms of hardware upgrades.

[Malatesta]

The 700 does have nice features, but in keeping with Palm's tradition they are technically "minor" upgrades. Granted for tech geeks and treo junkies an improvement or new addon is always welcomed (look at the crazienss over the fat32.prc driver).

The camera, though 1.3 mp is actually quite marginal in comparison pics. BT 1.2 would be nice but that assumes someone uses BT. The memory stuff is also a welcomed improvement but nothing revolutionary and one would argue the 650 should have it all that in the first place. Really, the only that's a huge change would be the ev-do and I think any "changes" in the Garnet 5.4.9 are pretty limited to the radio change.

It will be interesting to see how many give up their 650s to go the 700. I think it will mostly revolve around "can you afford it?" rather than just the features.

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