<OT>Palm treo with Win CE!!!! :(

[Aaron Grewell]

On Thursday 29 September 2005 11:14, Susan Macchia wrote:
> http://www.palm.com/us/company/?intcmp=RFB_windows_20050927
>
> I love my palm smart phone (currently Kyocera).  I have been thinking of
> upgrading to a Treo 650 (still PalmOS).

As a current Treo 600 owner, I wouldn't touch another Treo.  I love the 
functionality of my phone, but so far they only last about 3 months.  I've 
had it replaced 3 times so far.  I've chatted with other Treo users, and in 
my unscientific survey I found I'm far from the exception.  Palm has serious 
reliability issues on the smartphone front.

> And I must be able to sync under Linux (I use Jpilot).

Without PalmOS JPilot may or may not work.  They've got a lot of plugins, so 
you probably want to take a hard look at what JPilot says should work.  In 
addition, there are other sync solutions for other brands of phone that may 
suit your needs.  The trick is that you never know without buying the phone, 
and by then it's too late.  Other than spending lots of time with our old pal 
Google I don't know what you can do about that.  Take a look at Multisync, 
they seem to have quite a few phones covered and have plugins for both 
Kontact and Evolution. http://multisync.sourceforge.net

> But with this latest news, I am concerned about the future of PalmOS,
> Jpilot and syncing my (future) smartphone or pda with Linux!

Yeah, I think Palm OS itself is a dead product.  The real question I have is 
whether the new owners of Palm OS (Access, Inc I believe) can work out a Palm 
OS emulator for their Linux-based smartphone OS that works well.  If they do 
it right and soon they'll have a saleable product compatible with a vast 
number of apps which should give them a big leg up in the marketplace.  If 
they do it badly or are too slow all these Palm apps will be abandoned in 
favor of Wince and/or Java and the purchase of PalmSource will do them no 
good.  I had never even heard of this company before they bought PalmSource, 
so I don't really know what to expect.  Regardless of what happens with the 
emulator, I expect all existing Palm sync apps to be legacy in a year or two 
as Palm is assimilated.

Like some other folks, I'm reevaluating my needs and considering other 
options, especially Symbian.  I like the all-in-one nature of my smartphone, 
but I'm also looking at what I use most frequently and trying to decide what 
I could cut if it came to that.  My 600 still has some life in it yet, so I'm 
talking my time and waiting for more vendors to catch up.

> Anyone have any opinions?

Lots.  I think I've covered the relevant ones though.  ;)