Palm vs other smart phones/PDAs

[Coleman Kane]

On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 09:45 -0400, Neil Joseph Schelly wrote:
> On Friday 09 May 2008 09:07, Tom Buskey wrote:
> > IMO, the original Palm UI and apps still hold up very well.  I've been
> > using Palm with Unix since I got a Pilot 1000.  I have a Blackberry for
> > work and my wife uses an iPhone.
> 
> That is true - I've been using Palms for nearly a decade now and whenever I've 
> watched someone use a Windows Mobile, Blackberry, or an iPhone, I've only 
> ever wondered how they can get anything done on such crowded screens with 
> such obtrusive interfaces.

I've got a Treo 680 and I've liked it pretty well. Occasionally it
resets itself (like acouple times per month), but not the kind of reset
where it loses all data, it just reboots. I got it second-hand though,
so the prev. owner might have dropped it in a sink or something. I had a
data plan for awhile and the mini-browser that they use it pretty nice.
I'm a bit dismayed that I can't get an Opera or Mozilla browser for it
like you can for other handhelds.

> 
> I have nothing against the Palm software platform, but the hardware and driver 
> support is lacking lately.  Bluetooth is very hit-or-miss with my Treo 650.  
> The Bluetooth modem has stopped working altogether and headsets can become 
> unpaired and nearly impossible to re-pair simply by running out of battery.  
> There's no voice dialing and I think wifi would be very helpful.  This all 
> amounts to little more than annoying, and I still look at my wife trying to 
> do anything useful with her Windows Mobile phone and realize it's all very 
> minor in comparison at least.

I'm using FreeBSD and I've never had any trouble with bluetooth access
on my device. I've used it both ways for internet access, as well as
using openobex and obexapp to interface with it for sending/receiving
files.

I haven't been able to use the GUI tools to do it, but that's because I
can't find any decent ones that are reliable *and* support bluetooth. I
suppose I could always write one using the commandline tools.

> 
> If I can get my hands on an OpenMoko and decide that I don't like the 
> calendaring or address book in it, I could just run the PalmOS emulator I 
> suppose.  But at least I'll have the hardware that will do whatever I want.  
> I really hope they pull it off - they've been so close for so long, it seems.
> -N

yeah I've been following that project too. It totally looks like a
hacker's dream phone.

-- 
Coleman Kane