new mac-software in back of ptg journal

Steve Borgstrom orchman@attbi.com
Thu, 10 Apr 2003 22:17:14 -0500


Bill,

Don't assume, it always gets a person into trouble... <grin>

I own the least expensive Palm personally (a Zire), and it holds all my 
client records, plays a mean game of Cribbage and Bejeweled (a 
Tetris-like game) and it handles all 2000 of my contacts and my 
appointments and provides me with a square-tooth A 440 (or any other 
frequency) if I forget my tuning fork! I use it as a metronome for my 
public school band and orchestra that I direct and it has become a real 
brain amplifier for me! God knows I need one!!!

On the other end of the continuum, today I saw my buddy's top of the 
line Palm Tungsten play a DVD movie in full color (with NO ishy frame 
skips), handle a complicated Excel Documents to Go spreadsheet, link up 
to his cell phone via Bluetooth to retrieve new contacts, voice mail 
messages and text messages, and do real-time GPS tracking of his car on 
a city map through his GPS device! It has 1 gigabyte of card memory!!! 
Omigosh!! Geek heaven!!!!

The new Palms are just as powerful as anything in the Pocket PC line, 
ya just gotta buy the right Palm! <grin> And IMHO, are much more 
elegant and user friendly. And I HAVE used all the platforms, Palm, 
Pocket PC, UNIX, Mac OS (9 and X) Windoze of all varieties, etc....

Heck, I owned one of the first Apple Newton MessagePads which have 
since gone the way of the dodo and the albatross. I loved it at the 
time, but recognized it was flawed; too big, interface too clumsy, too 
slow a processor. I don't think the top of line Palms are going to be 
extinct anytime soon, though...

You are quite right, too, the Palm Desktop software doesn't NEED to 
sync to anything, but one probably should buy the software rather than 
pirate it, I guess... But that would be a good way for Hazen to try it 
out to see if he'd wanna buy it!

So I guess I stand by my statement that I would purchase an ETD for 
Palm and I do believe it would eventually be profitable for the 
software author.

Just because a platform has less market share doesn't mean it's not 
gonna be viable. (Why does the word "Betamax" keep echoing through my 
head????...) <big grin>

Peace,
Steve

>> I wish someone would write an ETD for the Palm platform. I would buy 
>> a Palm Tungsten and whatever ETD gets written for the Palm almost 
>> immediately. (I never buy software that is version X.0, I wait for 
>> the first or second update! <grin>)
>
> I'd always assumed that the processor behind the Palms was not built 
> for much more than simple database work (create/edit/retrieve a 
> record). The most complicated thing I ever saw it do was to convert 
> human graffiti to text. The digital signal processing and high math 
> probably needs a more powerful processor.
>
> Hazen doesn't even need the Palm handheld to use its PIM on his 
> desktop. I doubt the app would ever start to wonder why it had never 
> been synched with anything.
>


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