Palm-Mac

Centro sales nearing 2 million...ebay sales

This is pretty amazing news is it not for a company that was being written off in some quarters and it does make you think that if it can sell nearly 2 million of a device that is basically 2004 specs then how many could it sell of a bang up to date specced new palm o/s model? Probably nowhere near as many unless the price point is similar unfortunately. Still, it is establishing a new customer base which is what palm needs to move themselves forwards.

On the subject of Centro's, I have been going naked with mine since purchase with no case and no screen protector. Unfortunately, I have just paid the price as I somehow managed to scratch the screen last week. I can't recall ever having scratched a screen before so it is a bit of a downer but luckily it is not a £500 device or I would feel even worse.

I gotta be frank here, I am struggling with the keyboard on it. It is fine for banging out short texts and shortish emails but for anything else, I find it a bit painful. As the keys are small I have to adopt a rather strange typing style which I couldn't possibly describe here but suffice to say it results very quickly in my fingers feeling like an unpleasant cramp style pain is about to engulf me. It makes me pine for the 680 although to be fair to the Centro, nothing else does.

My ebay sales are continuing. The Treo 500v, HTC S630 and Treo 750 have been sold as have 2 unused Apple Airport cards, a HTC Advantage docking cradle and battery and the TomTom sat nav for treo's. I had to get rid of that stuff as it was just lying around doing nothing. In total, it has raised a fair sum that I have yet to spend. Normally, I'd have bought another smartphone by now but as I have more or less decided to go forward using the iPhone platform there is little point buying anything else, not that that has stopped me in the past but things are hopefully slightly different now. I might try and sell my imac, which I hardly use these days, combine that with the ebay cash and I would then have nearly enough for a MacBook Pro. I don't need one but boy, I want one.

GooSync is a good sync

I have been using GooSync now for a couple of weeks and it is good to go, so much so that I have been thinking about upgrading to the "premium" service which includes the ability to sync tasks, multiple calenders and now even contacts. I certainly need the calendar part but I'm not sure I require the tasks and contacts bit at the moment but it is still tempting.
The only problem with using it on the iPhone is that  the lack of a native app means I have to sync iCal via an iPhone sync with Gcal which is a slightly more roundabout way but it does still get the job done.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know that a while back I was whinging on about how web based services were something I would never use as I did not like the idea of all that personal info being stored in spaceland but what the heck, it means that now I do not have to rely on Outlook for syncing my meetings and stuff. It is easier to use at the moment on the Centro as opposed to the iPhone, mainly because there is a native Goosync app for palm and not, just yet, for the iPhone.

I saw the chaps at jkontherun extolling the virtues of BusySync a while back and it is another mac syncing alternative for consideration. It offers to sync iCal over a LAN and also sync Google Calendar with iCal too, not quite the same thing but probably better for dealing with multiple calendars. It's not free though but seems to offer more flexibility.

Fake Call for Palm

I see that pda24/7 have FakeCall reduced in their store and it is a bit of software I have always meant to buy because I like the idea of it but then realise I'm not in that many meetings where it would actually be required anyway. I tend to go more for the Captain Oates approach.....pretend I'm off to the toilet with a "I may be gone some time" routine and never return. It's amazing how often people fail to notice when you don't come back. Mind you, that probably says more about the lack of useful contribution made by yours truly in said meetings more than anything else.

Still, there must be plenty of people around who could use it.

With your phone in your pocket, switch the System Ringer switch to Off and On or setup an appointment in the Calendar application and voila! A call will materialize from anyone you want, your phone will light up like a Christmas tree, your favorite ringtone will sound and, when you accept your fake call, an active call screen identical to a real one will display and a voice will be heard on the other end of the line! This program is a true escape from any unwanted situation!

Come on Palm ...give us a taster or a tidbit

What is going on with the new palm o/s? We don't exactly get flooded with updates or tidbits to whet the appetite from Palm and it would be nice to know that we're not hanging on for nothing. There seems to be nothing coming out of Palm HQ as regards any development news or when a device is likely to debut, we don't expect an hour by hour update but something, crikey anything, would be nice.

Let's face it, Palm is not exactly in a position of strength here to the point where it can afford to keep the ever shrinking mass of palm devotees in the dark for much longer. I'm not expecting them to come and out and say "the Palm Beano with new o/s, wifi and super dooper win mob and iphone bashing specs will be launched at precisely 10.40am on March 3rd 2009" but I would like to see wee snippets of how the o/s is progressing via screenshots or carefully selected leaks.

Palm will be losing another batch of devotees when the 3g and 3rd party totin' iPhone comes to town in the next few months, not to mention the Blacberry Bold or HTC Diamond, and you would have thought they'd have seen this as an opportunity, to say nothing of a necessity, to get some positive PR out there to counteract the iPhone and their glossy ilk. I can only see the resounding silence with regard to o/s news, the longer zip all emanates from HQ, as being bad news on some front, whether that is along the lines of them abandoning the new interface completely and concentrating solely on the win mob market I don't know but....I've no real idea obviously, I'm just starting to feel a little uneasy/nervous about it now, less confident than I was 6 months ago about ever seeing a new o/s.

Perhaps because of the huge sales of the Centro Palm are thinking that the panic is over and that they now have this huge new customer base to tap into at a later date, assuming of course that these Centro users would jump ship to a new updated palm o/s. They may or they may not but it would be dangerous to assume they will all automatically purchase a Nova toting superior specced palm smartphone. Part of the big attraction of the Centro to them in the first place was it's relative simplicity of use and low low price point. The former would be a likely feature on Nova but numero two certainly won't be.

Is anybody else thinking that all this silence is not necessarily golden?

Centro...reliable little fella, so far

Poor Luca from pdathoughts has been reporting on his Centro, which he bought for his wife, and the not inconsiderable problems he has met so far. The worst being its apparant inability to receive incoming calls which for a phone, is more than just slightly inconvenient. Luca tells me that it just freezes and has to be reset.

Luckily, my Centro has been rock solid so far. I say "so far" as my recent-ish palm experience has tought me to take nothing for granted these days. In days of yore, I always found palm hardware to be reliable and never had a single issue of anything going wrong necessitating (thankfully) a call to palm support. However, the first treo 680 I bought couldn't hold a call and had to be replaced and then the treo 750 needed to be sent back as the touchscreen stopped working after a few months. Since then I have been living on tenterhooks, always anticipating that something may go wrong. This has not been the case though with the Centro. Last night however I had my first random reset, sitting watching the telly with the Centro resting on the sofa I glanced across and noticed it was in the throes of a reset.  I thought, perhaps it has been doing this for a while so I checked the excellent Reset Doctor "Crash Logging" ...errr....log and was relieved to see that this has not been the case. This was the first time it had done it and coincided(?) with having added on an application a few hours previously.

If it happens again I shall assume that the application is causing the outcome and will uninstall it. I can't be bothered these days with apps that cause resets no matter how useful they may be productivity-wise. If they can't co-exist with my other stable apps then it is ta ta, no questions asked. I'm now not going to spend hours googling for a solution, wading through pages and pages of dull Forum posts trying, usually in vain, to find a solution for an application that I will probably hardly use but which was sadly just installed as it has nice graphics.

I did use the 680 for a day but found it a bit bulky feeling in comparison...I also think the Centro seems quite a bit nippier around the menus and when opening apps...anybody else think that too?

GooSync for mobiles

GooSync is available for various mobile devices, including the Centro and other treo's and I have been using it for the last week or so on my Centro to sync my Google Calendar. I wanted to try out an alternative to my normal Outlook calendar syncing, via ActiveSync for win mob and HotSync for palms, for several reasons:

• I have sent back a couple of devices that I really liked because I could not get them to sync with Outlook calendar on my work PC. One of them was the Moto Q9h which was a great device with a superlative keyboard but at the time, as I couldn't get it ActiveSyncing at work, I sent it back. Had I been using GooSync instead that would not have been such an issue.
• I need to get away from this Outlook "reliance" for keeping my diary up to date and Google Calendar is free and easy to both access and keep up to date.
• There are some things I don't want showing up in my work diary. I can put those entries in my online calendar now and not worry about them showing up in my work diary.
• I don't intend to use another windows mobile device again, not for a while anyway although the Samsung i780 is tempting.
• I have started using Google Calendar on my iPhone so it makes sense to make it the numero uno diary app for all mobile apps rather than using different diaries.

So I have turned off "calendar" syncing on Palm HotSync on my work pc and will rely instead on GooSync. Set up is painless, head over to the site and register and then activate your Google Calendar via the supplied link on their site. Then, download the prc file and hotsync it to your palm. Enter your password and user ID in the app settings and off you go. I was pleased to see that test entries done in Google showed up on the Centro no problem at all.

The version I am using is currently free although there is a paid version that adds further features such as task syncing, I'm not sure I would need that capability. Google Calendar in itself is pretty good, certainly for my needs anyway, and having GooSync on top is like the icing on the cake.

Centro review...Tracy and Matt

Interesting Centro review over at Tracy and Matt's site. They are undeniably the masters of the dull unboxing video and have done an odd review of the Centro which is pretty much very fair although it makes some strange claims.

Palm are keen to offer this as a smart phone, with there own Palm OS installed. But in testing I found that it lacked features that are commonly available on competing Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and the Nokia N series devices – as it does not offer WiFi or GPS.

Yeah, how many touchscreened win mob, RIM or Nokia devices are out there for £179?...or how many of the same have wifi or built in GPS for £179?

But if all you need is to send text messages, emails edit a word document and browse the internet on the go, then this is the perfect device for you.

What a strange thing to say, because of course the Centro can do so much more out of the box and with such a huge 3rd party range of apps the world can be very much your oyster with a Centro.

Switching from palm thread

Interesting thread here from the chaps at pda247 regarding the palm o/s. I've already added my own tuppence for what it is worth so won't bother repeating it again here.

I keep switching between various platforms at the moment, some days I use the Centro then I fancy a wee shot of the s630 and then the lure of the iPhone takes over. I guess I need to make some sort of decision soonish about what will become my o/s of choice but at the moment, I sort of like them all. I think I know deep down though that when 3rd party apps are finally available for the iPhone then I will make the full time switch to that. I just need to see a couple of things on there and then it should be all systems go. For ease of use, that wonderful screen, superb browsing experience and easy out of the box mac syncing then it just has it all. I suppose also that it is the platform that most reminds me of palm and I find that quite attractive.

I'm sort of sticking mostly with windows mobile standard at the moment though for several main reasons...wifi capability and there are one or two great apps that I love and hate not to have handy on any mobile device. I'm pretty darn sure though that these will be ported over to the iPhone...I can't see any reason why the likes of Ilium, for example, would not want to develop for the platform or is that just wishful thinking?

What stops me at the moment using the iPhone 100% all the time is the lack of a todo/task application, I can't believe Apple didn't make one on day one, it seems a stupendous error. I like the fact, for example, on my s630 that I can quickly enter tasks and then access them quickly. If I don't have the facility to quickly enter todo's  then I end up forgetting the task and that is frustrating. I don't want to bother either with any of those cumbersome iPhone workarounds for recording tasks like emailing yourself or using web based apps...tooooo sloooowwwwww for me.

Snappermail update...where art thou?

Snapper is probably the application that I have been using the longest on any mobile device. It has not changed much at all since I started with it back in 2002, about the only major change I can recall was them dumping the fish "snapper" logo on the opening page. It still looks exactly the same, which is oddly re-assuring in a way, yet I would like them to give it a bit of a pure eye-candy revamp as I think it is starting to look a bit dated and, well it's blandish now isn't it?

Still, that's me being churlish as usual. Bottom line is that it still works extremely well and for me, it continues to knock the pants off the likes of Versamail. In many ways though the lack of development mirrors that of the platform it graces but it continues, like palm, to do just enough to keep people using it and just as importantly, keep enjoying using it.

Palm's struggling

For a long time now I have been pretty darn sure that Palm will be coming out with a new o/s later on but now I am starting to doubt it. Last week was not a great time for Palm news with dissection of their disappointing "profits" announcements and subsequent analysis. Sure, they sold pots of Centros but the device is dirt cheap around the globe and the profit margin on it must be really small. When you compare their results and income with the likes of RIM then you realise, sadly, how small a player Palm has become in the mobile phone market. Those who claim that re-introducing new palm pda's into the equation a la HP are sadly mistaken too as apparantly pda sales (TX etc) account for less than 15% of their income...ooops.

If Ed is talking about the new o/s being on schedule let's see some evidence of that. C'mon, the palm people are deserting in their droves to Blackberry, iPhone and windows mobile and more will leave in the next 6 months or so. It would not do any harm, if they have the evidence, to show some fancy dan screenshots or give us an inkling or reason for staying..."here's the new palm o/s...see how brilliant it is going to be..why would you want to leave?" but as usual, zip all.

That news is depressing enough and then you see stuff like this...I remember taking the mickey a while back at some previous Palm news conference when somebody had just stuck a Palm logo on a pillar and then Ed was standing in front of that...not very professional looking.

Worse still is when I compare the treo 500v to the likes of the HTC S630, one of which is classy and feels like a million dollars, has great specs and is solidly built and the other is...ahem...not. I tell you, the 500v is the poorest treo I have ever used, it's slow and under-powered and creaks like an open window in a hurricane. Plus, shockingly for a treo the keyboard is unresponsive. It's the poorest treo I have ever used and Ed was wondering why take up had been disappointing...he should spend a week using one, that will stop him wondering.

The treo 800w, if it is going to be called that, will be a major product for Palm and if the specs are as mooted then it could have a very decent chance of being a big seller for them. It's going to be a big device for them, get this one right and it could be all systems go again. Let's hope so then and also hope they don't go for that silly Vodafone only style carrier deal that has become common over here with the 750v initially and then the 500v. The latter is a device that just slipped under the radar and having it tied into Vodafone for 3 months, with hindsight, did it no favours whatsoever.