The real problems with Android, Pre and iPhone.

[dsrtao]

I've been using PalmOS devices almost continuously for 12 years.

This equips me with certain prejudices:

- the thing in my pocket is a limited-speed, but general-purpose computer. I can download an SDK for it and write my own programs. So can everyone else, which means that in addition to a laughable number of commercial programs, there is a thriving community of open source and shareware apps. Every device works this way; you don't have to buy a special developer's edition to experiment.

- when I buy the next one, pretty much all of my programs will continue to work.

- battery life is sufficient unto the entire day, no matter what I'm doing with it.

- I can back it up to a set of files on my computer; a serial or USB or Net connection is all I need to do that.

- I can install programs by copying them over from my computer, and also by downloading them from the Net... if I put them on a web page, I can use that.

- I can drop it on to concrete or asphalt a few times a year and only have cosmetic issues if the screen doesn't break.

- If it crashes, nineteen times out of twenty that's a hardware problem or a specific app, not the OS. It doesn't crash often.

Comments

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

I agree in broad terms, but my experience with the last sentence was the opposite. I never became a dedicated Palm user because mine would crash all the time, losing whatever data I had on it - and would require tinkering in addition to a normal sync to restore the complete device state.

Of course, it's entirely possible that my Visor was a poor example of a Palm OS device, and others would be better. Or that there have been significant advances in the past, oh, 9 years. But I didn't find that the reliability had always been there...

[dsrtao]

PalmOS devices seem to have been like Chrysler minivans -- there were two lines producing them, and one generated lemons and the other built computational rocks.

OTOH my Visor (Pro?) was less robust than the Palm Pro, the Palm III, the IIIx, the PalmPhone and the Treo 700p, so it might have been those...

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

I still have my old Palm z22. Never use it anymore, but when I had my Mac, I had the Palm synced with iCal and read ebooks on it and used it a fair amount. The battery lasted a long time, too. Everything else I have that even uses batteries (that would be three laptops) won't even twelve hours between charges.