
Palm, an HP company
Bill Ray wrote: "Palm, which defined mobile computing, has been bought by HP, which pissed away its stake in the same industry. So can HP do any better this time around?"
Short answer ... not a chance. HP is too deep in the pocket of Microsoft to be looking at Palm as anything other than a short-term gain - maybe get those Windows 7 Mobile prices down to a level that's more profit-friendly. But I'm probably being unfair, and we'll see a couple of niche products "escaping" their clutches using WebOS.
BR also wrote: "HotSync didn't just copy over diary appointments and contacts: during the process every installed application is offered the opportunity to backup data, or be connected to a desktop equivalent which would be triggered by the desktop HotSync application."
Thumbs up for pointing this out - as a long term Palm user I was _really_ shocked when I got an iPod and found that iTunes doesn't do this. So when I had to "rebuild" my latest iPod (Touch 1st Gen) after Apples latest firmware had bricked it, (again!), I was less than impressed to find that while the core apps were back to normal and my ITMS app purchases were there, the configuration files for those apps were lost forever.
Good article, I just hope that the head-cases in HP realise the potential of their latest purchase rather than asset stripping it. Oh, and if they want to do a budget priced WebOS PDA with wireless etc, then put me down for one, I could do with a replacement for the Palm T3 that's sitting on my desk.