Fellow MVP Sven Johannsen pointed me to the Callpod Chargepod (Amazon affiliate page) multi-device charger (manufacturer page). I’m traveling to Seattle to attend the Microsoft MVP Global Summit and wish I had known about this thing earlier. The sad thing, though, is that charging six devices at once is not quite enough 🙂 But, it sure would help!
Wow, we didn’t even get a chance to see Palm get the Foleo out the door…
A Message to Palm Customers, Partners and Developers
I hope Austek gets the Eee PC out into the market. I still believe there is a significant market for a lightweight (2 pounds; 1 Kilo) category near instant-on device with a keyboard and LCD screen like the old Handheld PCs. The UMPCs are interesting. But their $1000+ price points for relatively weak specs (CPU, etc.) are not attractive. We need something in the sub-$500 range.
Palm announced (but did not release) its Palm Foleo mobile companion today. It has a 10 inch LCD screen, full-size keyboard, 5 hours battery life, email and other applications, and no hard drive. I got so excited about it, I bought it!!! Uh, well, actually that device in the photo above (device on a desk next to a Casio Palm-size PC)) does meet the Foleo description. But, it is a Compaq Aero 8000 that I bought in 1999 while attending the Microsoft Windows CE Developers Conference in Denver. And, the similarly spec-ed Jornada 820 (with an 8 inch LCD) is from 1998. It is also a Windows CE Handheld PC. Yes, neither one had WiFi or Bluetooth. But, nothing back then did. The Handheld PCs were great. How great? I fired up the HP Jornada 820 last year and used it to write most of Windows for the Intel Mac published by O’Reilly Media. I was very disappointed when the Handheld PCs faded away. And, since the Microsoft UMPCs are nowhere near the $500 level they were aimed at, I am saving my nickels and dimes to by a Palm Foleo when it is released. It will be great to have a Handheld PC again (even if it does not run Windows CE).
Information Week has a useful…
Road Map For Smartphone Operating Systems
…on their website. Anyone interested in trying to get a quick grasp of where the major mobile device OSes will be in the near future would find the table on their web site interesting. The table provides an overview of the near-future guess-timates for Symbian, Linux, Garnet OS (formerly Palm OS), Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Mac OS X (Apple iPhone).
Ilium Software’s eWallet is a secure information storage application for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Windows XP. It is much more than a simple password storage application. It is basically a small secure nearly freeform database application.ÂÂ
I’ve been using a Windows Mobile device since the 1.0 days in 1997 when it was still referred to by the kernel name: Windows CE. From those Handheld PC days to the current Pocket PC/Smartphone days, there has only been one 3rd party (non-Microsoft) application that has been resident on my daily working device: Ilium Software’s eWallet. So, I was very pleased to learn that after all these years, Ilium continues to develop, refine, and enhance this truly must-have Windows Mobile product. You can find information about the open beta of this new version linked below.
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