As the semester has started to pick up steam, my calender has started to fill up with classes and study group meetings, due dates and reminders, as well as regular non-school stuff. Normally I'd be loading all of this into my trusty Tungsten C, but this semester I've been strangely reluctant to do so. In fact, for the first time in about a decade, I found myself yearning for a simple paper calender to write my appointments down in.
Then today, I found out that PalmSource, makers of the PalmOS, has been acquired by a Japanese software company. What exactly that means for people who care about PalmOS-based PDAs is unclear right now, but my guess is it doesn't bode well.
My Tungsten C is a couple of years old now. It's still chugging along quite nicely, but eventually it will need to be replaced. What's going to still be on the market when I go to replace it? And will what's out there meet my needs?
I've pretty effectively reduced my dependence on Microsoft products over the past year. Thunderbird has been working well as my e-mail client, and the Palm Desktop as the PC side of my PIM. In addition, Firefox has replaced Internet Explorer as my browser of choice, and iTunes does a fine job of managing my MP3s, although those apps are not going to be affected by my choice of PDA. If I were to buy a Microsoft-based PDA, I'd have to switch back to Outlook, and I never liked Outlook. I used it because I felt that I had to.
Microsoft's PDA OS has improved significantly from what I saw when I used it back in 2000, but I'm just not very enthusiastic about the idea. Given the choice of getting an MS-based PDA and going back to Outlook, or going to a paper solution, paper looks like a much better choice.
There are other alternatives. By the time my Tungsten finally rolls over and dies, Apple may well have come out with an iPod capable of being an effective PIM as well as a music storage device. Or other new devices may come out that work for me. We'll have to see.
UPDATE: Amid a bunch of self-congratulatory "I told you so's", David Berlind at ZDNet agrees that this is definitely not good news for the PalmOS.
Comments (1)
Rachel, I too have noticed myself using my Zire 72 less and less. Right now if functions as a reader for ebooks and websites, and music player -- though the headphone jack seems intermittent -- leaving one less use for the Zire.
At the same time I've been using a variation of the HipsterPDA quite a bit, carrying around 3x5 cards for capture of notes and ideas. I'm not really using the Palm for work nor personal schedules anymore (work stuff is handled on the Mac, personal is very limited).
A Treo would be nice but would be overkill for my needs. I'm hardly ever mobile so why pay $20/mo for a device that's doing mostly the same things my Zire and cheap mobile phone already perform?
Like you, I am considering turning back to paper for personal use. I'm pondering the idea of a Moleskine weekly datebook for personal stuff -- the odd date here or there and to capture stuff when my cards are not handy, aloing with the 3x5 card HispterPDA I'm playing with now. It would be an interesing experiement. I would probably continue to use the Zire as a reader and maybe music player, but that's it.
Part of it is due to the way I work (at the Mac 97% of the time) and partly because I think I've lost some excitement on the Palm. Judging by the Palm industry and community there seems to be a general blah happening too, and the Access purchase seems to further that.
As to MS devices, I am sure they are decent, but again it comes back to need and use. If I use a Palm for music and reading, I doubt that an MS device would serve any different purpose.
Posted by Mike Rohde | September 14, 2005 10:49 AM