Palm’s New "Chicken Hawk"

Ryan Block just doesn’t understand what Palm was thinking and I generally give Ryan an amen on most everything.  Mike Cane calls it “Flopeo”.  Crunchgear correctly posits “at least it’s not a table“.  Jason Dunn reminds us though that ”there’s no laptop on the market with a 10″ screen and five hours of battery life that costs $499 USD”.  Many Brighthand bloggers took their guesses as to what the “Hawk” would be and my guess is Jeff Hawkins disappointed them all including Brighthand chief editor Ed Hardy who unfortunately predicted it to be nearly exactly what it is: a crippled laptop replacement. 

But let’s be rational about this.  Forget about form factor for a moment and consider what you could be getting: a Palm engineered Linux internet device with WiFi, Bluetooth (2.0 EDR?) that has special sauce sync software to emulate what’s on your smartphone ((which upon further consideration gives me the HotSync/ActiveSync heebie jeebies).  I posed this to my wife who used a Treo for a time and she immediately envisioned something more like this:

I replied “and so did a lot of other people sweetie” (and how cute is the new geek with the Jasjar?!).   Interestingly she also immediately asked “so there’s no phone in it?’

Jeff Hawkins clearly had his eyes closed much earlier than his interview with Uncle Walt would have indicated.  Too bad for us as Palm really could have lived up to their name and created a tremendous handheld, maybe priced higher than most people might be comfortable with but closer to what every geek was hoping for and they clearly chickened out…..

Google + Samsung = iPhone not going to be myPhone

Rumors are swirling around the grid that Google is at work on their own touchscreen based mobile phone.  From the post by Simeon Simeonov I linked to above, things seem to be getting pretty imminent on the platform/software side, and if Samsung is indeed the hardware partner, whacchhout baby!  All that I ask is that 3G be a strong part of the equation (and there’s no reason to think Samsung can’t deliver on that front based on my experience with their BlackJack HSDPA capable Smartphone).  If this purported “Googsung” partnership can include that connectivity piece, cajole the wireless carriers to play along (one would think excluding Cingular/AT&T based on their servility to Jobs now) and then bring it to market prior to June when the iPhone is supposed to (and now better) launch it might put a serious dent in the expected sales of the new Apple baby.  Competition rocks for the consumer no! So, let the games begin!

3 weeks of Exchange ActiveSync Horror

I knew my day would eventually come and almost 3 weeks ago it finally did. James Kendrick has blogged numerous times about his hatred of ActiveSync, complaining that when it works, it works great, but when something goes wrong there is no easy recovery from it. Having used Windows Mobile devices for a few years now, and never having experienced any issues with AS, I always kind of scoffed at jk (stupid me). My scoffing days are done my friends. From 8:27a on 10/5 through this morning I was completely unable to perform over the air synchronization to my Exchange server. The specific error I received was this blastedly vague phrase: “ActiveSync encountered a problem on the server Support code: 0×85010014″
All the Googling I could possibly do lead me to various solutions, none of which resolved the problem, and to make things worse one of those potential solutions was to hard reset both the 6700 and the 700wx (both getting the same error seeming to indicate that it was indeed a problem on the server). I have done enough hard resets that I am unafraid of them, or full blown ROm upgrades for that matter, but the frustrating thing is that upon reattempting the OTA sync (and failing) and then performing a soft reset after reloading my key apps, AS by default attempted to connect on startup and wound up freezing the device so quickly that I couldn’t stop the freeze in time to get into the task manager, thus leading to another hard reset.
I could at least do regular desktop syncing with Outlook to get all my contacts, calendar items, email, and tasks loaded, but having been able to do this OTA for a few months has spoiled me forever!
Suffice it to say, the research for a solution was exhausting and fruitless until my IT brethren and I determined that a recent install of an email archiving software had to have caused the issue. I also stumbled upon a 1 year old Powerpoint presentation from a Microsoft webcast for Exchange administrators. This ppt. contains some very valuable information about precisely how the sync process works (between front end and back end servers in particular) which lead me to what was ultimately a correct guess about how the problem occured.

The installation of the archiving software (Mimosa’s Nearpoint)on the back end server which holds my exchange account occured sometime the morning of 10/5 after 8:27a (my last successful OTA sync until this morning). The confounding thing is we have several back end servers and the 2nd installation did not lead to the same issue for Windows Mobile users on that server! In the review of the archiving software I link to above this comment caught my eye:

“Best of all, users can restore messages themselves. There are no special clients to install—management takes place through Outlook or Outlook Web Access (OWA)”

Because I knew this is also how OTA essentially works, I guessed aloud to my Exchange Admin that this had to be where the conflict was occuring. Sure enough what the initial Nearpoint installation did was by default change 2 specific permissions (not sure which ones) on the IIS virtual directory for OWA. It is these permissions that apparently make Nearpoint’s OWA archive management possible, and on the installation to the 2nd back end server, these 2 permissions were treated differently, thus the answer to why the WM users on that server weren’t having any OTA sync issues.

There is no documentation (that we could find anyway) on this issue from either Microsoft or Mimosa (who by the way I think is now owned by Microsoft). Yes it is a rather obscure issue and we did find a solution, but the fact that we had to pull so much hair out before we did is what still bothers me. This seems like a predictable conflict between these 2 pieces of software and I would bet that I’m publishing the first knowledge of this today?!

Though I am thrilled to be able to OTA sync again (which by the way duplicated all my contacts, tasks, and calendar items on 1st sync since the horror…nice), the bad taste from this affair won’t soon dissolve for me. If the boys in Redmond want their direct push solution to truly displace Blackberry Enterprise as the corporate mobile email drug of choice (which to be fair wouldn’t be the successful business model it is without the ubiquity of Exchange anyway), then they better start paying more attention to preventing issues like this from even needing to be documented in the first place!!!!!!!!

There’s no reason from a cost perspective that MS shouldn’t overtake Blackberry, once enough good WM5 devices are available from all cellular providers. The Blackberry Enterprise solution requires a another robust server (or multiples thereof depending on the number of users) in addition to the investment in the Exchange server(s) a company has already plunked over good cash for, and a per user/per month cost of around $40 bucks a user (based on what our organization was quoted at least). With a little more expensive WM device (compared to typical cost of Blackbery devices) and Exchange Service Pack 2 installed, this extra cost is eliminated and you get more syncing functionality to boot! How is this not a slam dunk?!!!!

And yet, somehow I don’t think Microsoft’s dominance in this area will come to pass. Why? Because executives don’t have the patience or the time to deal with suddenly not having mobile access to their email for 3 weeks. They will pay more for a more a more reliable solution, and though I haven’t made the time to scour the web to search for similar Blackberry horror stories, I’d bet good money up front they don’t exist………..

$111 in Data Charges! Katana Konfusion Residue?

I opened my Sprint bill this afternoon and suffered what many a Sprint customer before me has experienced: completely unexpected sticker shock. After some cursing and righteous indignation, followed by vows to switch to another provider if they didn’t erase the unexpected charges (all posturing for my wife in case I do have justification for a switch and therefore legit phone shopping!), I fortunately had to charge the Treo 700wx (and the new Jabra JX10 – more on that later!) or else it wouldnt have made it through the looming long call to Sprint CS.

Having had some time to calm down I tried to think through what could have happened and in looking at the bill saw that I had $77 in data charges on my line (which alternately through Sept. was attached to the 6700, the 700wx, the 700p, and then back to the 700wx-I’m sick yes), and just $34 in data harges on my wife’s number (attached to just the 700p and the Katana). I purchased the Katana on Sept. 20th and this is the date of the infamous let’s play CDMA musical chairs Katana Konfusion affar. I figured I must have used some SERIOUS data on my phone over the last 10 days of Sept relative to the Katana (which I only mapped to mobile gmail?). Anyway, I had always wondered what I would wind up paying without flate rate data and I had a pretty shocking 10 day blind experimental result, or so I thought.

As it turned out I had no trouble getting the right person on the phone upon calling Sprint Customer Service, and “Brittany” had no issue understanding my dilemma and clarified things quickly for me. The data charges on my line started from Sept 7th, the day I receive and activated the 700wx! Why in the world the rep who helped me then canceled or at least didn’t prevent the canceling of my Sprint data plan is beyond me, but Brittany to her and Sprint’s credit wasted no time in crediting my account the full amount charged on both lines! In fact, instead of paying $111 in data charges for last month, I won’t pay any – not even the $30 I truly owed (111 is literally my lucky number and those who are close to me know the story which I won’t bore you with, but suffice it to day it lived up to it’s numerological legend again)

Finally a good Sprint Customer Service story to tell. (until they screw up my bill again next month and then I really will be phone shopping!)

Katana purchase leads to Konfusion

I mentioned in my previous post that I spent some impromptu time with the 700p. That came about when upon purchase of the Sanyo MotoRAZR knockoff (my wife is home most of the time and got flaky reception on the 700p, thus the need for experiment and expenditure) I called Sprint customer service to get my wife’s number transferred from the PalmOS Treo to the new “Ultraslim Mobile Phone” (actual cheesy inscription on the front of an otherwise quite sexy handset).


Except that poor “Stephanie” mistakenly assumed I wanted to transfer the number from the WM Treo and did so before I could stop her. Of course, I was calling from the 700wx so that meant I had to hang up and call back from the 700p (because its number wasn’t being transferred I guess?). To Stephanie’s credit she was profusely apologetic and then “Tiffany” was also nice to work with until the flaky 700p lost its signal at pecisely the moment after I had recited its ESN. Fearing that Tiffany had already disconnected my wife’s number from the 700p’s ESN, I hurriedly called Sprint customer service a 3rd time expecting the worst, but indeed I got through and this time “George” patiently listened to my saga, and then confidently went about fixing the mess. On a whim I asked him to switch my number (now on the Katana) to the 700p instead of the wx and thus 4 days of trials and tribulations ensued until finally I broke down and called Sprint CS a 4th time (surely they hate me by now and by the time I call to switch again will certainly waive my early termination fee if only I will return to a GSM provider where clearly a cell phone junkie such as myself belongs) and had them switch my number back to the Treo 700wx….for now anyway.

She’s Really Responsive!

I can’t get over how snappy the Palm folks have made the Windows Mobile experience. If any of you used a JASJAR with the initial ROM you can fully appreciate my amazement with the 700wx. To be fair even on the 6700 things had really progressed nicely since the early devices with WM5. Multitasking ( I would argue beng one of the key reasons for Palm to devise a WM device in the first place) is ridiculously possible on the wx. Of course this was notoriously not the case on the w. It was as if they wanted to completely mimic the PalmOS experience on WM.
Anyway, the one thing I’m a little disappointed with so far is the typing experience. I guess I didn’t realize how freely I was typing on the spacious Apache keyboard on a regular basis. It’s not like I didn’t experiment with my wife’s 700p regularly before I pulled the credit card trigger last week, but nothing can replace real live experience when a colleague is looking for an immediate answer from you, and you while waiting for your ginormous sandwich at Jason’s Deli (remind me to mention a side story about my trip to the T-Mobile store after ginormous sandwich consumption was complete by the way) start banging away on a complicated answer made possible by your pushed knowledge of the question in the first place and the convienient proximity of that famous sexy thumboard begging for you to try her out. Typing for a long time on the Treo thumbboard though is taxing and as I mentioned in my previous post, editing mistakes requires the stylus. Maybe I’m overeacting based on too little experience with it, but time will tell….

She’s here!

My destiny with the Treo 700wx has finally come to it’s fruition. I received the unit Thursday evening and have plenty of unboxing pR0n to share. In 4 days of use what are my initial impressions? In specific order of pertinence they are:

1. As a phone it is very similar to the PalmOS Treo experience and probably better given the Today screen applet Palm devised. It is simply amazing the way Palm tweaked Windows Mobile to capture the “Zen of the Palm” experience. It is like no other WM device I have ever used.

1a. The phone signal is poor in my location, or at least that’s the story the signal strength indicator is telling. I made and received only a few calls from my house over the weekend, so no way to really make a good judgement yet, but all 3 calls sounded clear and progressed flawlessly.

1b. The data speed, however, might be the better indicator of signal strength. I’ve only gotten as high as 268 kbps at my house with literally no bars of service (actually impressive in a way). My wife’s 700p by comparison typically has a few bars but the PalmOS displays up to 6 bars whereas WM I think only goes to 4 (or 5? But I don’t think I’ve ever had 5 bars on a WM device though even if possible). At work with 2-3 bars of service I’ve gotten as high as 460 kbps….not as good as the 6700.

3. The snappiness of WM on the Treo as already widely reported on the 700w the past several months is likely even better on the wx. Add to that the amazing memory management and the extra 32 MGs of RAM (which are seemingly always available no matter how many programs I have open). 61 MGs of Storage upon first boot of the device too! Not since the Blue Angel has memory been so plentiful on a WM device. There is not a device on the market now that compares.

4. The most annoying thing so far is the lack of D pad functionality in Pocket Outlook (the most important application in the OS). You can’t go up one line in an email your composing! You either have to scroll right to left with the D pad until you get to the spot you need to correct or you have to pull out the stylus. Also, pulling out the stylus is still required to look at a different folder within poutlook. Surely Palm could have tweaked this too but I wonder if Microsoft kept this code close to the vest?

5. Bluetooth audio gateway opening such that listening to podcasts through a bluetooth headset is made possible, apparently is not possible on the 700wx. I’ve attempted using BlueCast (which worked on the Wizard/8125), BT Audio Toggle (which worked on the Apache/6700) and both of these devices had the HTC developed “Voice Speed Dial” program. The supposedly much superior Microsoft Voice Command software is present on the 700wx, but I guess it works differently such that this hack isn’t as easily accomplished. Palm used a company call BSQUARE, to quickly develop the kind of audio management in the WM environment they would need prior to the launch of the 700w on Verizon, and I guess this works quite differently on the Treo than it does on other HTC devices. BSQUARE was by the way suggested to the Palm folks by Microsoft….the last people Palm should have been asking for a Bluetooth implementation recommendation. If only they had gone with the Widcomm BT stack but I’m sure I must be simplifying the complexity of the task. As sour consolation, Softick Audio Gateway which makes Stereo (or Mono I assume) Audio through bluetooth possible on the Treo 650, is not yet supported on the Treo 700p either.

6. The form factor/”caressability” of the Treo is everything I expected it to be. It is somehow both geeky and sexy at the same time.

7. The lack of embedded Wifi is only an issue because of the aforementioned signal strength issue, although I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss it, and I’d also be lying if I told you I hadn’t picked up my 6700 frequently whilst at home in close proximity to my beloved Belkin router. It’s funny how a device looks more attractive the closer you get to parting with it, and that will be the case whatever I decide…….stay tuned!

She awaits my taking her over the threshold

Anticipation is building
Free storage space gets me excited

Can’t wait to take her remaining clothes off
Get your boot on

Ahh, Today is the day

Money Shot

Order Received Shipped

So, I placed my order for “the one” last night at 9:36pm. As a part of that order I received free overnight shipping as well as a free 1GB SD card for being a loyal Palm customer (I already own the 700p). Having previously purchased a t/x for my brother from the Palm site I was aware of their free overnight shipping offer and that prompted me to buy from them as opposed to buying from the Sprint website which is charging $12 for shipping. Taking advantage of the memory card benefit merely required me to remove the battery from the p (it needed a soft reset anyway) and retrieve the serial number. I discovered the 1GB memory card deal as a result of being signed up for the Palm newsletter and I launched my purchase from that email and finished the transaction in maybe 2 minutes (if that). There was a very Zen-like quality too the whole process and quite frankly all purchasing experiences online should be made so easy.
Imminently pleased already, I really didn’t expect the order to process quickly enough that I would actually receive the device today. However, consistent communication from Palm about the progress of my order has been reaching my inbox all day and my persistence at checking the order status on the Palm site revealed this cause for giddiness as I ponder shutting things down here at the office and making a speed limit violation riddled commute home.

Update: Okay, I misinterpreted the Palm Customer Care/Order Status site lingo. Instead of going the final step forward, (I was convinced my wife, oblivious to my restrained glee, was holding out on me when I came through the door expecting my new toy to be present) my order went a step backwards. It stated earlier today (7:54a) that the order had been shipped when in fact I guess it hadn’t. Clearly it went back to the “Order Received” status and now this is what I see when I continually ping the page for an update….at least it’s a step back in the right direction!

. :{

wx is the one

So based on several reviews I’ve read there is no engineering trickery thereby leading to the enhanced 64 MG of RAM in the Treo 700wx. In fact it now stands as the WM5 device with best memory capacity and managment on the market. Over the weekend, the Nokia E61 caught my attention again based on consistently rave reviews, and though this lead to some wavering, it didn’t deter me from my destiny with the Treo, especially now that the real WM Treo we all expected in the first place is finally a reality. Unboxing ritual obligation fulfillment is imminent………

jk ditches w for xv

So my favorite blogger James Kendrick, has made the switch from a Treo 700w to the Verizon version of the HTC Apache. My kidding of him about neophilia surely playing a role aside, the needs of his job and the growing inability of the w to meet those needs, actually forced him into this decision. The main shortcoming of jk’s w apparently was it’s inability to properly interrupt data sessions to allow important phone calls to come through. Anyone who has ever used a Windows Mobile phone for any extended period of time will identify with jk’s pain on this front. His lingering and strong suspicion was that the paltry program memory on the w was the cause of it’s inability to manage these hand offs properly. Of course, I’m pondering a true neophilia induced purchase of the wx when Sprint “releases the hounds” (tomorrow?), but I’m fairly concerned there might be more to the problem than jk’s theory? See my wife’s 700p intermittently has basic phone issues such as spontaneous rebooting when attempting to make a call and flaky reception not in line with what the bars of service displaying would portend. What if hardware wise nothing has actually changed between w, p, and wx and Shadowmite is correct such that some engineering trickery has caused the appearance of more program memory, when in fact, it is only being borrowed from total memory in a way it wasn’t when w & p were designed?