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HP sticks by PDA but Palm's off |
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THE personal digital assistant is pretty much out of favour these days, with road-warrior executives instead tending to flaunt BlackBerry push-email devices or snazzy paper-thin smartphones.
Hewlett-Packard, one of the first companies to embrace the PDA is not giving up easily however.
It is continuing to promote and extend its iPaq line of PDAs, inherited from Compaq in a 2002 acquisition.
A typical product is the $499 Ipaq 2190 Pocket PC, which uses Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform to deliver mobile versions of Office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and to connect to the internet.
It has been joined by the iPaq 112 Classic Handheld, described as a traditional, although slim and stylish, pen-based PDA at $399.
It's pretty much a no-nonsense entry-level device for students and working professionals who want to keep personal and business calendars synchronised, and don't need to be hounded night and day by corporate email pushed relentlessly BlackBerry-style.
It will also store a limited amount of digital content, such as MP3 music files and photos.
HP's other new iPaq is a GPS navigator, dubbed the iPaq 312 Travel Companion. It has a 4.3in widescreen for displaying maps and videos.
When showing the latter, it is claimed to have resolution equivalent to DVD quality.
The 312 displays Australian maps, although HP is silent on where they're coming from.
Presumably they're from Sensis, the Telstra subsidiary that specialises in maps.
Access to an online trip-planning portal is said to help plan itineraries and research information on destinations, although Double-click reckons you'd probably be better doing the latter on a notebook or desktop PC with a decent-sized screen.
The iPaq 312 Travel Companion sells for a recommended $499.
Meanwhile, doubts continue to hover over Palm, the company that helped popularise the PDA.
The company has been in something of a financial pickle, and most of its models continue to use the outdated and sometimes crash-prone PalmOS operating software.
A new operating system using the open-source Linux system is on the way, but probably won't be delivered until late next year.
Palm has been the subject of a scathing report by Business Week of the US, which notes that most smartphones offer built-in Wi-Fi and GPS navigation, but Palm's products offer neither.
Its latest model, the Centro (now on offer in the US, but not Australia, and aimed at young users) suffers, in Business Week's view, from a cramped keyboard that seems designed for hobbits, a tiny screen and a low-yielding battery.
BizWeek reckons the company may be on borrowed time. That's sad, it says, because for all its faults Palm still offers the simplest and most intuitive user interface and the best integration between PDA and phone functions.
The notion of an early death may be premature. Palm last week teed up a deal in which a company called Elevation will pour the equivalent of $360 million into the company in return for a 25 per cent shareholding.
Much of that money is going back to Palm shareholders, but it is hoped some should be available to spur development of the new operating system.
In another good sign, Jon Rubinstein, former boss of hardware engineering and head of the iPod division at Apple, has been named Palm's executive chairman.
The man is a genius who has played a major role in Apple's remarkable revival. If anyone can rescue Palm, he's the one.
APPLE Australia had a pleasant surprise for Mac fans when the long-delayed Leopard, the new version of the Mac OS X operating system for Macintosh computers, went on sale last Friday.
The company cut the earlier announced price of $199 for a single-user Leopard licence to $158.
A five-user family licence, for use at a single residence, goes for $249, down from the previously announced $299.
Apple Australia executives say the price cuts reflect the rise in value of the Aussie dollar in recent months.
That's great. Now perhaps the local subsidiary might apply the same reasoning to its Macintosh and iPod hardware catalogue, and trim the prices of those products also.
Submitted Date: Oct 30, 2007
Source: Australian IT
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