So is this the end of Palm OS 6 (Cobalt), the operating system that never was ? Garnet (5.4) should be dead in the water - this generation has gotten seriously long in the tooth and, as a result, Palm OS has lost a lot of ground to WM.

I gave up on Palm a couple of years ago as I got fed up waiting for decent support for scalable fonts, large flash storage, WiFi, etc. I went to WM. I doubt Palm will ever make up the ground they lost with the split, Source's move to Linux, etc., etc. Such a shame for a company that was once second to none in its market.

Palm Desktop 4 and earlier required users to install Palm Desktop multiple times -- once for each user -- on a Windows XP or Win2K machine that had multiple users or resided on an Active Directory domain. And each of them needed Admin rights.

Contrast to Blackberry, whose Desktop Redirector worked without security hacking or multiple installations out of the box.

http://antiwindowscatalog.com/?mode=product&id=23

I'm now on my 3rd Palm TX as a result of digitizer failures, all within the 90-day warrantee period. Of course, I'm now in the process of moving all my data out of the proprietary Palm, Pocketmoney, and Handbase formats.

Palm just doesn't have a direction anymore, do they? They have no clue what they're doing, and it shows. Of course this isn't a recent development, with the spinoff of the software division and the subsequent repurchase. Now that's the sort of dysfunctional behavior to make you run in horror from any company.

I guess I shall see if getting a PocketPC to communicate with a Linux box is as difficult as I hear.

I'd like a Nokia N800 but everyone and their dog slams it, according to Google. Sigh.

Is it THAT difficult to make a small computer to keep track of my calendar, address book, bank account, and to-dos?? It appears that going to the Moon was easier.

... I'm a happy (mostly) Palm user.

I'm a lone Mac user in a Windows-centric business, and I can think of little that would be worse than switching to Windoze. My colleagues all user Windoze Mobile devices, and how I laugh every time I catch one of them doing a hard reset because it's crashed again !

I agree that Palm is way behind on features, for example it was something of a "disappointment" when I found that there is no 'cheap' WiFi available for my New (to me) Treo 650. I think their desktop software sucks, but thankfully I've discovered Missing Sync which is what Palm Desktop should have been years ago.

I REALLY, REALLY hope they succeed in this major update - otherwise we'll be left with a choice of Windoze or Windoze, and I really, really, really wouldn't want to use that !

I really hope Palm can get it together. I think my Palm TX is great. It would be nice if it had a phone, but I can live without it. It would be nice if it had better software, but its good enough.

It just does what its supposed to. I don't want to edit MS Word documents on it, and I don't want to pay for that capability.

I own a (long-in-the-tooth) PALM device and a new IPAQ hx2495.

The IPAQ bells and whistles (ebook reader, music, SD and CF suppport) are great, inspite of many, many hangs and soft-resets.

But for business and essentials, I use the old PALM. Intuitive, reliable, and just simply a great tool.

I wish them the best of luck. I hope they allow the freedom for their devices to load a modified linux image. My main issue with all the smartphones is that they are not that smart.

I would love a device that I could tinker with the applications and script relatively easily to suit my needs, but took care of all the backend phone related specifics for me. I don't use or need any windows related apps, but the ability to develop networked apps to interface with my own servers would be cool. Why sync the device in a cradle when it could be real time across the (my) network ?

Imagine a fluxbox / E17 interface with phone facilities available and all that touch screen goodness. iPhone lookout !