Published on September 22, 2005
It’s official. There really is a Windows Mobile Treo. Rumored as the Treo 670 for a while now, Engadget has taken the wraps off of the Treo 700w. The unit has a slightly bolder design, with buttons that are squarer than the Treo 650. Impressive specs include a 1 Megapixel digital camera, 64megs of RAM and EV-DO. Not so impressive, however, is that the screen is apparently running at a resolution of 240×240.
Of course, outside of this particular device, this is a pretty big move for Palm. This is the first time Palm has released a device that does not run the PalmOS. Palm just released a Windows device. That’s pretty dramatic, and exciting.
Do I regret getting my Treo 650 just a few weeks ago? Not one bit! However, I’m not knocking the Treo 700w, as I think it will give Palm a great boost in the corporate market, where the PalmOS Treos have already been performing solidly as is. Should we be on the look out for a PalmOS Treo 700p? I’m thinking not, as a 1 Megapixel camera and 64meg of RAM seems like too much of an incremental upgrade from the 650… but it has been out a while so I wouldn’t rule it out. I’d just rather the next PalmOS Treo to have something around 128meg of RAM, Bluetooth 2.0, and WiFi built in (of course, who doesn’t?) Then again, such a device would tempt me to upgrade… so perhaps it’s best that the next Treo update be incremental after all.
Read More At: Engadget
Tags: Palm Windows PDA Smartphone
Published on September 12, 2005
We all remember a while back when Volkswagen teamed up with Apple right? They offered the New Beetle with an iPod, and an actual iPod dock built into the dash. This move, combined with the popularity of Apple’s digital music player, has lead many other auto makers to follow suite, as you can now buy cars from companies like BMW with built in iPod interfaces.
In a move that surprises me, Volkswagen has turned away from an interface that is exclusively iPod compatible and has adopted a new USB port in their vehicles. Stored in the center console, this USB port will mount any USB-based storage device, search the drive for MP3 files, and then let the driver navigate and play the music through the car’s sound system. This means that any thumbdrive or thumbdrive-based MP3 player will work in the car. I think this is an EXCELLENT move on Volkswagen’s part. This greatly reduces the investment required for a driver to make use of digital music in the car. Instead of having to put down $300 or more to get an iPod that will work in the car, the customer can find a great deal on a 1GIG thumbdrive (which I’m sure can be had for about $40 now), load it up with music, and leave it in the car until they want to swap the tunes out for something else.
I also see this as another step for USB based storage devices to completely replace CDROMs as a storage media.
Link: German Car Blog
Via: Engadget
Tags: cars MP3 USB Volkswagen
Published on September 8, 2005
I resisted the switch from Winamp to iTunes for as long as possible. When I got my iPod Photo, though, I lost the war. iTunes was needed in order to be able to synchronize photos to the device which was an important feature for me, especially the album art. Over time, I’ve gotten used to iTunes and forget what I miss from Winamp. The fact that the original team is gone from Nullsoft made the loss of Winamp seem less severe after all.
While I sync my music library to my iPod using iTunes on my Windows desktop, I also wanted to keep my contacts and calendars synced. To do this, I had to use iSync on my Powerbook. My Palm bridged data between my Desktop and Powerbook, while iSync then brought that data onto the iPod from the Powerbook. It was a bit of a convoluted system, but it worked extremely well as long as I synced my iPod up to my Powerbook about once a week.
When I updated my Powerbook to OSX 10.4 Tiger, it pretty much broke my ability to sync my Sony Clie NX80V with my Powerbook (extremely frustrating). Because of this, I quit syncing my iPod with my Powerbook because there was no way to get the new data over there. Basically, it threw my iPod out of the loop. At least I had my music and photos.
So why am I explaining all of this? Well I’m a bit excited, because tonight I see that there is an update to iTunes, bumping it up to the 5.0 revision. In 5.0, they have added the ability to synchronize your iPod with Outlook on Windows. While it’s not exactly what I want yet, which is Palm Desktop synchronization, it is certainly a step in the right direction. Having my iPod sync my calendar and contacts with my Windows desktop would eliminate that nasty cross sync between my Desktop and Powerbook.
Although, here’s where I flip-flop… I do like having my Powerbook and Desktop synced up as far as calendar goes… and I just got a Palm Treo 650, and I will have to see how it plays with OSX Tiger. Hopefully I’ll be able to hit a Bluetooth hotsync between the Treo and the Powerbook every now and then, and everything will stay synced up. Mainly though, I can put away my iPod’s firewire cable. 
[/rant] I hope at least someone followed that.
Link
Tags: Apple iTunes iPod
