According to several sources including Reuters, Microsoft and Palm will unveil on Monday a new cell phone, the Treo 700, that will run Microsoft"s Windows Mobile software.

Despite the fact that Microsoft and Palm were longtime rivals in the mobile software market, Palm has been expected to make a version of its Treo that works with Windows.

The Treo 700 will be offered by Verizon Wireless and will be able to access the Internet, news and e-mail, just like previous Treos.

Palm, Microsoft, and Verizon issued a press release saying they would hold a joint news conference Monday in San Francisco, which is pointing to the long-anticipated arrival of the first Palm Treo based on the Windows 5 mobile OS.

Currently, the Palm OS is running on just 19% of handheld devices, compared with 46% running Windows Mobile and 23% running Research In Motion"s software.

So, Palm OS is dead?

Palm R.I.P.

I'll never buy anything with crap <b><i>Windoze</i></b> on it. I hope they keep a model with PalmOS.

a pity. The Palm OS was incredibly light and powerful. Microsoft's marketing clout and "compatibility with microsoft office" (which the palm devices also had.) really drove the nail into the coffin for the Palm OS in the US.

It lives on in China though!

(with the linux kernel, no less.)

http://www.palmsource.com/press/2005/090905_access.html

No place left to go to keep away from BG. Unless.... maybe Google will develop an Open Source platform for PDAs?

As a palm os user I have to admit I'll miss the ease-of-use and the simplicity of the OS but in a world of superficial shallow people (not that it's such a bad thing)- companies like Samsung who tap into people's desire for a device which looks pretty or makes nice noises overrides their needs for a functional device. I think that's what's happened with the Microsoft handheld OS's- it's not that they work better but rather, they look and feel better.

The brains on this one is done.

The Palm O/S had its day. It is an easier system to operate and one that fails less often than the version from Microsoft, but not much less. The MS Software is better looking and has more features and is faster.

As far as the Samsung VS Treo (Palm) comment, the user has little experience with the Treo and Samsung.

We have dozens of Treo's, none of which work properly. The following is a short list of consistent problems:
1. Lock Ups
2. Random Reboots
3. Voice echoing
4. Poor signal quality compared to our Motoral's and Nokias on the same cingular network.
5. Consistent sync issues
(Yes, they have updated firmware and all sync software is current)

I am currently testing the Samsung I730 with the MS O/S
None of the problems mentioned above occur on the Pocket PC version.
In addition, the Pocket PC o/s can look up a name in our contacts database instantaneously (Our database of names contains over 7500 contacts). The Palm took 3-6 seconds to look up a name and could not look up by company name, and if the name had a middle initial it may never find the name. Just to throw rim into the mix, they had a fast 2-3 second look up but when switching between company and contact lookup mode it took over 15 minutes! The Pocket PC switches in 3-5 seconds.
Note taking while on the phone on the MS O/S is great. It automatically puts in the note the date/time stamp and who you are talking to. The palm can take notes, but doesn't add this info.


Synchronizing on the palm always took 15 minutes +. The palm os can not figure out how to sync just the data that has changed. Activesync for the Pocket PC syncs in 30seconds or less after the first sync (of about 15 minutes).
The Treo's will fail on the sync so often that a standard hard reset and total resync has to be performed about once a month or more (I'm being generous). Plus we have to use Intellisync to make everything work. Activesync has yet to hiccup and it doesn't cost extra.

There are many other features that make the OS better, but this is time consuming.

So while many will bash MS simply because they are MS and have made some fairly stupid marketing attempts and product launches, the Pocket PC O/S is an easy win over the Palm or the RIM.
Even so, if the Treo hardware doesn't get better, I wouldn't buy it with the Pocket PC software either.

I agree with IT Man wholeheartedly. I have been a Treo user since the very first version that actually flipped open. I think it was the Treo 300? This OS has been more bugged than the Roach Motel. Ironic, huh, when we are also discussing Microsoft yet calling a DIFFERENT platform bugged. That ought to illustrate how crappy the Palm OS has always been! I just CAN'T wait for the Treo 700w!!! But for now, I think I am gonna get the Sprint PPC 6600. Big, bulky and has a questionable sliding face. Well, that's what warranties are for! At least the display on the PPC 6600 is HUGE and clear and it runs MS, which means web browsing will occur at under a minute for a page load. My crappy Treo can take over 2 minutes to load a page and often doesn't even fully load it. Then the links don't work, etc. I usually can't access my Yahoo Mail account, and when I can, I often spend a LOT of time accessing ONE email, then a LOT of time typing out a response only to have the system fail to deliver it. I can literally spend over 20 minutes on the Treo trying to check and respond to an email that would literally take me about a minute from home, maybe 2. RIP Palm OS is right!!!

Hm... Palm's problems (and MS as well) are in the quality of hardware. That's the REAL reason for lock-ups, reboots and slow speed. I used different versions of PALM based handhelds, including the latest TREO650 and while some of the them perform as you people described, others were great.
So, when some smart manufacturer will start producing parts not in Taiwan or even worse CHINA, but some places better (like Germany or even US) we will complain less. That's for sure!

I think it's a little premature to write off the Palm OS. Palm has partnered with Microsoft in order to gain market share in corporate america. The new deal with Blackberry just furthers their expansion into these markets. The ability to sync with Outlook seamlessly and work with Blackberry Connect is critical to growing their business. I think you will see a new Palm OS based Treo that will offer features and looks not found in the Treo 700.

Either way, I'm looking forward to the new Treo.

A WORD OF WARNING – Treo 700 is great if you DON’T want to receive phone calls. If you had 650 problems you’ve not seen anything yet!

My husband and I just purchased (a week ago) new Treo 700’s and changed service providers in hopes of resolving the numerous problems with our Treo 650’s.

It all started last year, -- we purchased Treo’s to allow us to load “Supra” software that allows Real Estate Agents to use their cell phones to unlock the electronic key boxes on homes. This software only works on PDA phones. It was a great concept as you didn’t have to carry around two devices. First we started experiencing a lot of dropped calls and missed calls that went straight to voice mail. We contributed the problems to our cell provider. The service provider kept blaming the problems on our phones; we changed out the 650’s twice but still the problems remained.

As swapping out the phones did not resolve the problem we switched cell providers. This meant we had to buy new Treo phones; the 700. Not only are we experiencing the same problems as with the 650 but even worst -- the phone sometimes doesn’t ring and does not alert you of missed calls.

We’ve tested it several times by calling each others phones; in the pass week just about every second try the phone does not ring and no alert to a missed call! If you reset the phone, the calls come through for a while, but after a few hours the problem starts again.

We have spent hours talking to service providers, hours in their stores, and hours getting each phone setup. The result has been we have no idea if our phones are working at any given time, in the real estate business you live and die by you cell phone.....this is killing us!

jeretta,

I am having the same problems as you describe. I even got Verizon Wireless to switch my phone out. This after speaking with both Verizon, and Palm. Palm wanted me to go as far as deleting my Microsoft Exchange account at work (I sync with MS Exchange at work). I even went one step further and deleted my active directory account and rebuilt it from scratch. That didn't work. I've been doing research since to see if I can determine how many people have the same problem I do. I found one other forum where people were complaining of this so far:
http://mytreo.net/forum/index.php?PHPSESSI...34532.msg277739
None of the suggestions in that group worked either.

Also, a few other people at work are having this problem, but not as often as I do. If you come up with anything, let me know, and I will do the same. My email address is splatt@nospam.hotmail.com. (remove the nospam.)

Thanks,
Dave