[MJCP]

Late last week Palm Inc announced the closure of 30 retail stores -- its entire bricks and mortar presence in the United States -- ending one of Palm's worst years. Read More

[Some Random Bloke]

Pressed my buttons - It's really sad to see such a great company going down the gurgler.

I'm still using my trusty Tungsten T3 - it's faired me well. I would have considered a Treo two years ago, but they're so early 2000's now ;-)

I'm not sure the move to Windows Mobile was the issue. I think the closure of the stores isn't a huge issue, either, in that it must be hard to run a store on such a limited range of devices. Probably just a good business decision. But they've been distracted by mergers and demergers (or was that the other way around?) and acquisitions and who knows what else. That's was the big news in Palm, and the loooong anticipated Linux based OS, at least when Palm had any news.

And Palm OS II still isn't due to be released for another year, at least. It had better be something pretty magic, on the back of some damn fine hardware.

But apparently they're pitching it at the consumer market. That leaves them squeezed out of the business market by the Blackberry (I remember the Treo once being called the 'darling of the corporate world') and up against the likes of the iPhone.

The T3 is great, but my needs have changed since then. I'll probably be trading up to the iPhone when that comes out.

I'm actually quite sad about it all.

[Anthony Caruana]

Thanks for comments Xenophos.

Likewise, I find it all a little sad. I loved my Treo 680. Sure, it was a little chunky but it did the job. These days I use Nokia N95 and, while it's very good, there are still some rough edges to be sorted out in my view.

I'm guessing that I'll think seriously about an iPhone when they're released here (I'm not prepared to mess around with a "jail-breaked" unit as I rely on my phone too much to have it screwed up) although it'll have to be able to sync PIM data from both my Mac and a PC and I use both.

However, back to the main topic, unless Palm does something dramatic, I can't see myslef spending hard-earned cash on another Palm.

[harps]

I've been a palm user since 1998, but in Dec last year I ceased upon the death of my fifth device a T5.
Unfortunately the technology of palm didn't keep pace with technology in general.
I would have loved to move into a Treo but my works IT policy has limited us to the use of Blackberry's.
Whilst I like my blackberry (Red Pearl), its not a PDA.
The biggest thing I miss is the in ability to have word & excel files at my fingertips which synced back to our iMac via Documents to Go.
The one device I was really looking forward to was the much criticized Foleo.
To compensate I've purchased a used 12" G4 Powerbook.
I was looking forward to the MacBook Air but I feel the screen is too large, and device too big in general.
On the weekend I saw the Asus Eee PC in the flesh and I love it.
Its exactly what the Foleo would have been, and has been a huge success.
The Foleo could have been the saviour of Palm, not the demise which most feel.

[coins]

as the owner of a Lifedrive, i'll never own another palm / PDA. mobile phones are too clever. Even the iphone will be a winner in my books.

[Anthony Caruana]

At the time, I never thought that the Foleo was going to cut it but the market has spoken and it seems that there is a market for ultra-portable devices.

If Foleo 2 comes to life then I hope it has WiFi and 3G built into it.

[Alex Kidman]

The closure of stores doesn't really surprise me. While in SF for the Macworld conference, I wandered past a very lonely looking Palm store (it's in -- or that should be, was in -- the large Westfield Mall on Market Street). The store to the one side of it was packed with shoppers. The store to the other side was less busy. The Palm store? Well, I peered inside (I was basically just walking past) and I couldn't even see a salesperson...