Why palmOne will lose more ground

[Carpet crawler]

The T3 is an example for the decaying light at the palm horizon. My girl friend is not an aficionado of PDAs. I told her to go into PDA three years ago. She is working in a big enterprise. She is one of the first using a PDA in the upper management floor. She had a Palm V in use since three years. But now wants to switch to something better = emails and netbrowsing, landscape mode and powerpoint presentation. The Palm T3 could serve that needs. But - she needs an absolutely reliable data flow between Lotus Notes and her Palm. The company (40000 people) is uniquely using Lotus. The T3 is not yet providing that synchronization out of the box. Pumatech announces today that they will manage to cope that problem in Q1 2004. Ridiculously late. My girl friends IT department is telling her that she is on the wrong way with the palm T3. She will switch to PPC because she needs the power of her new PDA now. Not later next year.

This is an example of complete misunderstanding the market reality. Palm is supposed to deliver complete packages that enable people the use the hardware in an appropriate way. They don't.

So they will loose one custumer by one. The newest market researches point that out. Palm is losing leadership in Europe (golem networks reports that). The reason is obvious. But in the Palm chief-management floor nobody is thinking about that. They are building PDA with no sense and no future.

It's a pitty. Who will replace those people as soon as possible. Nobody - I guess.

CC

[AgentSmith]

Just have her try Cadenza mNotes.

www.commontime.com

It is worth the expense. Very reliable with Lotus Notes.

[charleski]

Does Microsoft provide built-in OS support for competing products? Hmm, sounds new to me.

[Convert2]

I don't think the analogy is valid. Lotus Notes is losing ground to Outlook which already dominates the market.

[Carpet crawler]

You can't rule out a whole world wide operating company - using lotus notes - by telling them that they are on the wrong side of the moon. What is the problem to develop a software that can communicate with lotus notes? What does that cost? 20 000 Dollars? That is peanuts. But losing a 40 000 soul company (and shurely there are more on this planet) is a bigger loss. It's like saying: black people cannot use Palms. They have to get white.

For me personally Palkm is making a mistake. The most annoying comments by PPC users on my Palm in the past was : they cannot do that and that and ....

Now it's 2003 and Palm managed to implement Word and Excel. Too late. The market has shifted to PPC.

And totally ridiculous: they imitate now the start up screen of PPCs. But that'S it. Where are the other necessary steps to hold people in the Palm OS stable? Is it really a Kotau to implement a mere tool? No - it is not.

My girl friend will kill me when she is told by her IT fellows that her T3 is not g?ing to be synced properly. She will throw me that 150 gramms on my head. Ouch.

Am I too servere?

CC

[charleski]

Are PPCs really capable of syncing with Lotus Notes right out of the box? Or does her company have a 3rd-party solution?

Yes, there are plenty of companies using Lotus Notes and Novell network products still, I just find it strange that M$ would provide support for them. There are actually several products that will work to sync Palms with Lotus Notes.

[Larken]

Unless they have really changed PPC in the past few months, it is not capable of syncing Lotus Notes right out of the box. It doesn't matter which handheld you buy, you always have to use Intellisync or XTNDConnect or some other similar software to sync with Notes. I came from an equally huge company that uses Notes, and I supported their handhelds. I don't see where Palm is so far off base, unless you are really into lock-ups and soft resets.

[chuckwjK1]

Originally posted by Carpet crawler

Now it's 2003 and Palm managed to implement Word and Excel. Too late. The market has shifted to PPC.

And totally ridiculous: they imitate now the start up screen of PPCs. But that'S it. Where are the other necessary steps to hold people in the Palm OS stable? Is it really a Kotau to implement a mere tool? No - it is not.


Am I too servere?

CC

Well,

Documents to go has been out for quite sometime and works better than some of the PPC builtin app. Lotus notes conduits have been around for quite sometime as IBM/Lotus have always been strong supporters of the Palm Platform. I understand there is updated support on the Lotus site and it is available NOW.

I think that your girl is being mislead....., Synching with Notes is not a big deal, and it will sync correctly.

[Hook]

Back last March when I first set out to learn about PDAs, I was looking at both Palms and PPCs. PPCs were quickly ruled out because:

1) PPCs could not edit word documents without destroying their formatting.

2) Pocket Word is actually Pocket Notepad-- i.e., although both Palm and PPCs require third party apps to handle word docs, M$ lied about it while Palm actually bundled the app.

Nuff said.

[Dizzy]

EasySync from Lotus synchronizes Notes and any Palm. It has been used in my company for many years. PPC needs a conduit just like the Palm to sync with notes.

The PPC has a bigger problem that Palm because if for some reason the machine looses it data has to have a hard reset the conduit has to be reinstalled on the PPC. With a Palm all you do is re-sync the palm.

In the company I worked for both Palms and PPC are being replaced by Blackberrys. Personally I own a Blackberry and I hate it what I would do for a Palm with the Blackberry capabilities.