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Weekend Mailbag #7
I broke my Prism (yet) again this week. Somehow the keys in my pocket or something pushed the hotsync contacts into the Prism, and off the board. Oh, and this isn't the first time that this has happened to me either; I have broken it the exact same way before ;). Luckily I had a spare Prism button board so I just swapped it out and put it in, and everything's good again :)
Was the Prism jealous of the Jornada in my other pocket? For that fact let me just say one thing -the Jornada has a beautiful design, and I love the hardware. Microsoft PPC 2002, well quite frankly sucks. I said it. I'm now going to get flames in my inbox, but seriously it takes way to many taps to do whatever you want done. But I say again, the hardware is awesome - I love this screen, and the size of the Jornada 568.
I can't rant on this forever, long live Prism! (And it's multitude of Springboards). I actually have a lot of stuff for this weeks weekend update. Some new products, updated software, lowered prices, the usual ;) Oh yeah, if you would like to view each link in a new window, in Windows browsers normally "Shift-Click the link" will normally open a new window. In Mac browsers, "Apple-Click the link" will work. Last of all I think this is the longest weekend mailbag ever! YEAH! :) Should I divide it up into pages? MAIL ME!
To start off with some Handspring news, slawyer pointed out to this article on CBS marketwatch which quoted Handspring saying that mm02 (the European Treo provider) will release the Treo into the UK on February 15th. Let's hope that date comes true!
 Alas, Handspring has recently stopped selling Handspring gear on its site. Previously everything from hats, t-shirts, to gym bags was available.
"We decided to remove the items due to the fact that unfortunately the volume was very low."
Not everyone wants to wear their favorite pda company on their sleeve I guess ;). If you still want one of these shirts, every once in awhile they pop up on eBay.
One last thing from Handspring; previously they had offered an instant rebate of $50 on the Visor Pro, now they have officially dropped its price to $249. (Old news)
My favorite mass-retailer (it's based in Minnesota), Target is selling the Visor Neo for $169 in stores and online. (roc459868)
Pocket Express, makers of many software springboard modules dropped prices across the board. The PocketChess Deluxe springboard module is now only $14.99. The PocketDB module is now only $29.99
(A drop of $20). Both of these are limited time special offers, and the prices are only available as far as I know through those two links.
 To hide some things away in the middle of this update, Landware has announced a public beta of its Pocket Quicken 2.01 for OS X. You must be using the latest Palm Desktop beta and have Quicken 2002 for OS X for it to work. I'm sure some people (Our in house Mac-addict James) will be excited about this! If anyone can e-mail me a screenshot of (the Beta) I'll post it.
Blue Nomad has updated Wordsmith to 2.1.3. The new version includes faster spellchecking that supposedly will check at 40 words a second.
Now, I don't try to put a link to the New York Times in EVERY update, but sometimes they have interesting articles. This is a very small side note, but they had an article here about new ways to shrink cell phones, and they specifically mention the Airprime SB3000 springboard module as one of the first products to use this technology. So in some ways the Visor STILL is in the front of innovation... Right ;) (I did see this article through Avantgo the night before Slashdot posted it. I'm original! I swear!)
Some new products...
Conceptual Innovations has released a new line of cases for the Visor. Both of their cases are leather, and offer the interesting feature of being able to hotsync within the case. The pictures aren't the best quality so it's hard to see details, but it is a similar design to the Handspring cases. The cases are from $40-$55 with a special offer of free shipping. I like the companies color scheme ;)
 And here's a cool product that one would think might already have been made for the Visor, but as far as we know it's new. The CardTool made by a company called TokenWorks is a magnetic stripe card reader springboard module for the Visor. A Development kit is available for it and the module can be flash updated for new protocols. It includes 2 MB of flash memory and is available now for $189. As helpful as it might be; you could do a complete transaction right on your Visor and than print a receipt via IR, Toolkit brings up the question of what ELSE you could do with it. (Work as a waiter and steal credit card numbers etc). Thanks to Toolkit for the news.
Two last things and I promise that I'll be done. You can now buy Handspring products and earn Northwest frequent flyer miles at the same time. Click here for details. (PDAENVY) You also can still buy your Visor accessories and Handspring products through us and help support the best community Visor site!
I got this press release in my inbox, and I thought that the product was unique. This doesn't apply to consumer's very much, but what Techneos Entryware 3.0 is, is a PC and palm combination that enables people to give accurate surveys on the PDA and than analyze the information on the desktop. I downloaded the 30 day demo and it's pretty full featured. Plus it'll work with supposedly the leader in the survey market, SPSS. Pricing is not disclosed, but my bet is that it won't be too cheap.
That's all folks. Check VisorCentral this week for more up-to date news, a preview of a new springboard module (no they are not dead!), and more!
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