Just Like the Pre, I’ve been chomping at the bit for an HP / Palm TouchPad, FINALLY coming out tomorrow.  I stopped in at Best Buy to play with one last night.  And, I’m sorely disappointed.  I’ll be blunt, this is a pretty big let done.  Quick and dirty, here are the main straws that broke the camel’s back:

• My friend was right there with his iPad 2, and I got to compare its weight to the TouchPad.  The TouchPad is noticeably heavier.  I actually got tired holding it.
• WebOS is not done “baking.”  Case in point, picking a date on an event in the calendar is just like my Pre.  If you are on today, and you want to pick next Tuesday, you gotta count on your fingers or toes to figure the date. The iPad?  The roller says, “Tomorrow, July 1, Saturday, July 2″ – you just roll and get it done.  WebOS has not improved in this area and many core OS areas.  Heck, my Treo was easier to pick dates with.
• Only one front-facing camera.  Really?  Come on; this was “introduced” clear back in February.  HP could not get this added to compete?

On the positive side, WebOS, just like the Pre, makes the iPad pail in comparison to “moving between apps” and business productivity.  And, though I could only make it do one, notifications are way cool.  If I had a phone that would work with the TouchPad, that might be something that might sway me.  Maybe.  (Alas, as we all know, there’s only one new Palm phone, and not on a carrier we want, and not the size we want.)

I’m actually more excited (slightly) about a couple of other options:

• I must have been sleeping under a rock, but, I didn’t know Google has launched Chromebooks.  These look really attractive and really take a “more baked” innovative turn.
• I looked at a couple of what I will call Android Mini Tablets.  I might look into these more.

Oh, HP.  I figured your years of maturity, and your size, would push TouchPad to where it needs to be.  Alas, it’s for not.

I love my Palm Pre, and when I read about, and watch the videos about the TouchPad, I get really excited.  Then, I stop and ask myself “why?”  My Windows 7 HP dv4 laptop has “cards that slide” through Aero.  My full calendar and email via Outlook. (And, let’s not forget Foresight! )  I have full social media experiences through my browser or, I’m sure if I wanted to download something from the web.  I have “Facetime” via Skype (which I frequently do to other Pad owners).  So, why do I still gravitate back to the TouchPad, and even my Pre?  It’s the “always on” factor.

I’ve been trying to leave my laptop in “on mode” by letting it sleep or hibernate when I’m done – instead of turning it off.  But, when I pick it up (though, it’s a TON better in Windows 7 than it was in previous versions), you have to wait a few seconds, log in, and let Windows re-establish its self.  Sometimes, Windows doesn’t manage to completely re-establish itself self.  Sometimes, I have no sound – requiring a reboot or a re-sleep.  Sometime it just doesn’t act right, again, requiring a reboot.  With my Pre, I press “on” and I’m ready to go – reading the text that just came in, or, heading right to the destination I want.  It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if I could have this same experience in a larger form – hence the TouchPad.  And, the TouchPad boasts integration to my phone – someday, that is.  That’s a real downer at the moment; not knowing when a Pre 3 will come, and if it will come to Sprint.  I think this integration is a key feature for HP / Palm which has real appeal and can take personal productivity to a new level.

Microsoft, listen up – want to stay competitive in today’s world?  Make Windows and my laptop “instant on.”  Yeah, I know you don’t have control over hardware consistency, as well as what users might load on it, but that’s the gauntlet the world has thrown down for you.  Meet that challenge, and you have a huge chance of becoming relevant again.  You are relevant now in that everyone uses (okay, you Mac people, “a lot of people use”) Windows, but, you are not a part of the conversations and buzz of today.

HP / Palm, listen up – very happy that you are finally bringing out products – but you have to speed things up.  Get the Pre 3 out, on multiple carriers (Sprint first, please! ), so you can boost the slight buzz you have now.  You’ve got “the right stuff;” you now need to let it fly.

Well, as my kids would say – EPIC FAIL.

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(Written via notes capured in Notes by Inglorious Apps. Posted via Poster by Gabriele Nizzoli – all on my Palm Pre. Please excuse any brevity, terseness or type-o’s. Thank You!)

As I sit here on the road, I’m pushing the Pre to it’s limits.  In addition, I’m pondering a piece of blog feedback I received about talking more about the Pre “extending the brain,” and the best answer I’ve come up with is, well, two possibilities: Life Comes Fast, Don’t Miss a Thing – thanks Palm – or, a better fit that just struck me – Relaxed Productivity!

The Pre truly lets me do what I want to do, most of the time, when I want – short of “Sorry – Too Many Cards!” or, holy cow, I just had a call come in, (a good thing), I answered it and all I could hear was myself in my ear buds (a bad thing!)  So, here is some random thoughts via a post that started as a rant, shows some love, and ends up with a final thought (Plea?) for Palm.

* Video
I love the quality of the video, as well as the share options (Facebook, You Tube, etc.). Sometimes, completing an upload seems for not, resulting in errors until I reboot.
(Well, side note, I thought the Facebook upload was going to fail, but it pulled through. So I’m batting .500)

Many times, the audio gets out of sync from the video.

* Life Moves Fast
I love notifications. (Love, love, love!) They let me keep on top of everything (alarms, texts, Facebook and Twitter if I want to) and truly makes sure I don’t miss a thing.

* Moving Backwards
Why did the calendar loose features moving from PalmOS to WebOS?

- The monthly calendar is useless on WebOS. On PalmOS, I could look at it and quickly identify through colors, categories and symbols what was happening through the month. You can’t do such on the Pre.

- Reminder options are limited.

- Seeing meeting attendees is neat. (I can’t remember if you could see those on PalmOS.) However, you can’t use the feature to invite someone to a meeting via the Pre.

- I LOVE the calender collapsing the freetime space – that is a great, great feature.

* Moving
I love being able to listen to Pandora, write this post, surf face book, review and post videos (when they upload) and im / text all real time. I can move from app to app seamlesly.  NORMALLY, I can answer calls! (Fail! – as my teenagers say.)

* Innovation
(Not sure if that is the right section title.) So, I ran across a client today with a Pre. I got about the same reaction out of him as I do most. Mixed to negative. The Pre doesn’t seem to “wow” him as much as it does me (for some of the reasons I chat about above). I get a much different reaction from iPhone users. This coupled with the fact that Palm has only brought out the Pre with really one or two minor OS updates in the same time Apple brought out the 3G, Multi-Tasking OS (though not as slick as WebOS), 4G and the iPad, makes me say that Palm had better get it in gear. Life IS moving fast, and I hate to see them miss the thing – a thing called survival.

(Side Note: Pasting from Notes to Poster lost my extra CR LF that I use for breaks between paragraphs. I think I got them all put back in here.)

Untitled - By Me

A short while back, I had asked for some feedback and direction.  From this, I received several replies; thank you so much!  Here is one of those replies:

“I’ve been using PDAs since the mid ’90s, and I’m interested in using them to extend my brain — productivity, in other words.  Overall, there’s been little focus on this since the rush for communication.   I’d love to hear your thoughts on what works, and what doesn’t work, under webOS.”

(Thanks, Doug, for the response!  Doug’s product looks like a great productiviy product for the Palm Pre.  I haven’t tried it yet, but plan to do so.)

I think this is a great idea and I will work on a post about this.  In the meantime, I wanted to talk a little more about a particular subject; one who’s name Doug actually wrote above – Focus.

I’ve alluded to it, and have talked about it directly in a couple of posts.  I sincerely think focus is a huge area one has to work on to increase personal productivity in order to accomplish goals, and finally handle everything life throws at you in a relaxed manner.

Side Note: Doug, I think the Palm Pre & WebOS helps with this tremendously by letting you take things in stride, not get interrupted and maintain focus.

Yesterday was Independents Day (I hope you had a GREAT day).  Focus was surely a gigantic necessity in forming our country.  I’m picking up this book and reading it to see how the Founding Fathers kept their focus and accomplished such a great task.

(I spent some time writing this up as a part of an application.  I thought it was so good, and, because I spent the time I thought I would post it here also.)

Should I buy a Palm Pre over an Apple iPhone?

As with many things in life, it depends.

The first thing you need to ask yourself when making this decision is why you are considering getting a “smartphone” (as these devices are commonly called).  The “why” can be generalized into one of two categories:

1) I want to get a smartphone for entertainment.

2) I want to get a smartphone to help me be more productive.

If you think you are in the first category, then, you may want to lean more towards the iPhone.  Apple has certainly done an incredible job at making music easily available and a piece of cake to load.  Their apps (applications you can load on the phone, some for free and some for a cost) can keep you entertained for hours.  However, if you are more interested in tackling life, the Palm Pre is definitely the phone for you.

Palm’s slogan is “Life Moves Fast. Don’t Miss a Thing,” which is the perfect companion to being more productive, whether in your personal or work life.    The Palm Pre takes everything that is thrown at you (Emails, Text Messages, Facebook Notifications, Twitter Tweets, Appointments, Tasks) and queues them up in what’s known as “notifications.”  A notification can be flat out ignored, temporarily ignored and placed as an icon at the bottom of the screen that you can deal with later, or literally “thrown away.”  This is opposed to the iPhone where when one of these life events happens, a message rudely pops up in the middle of the screen, interrupting what you are doing (on the phone, or not) and forcing you to deal with it.  The Palm Pre’s “river rock” design is comfortable in your hand, making life comfortable to handle, even multiple things at one time.

The Palm Pre was the first smartphone to truly be multitasking – allowing you to run more than one application at one time.  Get a text and need to look at your calendar?  Just “slide over” to it, see what you need to see and slide back.  You cannot do this with the pre iPhone 4 phones.  The new iPhone 4 does have multitasking, however, it simply is not as graceful and will not keep you as productive as the Palm Pre.

Life truly is moving faster and faster every day.  If you want a tool to tackle it (and one that has music and apps as well), then the Palm Pre is it. Palm’s website is a great source of information, including videos that will demonstrate everything I have talked about. Palm’s Facebook page has a great video demonstrating how you will truly feel with a Palm Pre in your hand.  Finally, if you are looking for a more neutral review, Gizmodo.com is a good source.  I hope this helps; now, go be more productive!

• I’m happy to see that Nancy is still trying.  Please view her video and help her out.
• Contrary to my rant of awhile back, I’m still using the Palm Pre – and happy I am.  It still is a great productivity tool; the bestone out there for people who truly want to concor “Life moves fast, don’t miss a thing.”
• I’ve had some of the largest productivity challenges of my life lately with my work.  I’m pondering doing some writing to help me think through them, and make it educational for others at the same time.
• Related to the above, I recently figured out that there are a lot of you monitoring this blog.  What can I do to be of service to you?  What would you like to see / read more of?  Palm Pre? Productivity? Business?  Let me know.  Comment here, or, email me: jeffrey@fixyourtodolist.com

• I was on Facebook looking around. 

 

• I have the web browser up on another card holding the address and phone number for something I’ll need in a bit.

 

• I’m IM’ing with a friend, and… 

 

• I can quickly slide over to my calendar to confirm a time for that IM conversation and not miss a beat.

A quick jab towards my “iPhone has changed my life” friends; I would like to see your iPhone do the above just as effectively. Alas, in a touché’ to the iPhone, there are sure some things the Palm misses the mark on: 

• Battery Life. When I travel in Denver, and use my phone some to medium (Maybe a call or two, Bluetooth, GPS), it is dead by noon. My Treo at least would last all day. 

 

• I’m on a (very) mini-vacation in Vegas today. Phone came off the charger at about 9:00am, it is now noon and I’m down to 49% battery.
• Calendar. I wish the monthly calendar view displayed colors and more effective information like the Treo did. In its current form, it is pretty useless.

 

• Adding Contacts. On my Treo, when I found something on Google, there was an option to add it to contacts with the “touch” of a link. No more. 

 

• Slow. It is NOT a peppy unit. I watch iPhone users and, bam! They are there!

Where I stand: if Apple comes out with the new phone this year, and the OS is up to multitasking par with the Pre, then I will probably jump ship. I read an article recently that said Palm is working on new phones. So if they address the above, I may say on board as I have been on the Palm ship a long time (I started with the Palm Pilot) and have always appreciated what they do for productive people like me. 

Epilog: I think the world of “$.99 Apps” is killing us. Of the (very) few apps I have found worthwhile and useful on the Palm Pre, no one is coming out with much needed updates or growing their applications. I have to imagine that because the app is so cheap, and it was so easy to make using the WebOS operating system, that there is no motivation to keep developing the application. When I talk to iPhone users, they say their cheap apps get updates fairly frequently, and I have to wonder if that is due in part to the effort the developer had to put into the iPhone app. As I understand it, the programming language is much harder to learn and Apple is very strict about what they allow in their web store. I think this is something critical the world needs to ponder, let alone Palm.

When I purchased my Palm Pre, I purchased a Touchstone charger for it.  I love the Touchstone and its whole concept.  When I am working in my home office, I just lay my Palm Pre on the “puck” and wah-lah, it is charging.  If I answer the phone while the Pre is on the puck, it automatically answers like a speaker phone.  If I pick the Pre up off the puck, it automatically takes it off speaker phone.  It really functions as a great business office phone.  (Being “built for business” is an important point and one I am chomping at the bit to write about in my next post.)  Yet, the Touchstone has had some issues.

When you purchase the Touchstone, you have to replace the back cover of the Palm Pre with the Touchstone back cover.  (As a side note, Verizon’s Palm Pre Plus comes with the Touchstone cover I believe.)  It is similar to the original back cover, accept instead of being a smooth, glossy surface, it is more rubberized.  I think this is for two reasons.  One, I think the rubberized surface helps the Pre sit on the puck.  Two, the cover has the metal antenna (for lack of better words) inside for the inductive charger.  I am figuring it gets a little warm in there, so, they had to make the plastic thicker.  In any event, I unfortunately have had three issues over time with the Touchstone:

• My first Touchstone (or the back cover) “buzzed” or “hummed” ever so slightly after the Palm Pre was fully charged.  In my Zen like home office, this was not good.  After surfing the net some, I saw that other people reported this and, some, said that swapping it out for another unit made the problem go away.  I swapped mine out and, sure enough, the hum was gone.  However, there was another disruption in the Zen river rock.
• With my 2nd Touchstone Cover attached, I began to notice that as I “thumbed” on the keyboard, the unit “creaked.”  Related, it just did not feel as solid as it did before.  I was on the road for a week and swapped my cover back to the original cover (as I was not taking the Touchstone on the trip with me), and, wow(!), I immediately noticed how much more solid the unit felt.  After my trip, I swapped back to the Touchstone cover and I was in church taking notes.  I (and others) noted how “creaky” and loud it was.  So, I called Palm and kudos to their customer service; they said, “no problem, we will send you another one” which I had in a matter of days.
• My 3rd cover is much more solid and quiet than my other Touchstone cover.  However, sigh, the charging on the puck is intermittent.  It keeps going in and out of charging mode, “duh-dunking” every time.   Frustrating?  Yes.  Yet, again, kudos to Palm.  Customer service was apologetic and did not give me any hassles; another one is on its way.  I am optimistic that I will be back in “river rock on a pedestal” soon.  Also, I am optimistic about Palm.  See my next post about that thought.