Palm PDAs have always been excellent e-book readers. I cut my e-book teeth on them and still occasionally read a book on my Palm TX. The Sony Clies were also excellent e-book readers and in some ways even better than the Palms. The Sonys had a higher resolution screen and also had that wonderful jog wheel on the left side that made turning pages so easy. It still miss that jog wheel.
Palm will be announcing its new operating system at CES next year (I won’t going to CES – three years in a row is more than enough) and according to Engadget: What Palm did reveal is that Nova is already in the hands of some of its development partners … and that traditional non-phone PDAs — that is, the foundation upon which Palm was built — will not continue to be developed as Nova comes into play. We still love the Palm V after all these years, don’t you?
It makes sense. My iPhone, or any of my Windows Mobile or Nokia Symbian phones, will do everything that my TX will do. What the TX offers, as opposed to the phones, is a slightly larger screen, but this is hardly a justification for carrying two devices, especially if you have an iPhone which as a pretty large screen itself. I will put my TX up on the shelf along with my 2 3Com Palm IIIs (which still work perfectly well), Palm V, Tungsten C, T3 and my Sony Clie NX60 and Zodiac 2. Just another piece of gadget history to go along with my Sinclair calculators and computer, TRS80, HP calculator watch and HP Jornada, to mention a few.
PS: the Jornada and the Palm III had one of the best features that nobody since has emulated. A built-in flip-up cover over the screen. No need for cases or screen protectors. Remember?
All right, I’ll bite.
How do these “great e-book readers” suddenly stop working just because Palm is changing OSes yet again? I would think if they were going to stop working due to an OS change, it would have been when Palm switched over to using Windows CE. I don’t have a working PalmOS device anymore (they all broke) but when I read an e-book on the Garnet emulator on my Nokia 770, it still works fine.
Likewise, I had thought “traditional non-phone PDAs” had already been phased out some time ago. Certainly it’s hard to find any now. Even Palm’s $100 Centro is a smartphone.
If an e-book device still works for you, there’s no reason to stop using it. Certainly not any to make a big deal out of putting devices two to four or more generations old on the shelf because the current generation is being phased out. They’re no more obsolete now than they were before this happened.
Chris,
True enough. I’ve been using Palm handhelds to read ebooks for just about 9 years, and am currently on a TX; in the drawer is a IIIXE and an M125. My wife uses a Z22. None of ’em are exactly state of the art these days, but they’re all functional, and I expect them to remain so for quite some time.
But just the same, when I saw this post, I double-checked the platforms available for eReader and MobiPocket software, and checked the prices on the Ipod Touch (screen about the same size as the TX as I recall). If the TX and Z22 are discontinued some time soon (and they may not be — “not continue to be developed” doesn’t necessarily mean discontinued) it can’t hurt to have an alternative in mind.
Bests to all.
-tr
I stopped using Palms close to two years ago, and honestly haven’t looked back. It’s a sad thing in a lot of ways, and I do miss a few programs (mainly games). But (to me at least) the TX was never the equal even of the T5, and the TX has stagnated ever since its introduction. You can’t tell me that there haven’t been enough advancements in state-of-the-art to put out a PDA that’s much better than the TX – better screens, better batteries, perhaps an improved processor… and they *surely* could have improved on the case-and-button-quality, which frankly feels cheap compared to the original T/T2, and doesn’t come close to my ‘best physical design’ leader, the M505. (Of course, the 505 had a crappy screen, but…)
These days, the iTouch platform has completely replaced my PDA needs. The screen may technically be the same size as the TX, but it sure feels bigger; the base software is generally more polished and smoother, not to mention faster and more responsive.
The decline of Palm saddens me – the IIIxe was my first ereading device, and I still use more modern palms for ereading even now. To state, however, that the iphone or Windows Mobile will do everything that a TX will do indicates that really, the TX wasn’t being used to it’s full potential. Of course, the newer devices excel at doing things the TX never did – but any device incapable of running HandyShopper isn’t useful as a PDA in my view 🙂 The later Palms were superb at playing video in a multitude of formats.
As for the smartphone/PDA argument, I find that dumb phones are small, rugged, cheap, have better battery life and are easier to use, and in conjunction with bluetooth supply connectivity to a range of my other handheld devices seamlessly when required. Phones are almost disposable, (and certainly interchangeable) my other devices are not.
As for my old devices? They still work, and I use them regularly. For example, the IIIxe is currently being used as a datalogger monitoring temperatures on a solar hot water system.