Jeff Kirvin

Jeff rants about Docs 6, buggy software, Wall Street foolishness and why today's devices are too complicated to succeed. [details]

enderenya

Jeff only mentioned ONE bug in Docs 6. (Not syncing files on card properly) Why say it's a "beta" and "buggy" and not give any kind of detail (in other words, more than one problem) as to WHY?
Obviously it wasn't a review, but why rave about a product, spend all this time talking about it, then deem it unsuitable without giving us some (plural) reasons?

strider_mt2k

It sounds like the audio level is changing throughout the 'cast.
I don't know if it's Jeff being "on and off" the mic itself, or if there is some kind of automatic record level system being used that might be funky.

I found my self turning up the volume and then turning it back down again several times while listening on my PC at work.

Jeff Kirvin

Okay, I've posted the full review.

http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/20...tems-docs-6.htm

Jeff Kirvin

Actually, that was probably all just me. I recorded it late at night and probably didn't keep my voice at a constant volume.

Tam Hanna

Erm, where is the Cesinc stuff(QuickOffice)? They have a nice office package too.... . It even supports fonts via FontBucket. Why isn't it appearing here?

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Jeff Kirvin

I mentioned that in the full review, but Quick Word isn't full-featured enough. Specifically, it doesn't support paragraph styles (like indents).

enderenya

Great review Jeff, Thanks.

Possum

Concerning the ease of set up of new Palms, it not so much the set up but the migration to a newer model that's painful. It's just easier to give up from the beginning, beam or send over all your contacts manually (BT or IR) and then install absolutely every program you own one by one so you can tell which ones cause conflicts.

I had no trouble finding or installing the update or wi-fi driver. The problem with the keyboard was with the driver and it's been updated on PalmOnes site.

I can't see how we could possibly get the simplicity back. I, for one, am not willing to go back to 160x160 monochrome. I don't want to give up SD card access but that has some complexity involved with it. I've owned desktop computers that didn't have the storage capacity of my smaller SD cards.

If you remove the keyboard and wi-fi card (hey! what is your father doing with a wi-fi card anyway? Didn't you say last week that wi-fi in a handheld wasn't practical) then you begin to get some of the simplicity back but at the cost of features.

I do think that Palm needs to do a better job of fixing bugs before products are released. I'm not terribly happy about having absolutely no upgrade path for key programs other than buying new hardware either but this appears to be how Palm operates now.

Jeff Kirvin

Why would he listen to me? Besides, I didn't say WiFi was useless, only that it should be in the phone, not the PDA. In absence of many WiFi-capable phones at the moment, a WiFi SD card is a good option. I'm often ahead of the curve, and thought crazy by those than aren't. I'm used to it.

Possum

Let's face the truth. Phone companies don't want wi-fi in their phones. They are scared to death of people using it for phone calls over IP connections.

I have to agree with an earlier comment that about phones being too small to have a decent battery with the current technology.

The only way I would like to see wi-fi in a phone is if it were a fully functional PDA, like a Treo but with a 340x480 screen or a similar Pocket PC even, where I wouldn't be carrying around two devices to get all the functionality I want. Right now, one device makes me give up screen realestate, so a really tiny phone with bluetooth networking is the best option for me now.

I am Posting this message using wi-fi and the user experience is decent enough for mobile usage. With a proxy turned on with the wi-fi, browsing is very snappy.

If I use skweezer with the wi-fi card, pages display very fast, although this is with javascript and formatting turned off.