[plug] Agenda VR3

[Mike Holland]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Christian wrote:

> A "massively alpha release"???  You paid $600 to do alpha testing for
> them?

Fair suck of the savaloy, Christian. Simon bought it as a pre-release - a
hacking tool. The hardware seems OK. Sure they want people to fix the
software for free, but it IS open-source.

>  And, btw, it's not meant to be an alpha or beta or "developers
> unit" release.  They're actually selling this lemon!

  The fact that they made a public release is very unfortuante, but doesnt
directly affect Simion. I hope the public release still has 16MB of flash
and no mask-rom.

> Have you used a Palm handheld?  You don't *need* multitasking!  You can
> be doing something in one app, change to another and then change back to
> the previous app and be back in exactly the same place you were before.

Sometimes! Try looking up a postcode while editing an address item.
Palm apps cant stay open while another is running, they must save state to
'disk' memory.

> on the order of 0.5 seconds.  Based on the review of the VR3, it takes
> longer to than this to change between apps that are already open!  So,

So its slow - big deal. We all know its not ready for general release.

> the answer to your question is obvious: 1 app at a time is better and,
> on a Palm, all you need.

Isnt that what DOS and macintosh users used to say :)

> cool hack.  Why not use an operating system that has been designed from
> the ground up to work on this sort of hardware?  Handhelds are not meant
> to be tiny PCs.  Palm knows this which is why they've been so
> successful.

Kind of true, but as hardware improves, we will want multitasking. I
expect my future palm to simultaneously:
  - play an MP3
  - log data from GPS or other sensors.
  - poll my e-mail server
  - run foreground app
  - have some suspended apps.

The VR3 is a long way from that, but the software could have its beginning
here.  I wont be trading in my PalmV just yet.

-- 
Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
                          --==--