The Palm VIIx was my very first PDA purchase (and has since been replaced — at least mostly replaced — by the HP Ipaq Pocket PC [shown above] with wi-fi access) but I still use the old grayscale Palm sometimes. The reason I haven’t totally shelved it is because I haven’t transferred all of the website login info out of the program I was using on Palm into the Pocket PC (there is no export utility and the data isn’t in a format that I can convert so I have to manually move the information).

Briefly (a couple months), I was signed up for the palm.net wireless service but found it too restrictive and not full of enough worthwhile content. It was sort of like a partial internet and I was hungry for the full meal deal, not some primarily ASCII text version of sites I liked. They used their own version of HTML too calling it “web clippings” which certainly didn’t help with their adoption efforts. I believe they also interpreted WAP, but since WAP changed quite a bit, I imagined it was more than a little bit frustrating for developers who signed on and really tried to promote internet-related content on Palm devices. Well, apparently they didn’t improve upon the situation enough to impress enough subscribers to stay afloat financially and now they are shutting the service down for good as of August 31, 2004.

PalmOne will shut down operation of its wireless service, Palm.Net, by the end of the month. The Milpitas, Calif.-based handheld maker posted a statement on its Web site at the end of July to say features such as Palm.Net e-mail and MyPalm mobile portal and “Web clipping” service won’t be available after Aug. 31.

Last time I checked Palm still had the majority of the PDA market, but with Pocket PCs having more of a Windows feel, this could be another future victim of the Microsoft juggernaut. I think people just like familiarity and a PDA that has a Windows-like environment just feels more like an extension of a full size computer (for Windows users, anyway). R.I.P Palm.net.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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