.KEYWORD palmseven
.FLYINGHEAD NEW PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE A first look at the Palm VII
.FEATURE
.SPOTLIGHT FIGALT palmseven-cover.gif
.SUMMARY The Palm VII wireless device is now available, but only in the New York area. How cool is it? How much will it cost? If you’re paying for each byte you download, will your bills be suddenly huge? Since it only works with Palm’s own Palm.Net, will it be too constricting in a free and open Internet world? If you want answers to these questions and more, read this no-holds-barred product review by Contributing Editor Bob Freud.
.AUTHOR Bob Freud
The crowd around me in Ricardo’s Pizzeria couldn’t have cared less about my calzones. They were mesmerized by my new Palm VII, shown in Figure A. People started to notice when I put up the antenna. While waiting for my meal, I sent email to a friend. Some patrons saw this and then watched me download the latest headlines from ABC News. The talk turned to price. "Only $600? I would have expected to pay more," was one reaction. The people I talked to all agreed that the price was reasonable.
.FIGPAIR A The Palm VII looks a lot like a Palm III or Palm IIIx — until you raise the antenna.
The Palm VII was released only in the New York area. [We find it a bit troubling that this device is only sold in the New York metro area, even though the company claims wireless coverage throughout the US, as shown in Figure B. — DG]
.FIGPAIR B Wireless functionality appears to be available in many parts of the US.
[Even though coverage is shown to be available throughout much of the country, Palm.Net indicates that a percentage of the coverage is "outdoor only". As Figure C shows, the dark-brown areas near Denver, for example, are where you can get coverage while both indoors and out. The light-brown areas indicate regions where you’ll have to put on your galoshes to check your email. — DG]
.FIGPAIR C You may need to enjoy a walk in the park to use your Palm VII’s wireless functionality.
The Palm VII looks much like a Palm III. In fact, it fits into the same cradle. It runs all the Palm applications that my old Palm III runs. But once the antenna on the right side of the device is lifted up, the device becomes a networked device, wirelessly connected to the rest of the world. The Palm VII can send and receive email and also retrieve information from the Internet.
.H1 Wireless Palm
The Palm VII doesn’t use a modem to connect you to the world. Instead, a battery operated radio transmitter/receiver is built into each unit. It allows you to connect only to Palm.Net, which runs on the Bell South wireless network. Applications running on Palm.Net have a pretty good idea of who you are and where you are geographically located. By using a proxy IP address and determining the closest antenna to you, Palm.Net can tell a content provider your identity and approximate the location from where you are transmitting.
.H1 Web clipping
For a clearer picture of the Palm VII user experience, don’t think about traditional Web browsing. Instead consider 3Com’s new Web clipping metaphor. It’s like getting a newspaper clipping rather than the whole newspaper. When it works well, just the information you need is retrieved.
Although the unit can’t actually Web surf, what the Palm VII can do is pretty amazing. To retrieve Web-based information, the Palm VII uses programs known as Palm Query Applications or PQAs, shown in Figure D.
.FIG D You can download a whole bunch of PQAs to your Palm VII, but many already come installed into the Palm.Net category.
On a Palm VII, the HTML-based form resides on your own machine, rather than on the Internet. You enter your request off-line and then connect to Palm.Net and get the information you need and sign off. If you need to follow a link or sub-menu, you click on a link and are connected to Palm.Net again. Because the PQA resides on your machine and not on the Internet, the actual amount of information which needs to be transmitted each time is fairly small. Sending a query and getting an answer seemed to happen fairly quickly, although it usually took longer than the ten second figure which Palm gives as an average, even when at 100% signal strength.
The Palm VII comes with 22 PQAs and more are downloadable from the usual sources. 3Com promises that hundreds of content providers are already signed up and working on providing content and e-commerce PQAs in the very near future.
Today, owners of a Palm VII can already do the following:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Use MoviePhone to check when a film is playing or even to order tickets;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Check stocks on E*TRADE;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Catch up on the news from ABC, USA Today or even the venerable Wall Street Journal;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Find an ATM (Automatic Teller Machine);
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Check sports scores on ESPN;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Ascertain whether a flight has been delayed using Travelocity or OAG;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Help you find your way with MapQuest, as shown in Figure E;
.END_LIST
.FIG E Enter your "from" location and your "to" location and once you click Directions, MapQuest will return a path you can follow.
Here are a few more things you can do with your Palm VII’s PQAs:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Order tickets through Ticketron;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Translate short paragraphs to and from English and five other languages using the GO network translator;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Get customized traffic reports using Etak Traffic, as shown in Figure F.
.END_LIST
.FIG F Want to know which routes to avoid? Let Etak tell you.
Most of these and more are included pre-loaded or on the accompanying CD ROM.
.H1 Almost email
The Palm VII calls its email application iMessenger, shown in Figure G. You can receive email messages from anyone, anywhere. To save money, only the first part of the message is transmitted. If the message is longer than 500 characters, you tap on the more button to get the rest of it. The catch with using iMessenger is that you can only receive mail sent to Palm.Net — you cannot check your regular email account unless you set up forwarding with your ISP — and messages you send from your Palm VII will have the Reply-To address of your Palm.Net account.
.FIG G iMessenger provides the Palm VII user with email capabilities. You may want to use a smaller font to fit more of the message on the screen.
If you close your Palm.Net account and later decide to reopen it, you will not be able to get the same email address or user name again. This appears to be a Bell South, rather than Palm.Net limitation, but the effect is the same.
One other concern is that it might be possible to confuse the normal Palm mail application with iMessenger. Only time will tell how much of an issue that becomes.
.H1 Getting started
Activation of the Palm VII’s advanced capabilities is non-threatening and foolproof. Once the included AAA batteries are placed in the unit, the transmitter battery begins to charge. About an hour later, the Palm VII is ready to connect to the world. When you lift up the antenna for the first time, the Palm.Net registration application starts. Within minutes you can have full wireless capabilities.
.H1 Rolling your own PQAs
Using tools provided by 3Com, basic Palm VII query applications are easy to create. They are written in HTML and then converted into a PQA. Without spending a lot of time, I tried my hand at writing a couple of PQAs and was pleasantly surprised. The one that was most successful is called Nihon. It lets you access an on-line Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary. You can download it from http://www.bergen.cc.nj.us/faculty/rfreud/nihon.pqa. Palm Computing has provided excellent Windows and Macintosh tools for PQA developers. What’s more, there are tutorials geared for those coming to the development from the traditional programming or the Web development worlds. The style guide helps developers create PQAs that are both intuitive and elegant. The guide is a model of clarity and reminded me of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Bravo Palm Computing!
.H1 Bonehead batteries, bites and bills
After three days of pretty active wireless usage, I was about to check email. I found that I couldn’t. I got a message that my transmitter battery was being recharged and would not be ready for an hour. There was no warning about this. The Palm VII has a no transmitter battery monitor. My needs were not mission critical, but a delayed stock trade or business email might have been critical for the financial user. 3Com needs to address this issue in their next iteration.
.CALLOUT A delayed stock trade or business email might have been critical for the financial user.
Billing is fairly straightforward, but many users will find it pricey if they cannot "write it off" or if their company won’t pick up the cost. Palm.Net has two service plan options available. The $9.99 plan lets you transfer 50 KB of information a month. How much is 50 KB? As an example, this article would be about 10KB, not counting the graphics. Palm "guestimates" that this is about 150 Palm screens. The $24.99 plan lets you transfer 150 KB of information a month (about 450 Palm screens). Each additional kilobyte transferred is charged at $.30. This is approximately a dime a screen for each screen that exceeds your service plan.
In a recent Wired article, Tammy Medanich, product manager for the Palm VII, suggested that the average Palm user used his or her device about 13 times a day.
If typical Palm VII wireless usage tracks with this estimate, many users will substantially exceed their service plans. The following type of Palm VII usage seems pretty reasonable.
.CALLOUT Users may find themselves routinely going over their service plans to the tune of 100KB or more each month and thus spending $50 to $75 a month in overage fees, on top of their service plan fee.
Let’s imagine users who send and check email three times each day. Each time they get two or three messages and send a message or two. They look up two phone numbers each day and two stock quotes, check the weather, query MoviePhone once and Etak Traffic once or twice. Such users will easily rack up 7KB of usage a day, more if they check the news or avail themselves of other Palm VII goodies.
Users may find themselves routinely going over their service plans to the tune of 100KB or more each month and thus spending $50 to $75 a month in overage fees, on top of their service plan fee. If 3Com’s goal is to promote wide acceptance of the Palm VII, Palm.Net will need to move in the direction of other ISPs and come up with an all-you-can-eat pricing plan.
.H1 We know where you are, more or less
In practice, the results can be less than satisfactory. Based on my perceived location, MoviePhone suggested I drive 20 minutes to see Star Wars Episode One. Actually, it’s playing five minutes from my home, and I was able to find this out when I chose to submit a zip code location myself.
Carl Ford, Community Developer (Directories) for Voice over the Net provider Pulver.com had this to say about the Palm VII:
.QUOTE 3Com continues to lead the way in providing PDA mobility. The wireless solution has many nice features, but is not at the stage where true user individuality is recognizable by the wireless application. Until this problem is overcome the Palm VII will be a niche market device rather than a ubiquitous portable computing tool. As I see it, the goal then for 3Com is to continue to drive business alliances for specific application development.
Compelling PQAs convinced Timothy O’Reilly, owner of Claire Limousine, that the Palm VII might have a place in his business. Here’s what he said:
.QUOTE I’m really interested in the Palm VII’s ability to provide real-time flight information. In my business, it’s vital to know if a flight is on time, delayed, or canceled. Our drivers need to know at which gate a passenger is arriving. Normally, our staff has to get this information to our drivers if they are out of the office. It would be great to give drivers the ability to check this themselves, and it would free up our staff for other tasks.
.PAGE
.H1 Parting thoughts
The Palm VII is going to be well worth following. With its rich feature set and elegant Palm design, the Palm VII rewards the user with excellent mobile capabilities. Those who must depend on mobile access will find the Palm VII is a useful tool today. Others may choose to wait for the Palm VII’s future versions, especially if 3Com revises its Palm.Net pricing policy.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
You can download Bob’s Japanese to English (also English to Japanese) translator from http://www.bergen.cc.nj.us/faculty/rfreud/nihon.pqa.
Another fine review of the Palm VII is available from The Gadgeteer at http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/palmvii-review.html.
The home page for Palm.Net is at http://www.palm.net.
Many of the latest query applications are at http://www.palm.net/apps/index.html.
You can read a detailed white paper on the Palm VII at http://www.palm.com/pr/palmvii/7whitepaper.pdf. You’ll need an Adobe Acrobat plug-in to read this file.
Development support for the Palm VII from 3Com is available at http://palm.com/devzone/palmvii/.
As far as we can tell, Ricardo’s Pizza doesn’t have a Web site. But if you’re in Northern New Jersey, you might try getting them to deliver by calling (201) 843-1396. Be nice. They’re a small, local pizza place. No trying to order from Texas, OK?
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6d182
