.KEYWORD ppletstoed0699
.FLYINGHEAD LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
.TITLE Nostalgic, destructive, and constructive
.DEPT
.SUMMARY Here at PalmPower, it’s a lot of fun to get letters from readers. In this installment of our semi-regular Letters to the Editor series, we reprint a number of interesting letters. One fellow loves our publication while another is convinced we sold out to the dark side. What fun! We also include a fun dialog about ancient computers with a fellow "old timer" and chat briefly about creating a Palm VII version of PalmPower.
.EDNOTE Here at PalmPower, it’s a lot of fun to get letters from readers. In this installment of our semi-regular Letters to the Editor series, we reprint a number of interesting letters. One fellow loves our publication while another is convinced we sold out to the dark side. What fun! We also include a fun dialog about ancient computers with a fellow "old timer" and chat briefly about creating a Palm VII version of PalmPower.
.H1 Thank you for the memories
I still have an Osborne 1 that runs. I don’t use it for much except to show these youngsters how things were at the beginnings. Somewhere there’s one of those build-it-yourself computers with the switches and the blinking lights!
64K of ram was like wow! Ashton-Tate, dBASE, WordStar, SuperCalc, then the IBM PC…and I agree with your thoughts on Borland and Sidekick.
Thanks,
David Jay Kamison
dkamison@dca.net
.H2 David Gewirtz responds
Cool. You have one that runs! My friend just bought a Timex Sinclair on eBay and he got it to run (sorta). I think I managed to convince him to frame it and mount it. — DG
.H2 David Jay Kamison responds
I have all the original upgrades, 300 bps Osborne modem, 40MB hard drive, etc. Funny, a couple of years ago they actually auctioned one at Sothby’s and got $2,000.00 for it. That’s what it cost new.
David Jay Kamison
.H1 It’s a computer. No, it’s a religion
Most of our PalmPower readers are into their devices and either are curious about other handheld devices or don’t care. But every so often, we get one directly from the wacko file. As much as we’d like to include this reader’s name, we don’t want to do anything that might lead him further into never-never land.
Due to your decision to include WinCE [sic.] in your coverage, I will no longer visit your site, nor recommend it to others. Please tell me how I may go about unsubscribing from your Palm Power Tips mailing list, and following that, please never, never contact me again.
Disappointed.
.H2 David Gewirtz responds
Gee, that’s a bummer. My mom used to have a phrase she used when I was being particularly spiteful about something. She’d call it "cutting off my nose to spite my face". It seems to me that by not reading PalmPower, you’re losing the advantages that other readers will get. And why? Because we choose to publish magazines on a variety of topics? That seems pretty strange. Time Warner publishes People Magazine, which bores the crap out of me. But that doesn’t mean I’ll boycott Fortune Magazine (or if I did, that it would diminish them in any way). You’re welcome to choose what you read, but don’t let your religious beliefs get in the way of getting the most out of your little machine.
.H1 A constructive Palm VII question
Wow! It’s actually possible to write a constructive, polite letter of request and email it to a publication! My faith in humanity is restored. –DA
You have such a great publication for those of us who use our PalmPilots. But now that the Palm VII is out, when will you have a version of PalmPower that works on the Palm VII and PQAs?
Can’t wait,
Deng Biao
.H2 David Gewirtz responds
When we originally set out to produce online publications and started building our Editorial Production System technology, the magic that generates everything you see for all our publications, there really wasn’t a good way to download data to handhelds. Now, with the Palm VII and AvantGo, there are two excellent alternatives.
Right now, we’re still a bit time constrained. After launching a new journal, it takes a while to come up for air and start new projects. I had figured that doing an AvantGo version of our publications was a low priority–until I looked at our browser stats. Something above 20% of our readership reads PalmPower (with no special download version or formatting) with AvantGo! So a download version is now a higher priority.
I’m expecting we’ll extend the Editorial Production System so it’ll automatically generate an AvantGo channel instead of a Palm VII version, at least at first. AvantGo runs on more platforms, and that means one round of development is usable across publications. However, early investigation is leading me to believe that once we generate simplified content for AvantGo, extending that to a PQA-format wouldn’t be all that tough.
I frankly can’t give you a timeframe, but a handheld version of some kind is now definitely on the list.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6d17c
