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Pain in T(he)|X

As recounted previously, after much hemming and hawing I bought a discounted Palm T|X PDA. When I upgraded from my priginal Palm III to a Handera 330, the move was almost completely painless. When I upgraded from the 330 to a Palm Tungsten T3, there was extended wailing and gnashing of teeth. Now that I am upgrading from the T3 to the TX, I am reliving the pain I relived three years ago.

This is where I believe that Palm really fell down on the job. If somebody is going to put their entire life in a device, they should have some assurance they will be able to get their life out of the device if necessary. I recognize that it is necessary for a company like Palm to move constantly forward, but each time they have done so it seems like they have done it to attract new people to their fold, and not to retain the people they already have.

This has always been visible in the way they forced users to purchase all new accessories (down to the type of stylus nearly every time they upgraded hardware. The constant shift in form factors and connectors meant that you couldn't just buy a new machine, you had to rebuild your entire environment. There was also a constant shift in operating system and database structure, forcing users to upgrade their software applications. Application developers mimicked this, making it difficult to transfer applications you had purchased from one device to another.

It took me months to repair the damage to my databases that was caused by my 330 to T3 move. I expect the time frame to be similar for this latest move. The only upside to the apparent death of Palm is that theoretically the next time I move, it will be away from Palm OS entirely.

2007.11.29 at 10:30am EST

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