Two new Palms (yawn)
What a difference a couple of years can make. Two years ago I would have been all over the latest announcement of new Palm handhelds, reading as many reviews as I could and wondering how the new devices might work in an educational setting. And now? Palm introduced two new models on Wednesday, and I only today got around to reading the overview at the Brighthand website.
They really are impressive, actually. The Z22 is a color entry-level device for only $100. The TX now has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a big, clear 320×480 resolution screen, big enough for looking at web pages pretty easily.
But…Handhelds just haven’t made the impact that we expected 24 months ago. Why? I think largely because they were so different from the computers already being supported in districts that it was just too difficult (read: expensive) to add them to the technology infrastructure. Neither Pocket PC or Palms manage easily in a classroom situation without lots of effort, third-party software and add-ons. In the meantime, the lower-end cost of laptops is down to the $900-$1,000 range. In other words, for the cost of 2 1/2 Palm TX handhelds, you can get one full-featured laptop that integrates into whatever existing technology system your school uses now. Financially, they’re probably pretty close to even once you throw in total cost of ownership.
If Palm (or Microsoft) could have made the management of the devices simple and easy to integrate into existing technology implementations, we would be looking at a different situation now. But I think that ship has passed, and we’ll soon be using devices that are the same size as handhelds, but actually just be tiny computers running on the same software and tech standards as full laptops. That will keep things more manageable for everyone.
Palm had a distruptive technology, but they just didn’t know how to follow through.