02 June 2001 |
General
Attendance
New member Manny Amorim Joseph Klamer Ron Apperley Ron Kolthoff Visitor Zbigniew Bielecki Art Liem Leon Blevis Peter Midgley Rob Bowen Steve Pascual Visitor Sue Callaway Sam Peralta Alvin Chin Russell Scheer Stephen Cook Peter Thomas Paul D'Auvergne Karen Thompson Kenny Delaney Dave Hanson New member Dave Dickson Paul Toribio New member Michael Duden Philip Toribio New member Geoff Edgecombe Eric Tran Sean D. Evans Chris Tychansky Robert J. Humphreys
Topic - Palm Canada Presentation
Matthew Hickey, the Director, Partner & Enterprise Sales for Palm Canada Inc. was our guest speaker and presenter. The presentation was held at the new offices of Palm Canada on Skymark Avenue in Mississauga. Canada's Premier Palm OS User Group would like to thank Palm Canada for offering the use of their premises.
There was no formal topic for this meeting other than the presentation. The first half-hour to forty minutes was a meet and greet session with Matthew and those who have not seen each other in a while.
Once people were settled Matthew began his presentation taking questions along the way..
Matthew has been with the company since November of 1995, which is just about the beginning. In March of 1996 the Palm handheld device was launched. The company started as US Robotics, which was bought by 3Com and recently spun off into Palm Inc.
Palm sees the SDMC (Secure Digital Memory Card) format as the way forward. In fact Palm is among the 240 companies that make up a consortium dedicated to the future advancement of the SDMC. There are already 16, 64, and 256 Mb SDMC cards available and a select few have seen the 1 Gb SDMC card that is in development. If you would like further information you can perform a Web search for Secure Digital Memory Cards or click here.
Many Secure Digital devices in development such as MP3 players, Digital still cameras, GPS devices, Barcode readers. In the near future you may see such devices as FM/TV receivers, Cellular phones, Healthcare devices and much more.
| Q | How long will the "Universal Connector" slot on the device be considered "Standard"? |
| A | This is what Palm is using going forward. |
| Q | When will OS 4 be available for other Palm devices? |
| A | The OS should be available in the next few months. There has been no decision at this time as to whether it will be a free upgrade or a chargeable one. |
| Q | Why did Palm not use a virtual Graffiti area like the Handera 330? |
| A | At this time there has been no screen size that has emerged as the standard. Once this has happened Palm will go forward with the virtual Graffiti concept. The OS is already prepared for this as evident with the Handera 330. |
| Q | Why was the Silo on the left side of the M500 series mad smaller? |
| A | Since the M500 series is smaller than the Palm V series the Silo was made smaller to avoid problems with cases and other accessories. |
| Q | When if ever will we see the StrongArm processor in a Palm device? |
| A | With costs of processor dropping and public demand the move to a higher powered processor has been moved up on the priority list. |
| Q | Why was the cradle made in such a way as to make it difficult to put the device in without damaging the connector? |
| A | The public reported that they did not like the feel of the Hotsync cradle as it did not seem to click into place. |
| Q | Is there going to be some attachment that will allow users that have not purchased a M500 series device to use SD cards? |
| A | As a matter of fact a company called UniLinear Corp. has developed an attachment called the Parachute, which is an adapter for PC cards. At present they do not support the SDMC format, but with SDMC making such a push it is only a matter of time. If they don't do it someone else will. |
A special thank you to our sponsors for their support of Canada's Premier PUG. Please visit their websites to see a collection of other impressive products to help you get the most out of your Palm.
A extra special thank you to Palm Canada for the use of their facilities.
Respectfully,
Rob Bowen, Vice President, Canada's Premier PUG
Sean D. Evans, President, Canada’s Premier PUG