What do you chaps think of the new HP Pre stuff?

Hmmmpfffhhh……the new HP branded exPalm Pre stuff is back with a new version of the Pixi (which failed miserably), a new updated version of the Pre 2 (which failed miserably) and a brand new, spanking tablet (possibly due to fail miserably). Overwhelmed by joy and gadget lust? Probably not.

What’s quite annoying is if you head over to the HP site or read the advertising blurb…”now available in S M L”. Now, I don’t know about you but my interpretation of the definition of the word “now” is that it means now, as in today, as in available to buy straight away. Right? Well, not according to HP as to them “now” means in the summer…..which if you go by the dictionary definition, is at least 4 months away. It’s another risky gamble.

Have they learned anything from the previous Pre fiasco? Remember the launch of the original Pre, or the announcement rather of it in January 2009, and the fact that by the time it finally arrived here in the UK in October (9 months later) it was virtually dead in the water. I’d have thought they’d have been better off delaying the formal announcement until the darn things were actually available to purchase, you know, inspire a few “spur of the moment” impulse buys on the back of the launch excitement.

Anyway, the specs for the Pre 3 look good, the screen looks lovely, if the new Web OS version on it keeps the improvements over version 1 going then it will be a lovely device, assuming of course the notorious early hardware issues, or lack of it, are sorted. I’ve still got my original Pre and fire it up now and again, for old times sake, but boy is it slow. Compared to the iPhone 4 it feels super sluggish. It always was a bit slow in launching apps and stuff but I can’t remember it being that slow. Hopefully, HP can pull in some favours, or whatever it takes, and get some of the bigger developers to get a better range of top quality software ready in time.

Check out what former Palm boss John Rubenstein told reporters …..the handset was targeted at “professionals”, adding: “Finally a phone you can use for business that you don’t want to leave at work.” That’s a bit of a change then. Obviously HP has a lot of clout in a few important areas and they could wangle things so that this new range of Web OS stuff fares well, long enough for them to get a foothold back in the market and then hopefully build on that. Mind you, why should I care anymore, it’s not like they’re Palm products anymore is it?

Palm Pre SIM free….great idea (might have been a year ago)

…well, it might have been about 11 months ago. Even then it’s not the better specced Palm Pre Plus, no,  it’s the one from last year that nobody bought because it felt like the slider would come apart. So, another great idea from Palm who have really been dishing it out in the last few years in the great sales tactics and strategy stakes. It’s hard not to look back at their pompous January 2009 Pre introduction Keynote, subsequent iPhone killing claims and not snigger at their foolhardiness. With Palm it was just one fairly disastrous product launch/business decision after another which ended up with them in the position they are now.

Remember all those videos from January 2009 following the announcement, in which they were very careful not to let anybody apart from Palm employees actually handle the device. Now we know why, had reviewers been able to deduce the appalling build quality from day one the Pre would have been even more dead in the water than it was when it was finally launched 6 or so months later. Plus, launching it in the UK on just the one carrier with no SIM free option also turned out to be another poor business decision.

Of course, I have a Pre and bought it at launch and I kind of love the little fella despite its build quality shortcomings. Web OS is a great OS, miles better than Android but the battery life is poor, it wobbles like a Weeble and months after the App Catalogue was launched there is still not enough higher quality apps to rival Android or iOS. I think Palm sort of banked on a lot of the big Palm developers porting well loved Palm apps to the Pre, to satisfy the needs of hardened Palm users but to date it has just not happened. Most had already fled to iPhone and Android by then plus lukewarm Pre/Pixis sales have kind of killed that dead in the water.

Palm Pixi Plus….sob…is gone, poor little fella

I was getting on just great with the Pixi Plus and then the darn power button bit sort of vanished/fell off. I honestly don’t know what happened to it. The night before I had been out at this pompous dinner (and had the worst meal I think I’ve ever had) and when I got back home I took off the battery cover and swopped SIM cards. The next morning I couldn’t switch it on, I was pressing away and nothing was happening. I reckon that a small bit had just fallen/broken off when I took off the battery cover…

On the subject of battery covers the Pixi has a very odd and not very nice set up. The whole of the back, extending up and round to the sides comes off in a oner and getting it off is quite scary. The original cover that came with the Pixi was replaced early on by me with the touchstone compatible one and in my struggle to get the original off I noticed that I had gouged a bit of it off (it’s very rubbery). Take care with it people.

I was a bit disappointed by this sudden non-working mode but luckily it happened on the 13th day of the 14 day return period so I quickly emailed the seller and he quickly got back saying he would honour the return and refund…phew. The Pixi is a nice little thing. Plus points

• tiny form factor
• very slim
• nice screen
• great multitasking
• easy to move from Pre to Pixi with your Palm Profile and redownload your apps
• great keyboard
• it has a camera
• very good phone and wifi reception
• Web OS has some good Twitter apps
• very easy to set up and ongoing maintenance is low

Not so good

• that camera is not very good and the flash is a bit iffy too
• getting the back off is a nightmare
• can be laggy at times, often it will just stop for a few seconds
• getting used to the smaller screen after the Pre/Legend is not easy
• you’ll really struggle to get a qwerty one, unlocked and without a contract here in the UK
• bits might fall off….
• front looks a bit bare…naked even

Pixi Plus and Pre Plus at o2

I was up town this afternoon, the main aim being to pick up some new shirts for work, and of course I got diverted. Incidentally, I had intended to pop into the T-Mobile store on Princes Street to have a look at their new budget android set which is available on pay-as-you-go very cheaply but the darn shop has gone….well it’s still there, it’s just that it’s not now inhabited by T-Mobile or for that matter, anybody. There is an increasing amount of empty shops up town these days no doubt partly due by how hard the Local Council make it for anybody to actually get into town these days with the ongoing tram works.

I nipped into o2 and was surprised to see both the Pre Pus and Pixi Plus out on display, in their own little section of the shop. I thought they weren’t going to be available until the 28th…..I had a wee play with both of them although they were sort of strapped into their holders which meant you couldn’t actually lift them up or turn them around or anything. Still, I have deduced that the Pre Plus has a much improved keyboard over the original Pre and my attempts to cause the slider to wobble came to nothing so it looks like the build quality is improved too. From flicking through the menus I would also say that the device is quicker as apps seemed to open a bit quicker. Having just had a Pixi Plus the other week I didn’t spend much time with it but I would say it has a great keyboard, the best of any recent device I’ve used and the build quality is good.  The picture on the left is one that I took with the HTC Legend in the store today. I asked the sales guy if they were selling the Pre Plus on pay-as-you-go and was completely blanked, had they been I’d have probably picked one up as the Plus appears to sort the niggles that plagued, to an extent, the original Pre via a much better build and much better  and much clickier keypad. Folk can laugh at the poor maligned Palm Pre but it is a very good phone. It has great call quality, fantastic reception, great wifi reception and other good points.

They also had the HTC Desire on a working display too so I fiddled with that. I don’t know what o2 have done with this particular example but I found it to be a bit slow and laggy which is at complete odds with what everyone else has been saying about it. I reckon I’m just about at the end of my Android experience. The hardware on these HTC phones is top class but there’s just something about Android that is all a bit unpolished and unfinished feeling plus the on screen keyboard on the Legend, compared to that on the iPhone, is very much 2nd class. I really struggle with it and it makes using apps that require text entry, a lot, a pain in the derriere.

Pre and now the Pixi Plus

I did it…spent far too much on a Pixi and as usual couldn’t help myself. Before I do any fancy dan review type of thing I thought I would try and establish where, or rather whom, this odd little phone is aimed at. It’s small and it’s odd, it’s like a modern Centro. It’s the first Treo type thing from Palm that has the classic form factor AND a screen that is getting near hi-res and not old school 320×320. It’s got wifi, it’s got bluetooth and it’s got a very small keyboard that is surprisingly useable and which kicks the pants off the one on the Pre.

I really believe that it’s the sort of phone that would appeal to a lot of your first time smartphone buyers or to the sort of people who look at the Nokia E72 but think it’s too square-ish or to mumsy types who want a nice, compact little phone that is simple to use and has a keypad but Palm keep shooting themselves in the foot by missing out on one thing that is important to these types….a good camera or at least a camera that sounds, by dint of the quoted mega-pixel specs, like it would be decent. They’d just pick it up in the shop, think it looks cute and then put it down again when they find out it only sports a 2 mp shooter and then move straight along to the Nokia section. If it had a 5mp camera it could be a contender or at least have more of a chance but Palm don’t appear to realise the necessity of endowing their phones this way.

Anyway, I went back to using my Palm Pre about a week ago once I finally got the battery problem sorted out. I’d tried everything, uninstalling apps one by one to see if there was a culprit there. Eventually the alarming battery drain, we’re talking here near 20% an hour, was tracked down to the Google Contacts and Calendar syncing which was very disappointing for two reasons, firstly, it’s a feature I like to have available and secondly, it worked just fine prior to the Web OS v1.4 update. Once I got back to an acceptable level of battery drain with the Pre I decided to give it another fling as I’d started to get a bit fed up with Android, not so much the Legend which is a decent plus phone, but with the increasing arrogance of the Android based main websites. These people just can’t seem to see any faults with Android at all, it’s all wonderfully flawless to them and they have 30 000 plus apps in their catalogue, all of which are better than you will find on any other platform. I hate that, they’re starting to make some of the more zealous iPhone/Mac sites look like they have a serious bout of low self-esteem.

HP and Palm = HP Sauce

Come on , think about it. HP and Palm… The latter being the company with the “special sauce” gives us a great merger name…HP Sauce

A daftie…and other things…like a Bad Kitty

I thought this post was pretty silly. Not so much silly actually but just plain stoooopid and as a man who has posted plenty of stooopid posts himself, I should jolly well know. I’ve just plucked out a few…

• Advertising Service iAd: This will be a mobile advertising service that sounds a lot like the advertising API’s already announced by RIM. These were supposed to be launched right around now, but at least we know they’re coming.
• Global Inbox: Oh right, it’s a pain to manage several email accounts on an iPhone. That must be really annoying.
• An Improved UI: I have a new improved UI regularly; it’s called a theme.

Well, most would say there’s slightly more to having a great UI than just having a myriad of horrendous “themes” available. You only have to look at any online BB store to see how their cheap and cheerful themes clog up the app listings at the expense of decent software. As for “advertising service iAd”, is her seriously suggesting this is something that people are actually begging for? The whole post is rather pitiful and smacks of desperation as the RIM OS starts to look even more dated and unappealing following Apple’s announcement of the proposed improvements to OS4.

Okay, today I purchased another two apps for my Pre. Yak and BadKitty, both Twitter apps. Yak is quite plain but has the features I need and it has the navigation bar at the bottom that avoids the need to dig into preferences (unlike Tweed) to view direct messages. It also offers notifications but that is a feature I can do without especially as my Pre battery life is still appalling. I’d love to tell you how good Bad Kitty is but unfortunately it won’t even let me log into my twitter account and thus I cannot actually use it. For some reason it skips the sign in page…I’ve emailed the developer but they haven’t bothered to reply yet.

I hate to bang on about this but here goes, web OS is stunning and to do it justice I need to get my hands on a Pixi form factor. The apps I have bought or got for nothing are elegant, simple and easy to use and they have that uniformity of presentation and navigation that makes for an experience that feels unified, in sync and iPhone like.

Talking of unresponsive developers…Twidroid has not worked on my HTC Legend as I get connection errors. It downloads now and again and then the next time won’t. I entered into a conversation with the developers via email and their suggestions smacked of not listening to the info I was giving them and not really giving a stuff. So I moved to Touiteur and it works just fine, has a lovely interface and does all I need.

Pre apps coming thick and errr….half-fast

After my minor splurge at the weekend on a few items I have been checking on a daily basis to see whether the main ones I am after have finally appeared. I was pleased to see that the excellent Newsroom is now out, I think it cost £3.99 but it is well worth it for an easy to use and navigate RSS reader. It doesn’t sync with Google Reader which some will see as a pain but it’s not that big a deal for me nor can it import feeds from an opml file so adding feeds takes a bit of time. Luckily, the in-app search facility for finding feeds is very accurate. I also added “Poster” which is a blogging tool for WordPress users like yours truly, good value at under a pound.

I must say that I think the apps for Web OS are of a higher calibre than under Android, it’s just a pity my Pre is not up to actually being used in earnest at the moment as the battery issues have returned. One thing I have noticed in all the Pre apps, both free and paid, is that there is not a huge choice under the “preferences tab”. You expect that in a free bit of software but in a paid one you do expect a bit more. It’s odd, the battery appears to move too quickly down from 100%  down to about 50% and then really slows down, almost as if I am getting twice as much power from the 50% down to 0% part. I could be imagining it of course, I’m certainly not imagining however the ludicrous 15% power drain per hour just sitting on the desk doing nothing unfortunately. Darn it, I love the Pre but I’m not sure the Pre is the proper hardware for me and Web OS. Using the Legend over the past week has sort of rubbed it in. How can HTC make such a wonderful device, so sturdy and desirable, for a cost that is less than the Pre would cost were it available unlocked? Another hugely frustrating smartphone experience…if only (I keep finding myself using that expression) I could mate the HTC Legend with Web OS.

Apps purchased so far for my Pre:

• Newsroom RSS
• Mileage Monitor Plus
• Digloo (excellent Digg application)
• Top Stocks (superb share tracking app)
• Poster (blogging software for WordPress)
• Feeds RSS (only bought because Newsroom wasn’t available but still quite good)
• DrPodder (podcast manager, cheap and very good)

In addition, I have some very good free apps such as Movies, Facebook, Music Remix, Tweed twitter client and Fliq Tasks. That wee collection gives me just about everything that I need on a phone.

Pre App Catalogue is here….sort of

Today was the big day for us UK Pre owners, bestowing upon us the ability via wifi trickery to finally get our greedy mitts on paid software. Last time I looked they were bragging that there were over 1700 applications available for purchasing or downloading for free and therefore I was sort of expecting to see a bit more than the 700 that are currently listed. Hugely disappointingly for me, the two apps that I actually wanted to buy, Newsroom and Top Stocks, are not listed at the moment. I suspect that a lot of developers have either not yet adapted their app or done whatever is necessary to get it showing up over here and I hope the two developers behind these two apps can get their apps ready asap……assuming of course they have the inclination. Mind you, I also couldn’t find the paid version of Tweed or BadKitty twitter app…..effectively that means the only 4 bits of software that I actually wanted to buy are not listed.

I think I reported a week or so that I thought my battery issue disaster on the Pre had been resolved. I spoke to soon as it started draining again at an entirely unacceptable rate whilst basically sitting doing absolutely f all. I hoped that there might have been some little fix or two in the latest 1.4.1 updater but alas it appears not so far. I do really like the Pre but with the fast draining battery issue it is virtually unuseable as it stands and besides, I am still going through that first burst of love/can do no wrong phase thing with the HTC Legend.

Mind you, I saw a post over at Precentral this week claiming that the Euro versions of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus were going through the necessary whatever it is that they need to go through stage with whomever it is that they need to do it through. If a Pixi ever makes it over here and if it sports wifi I know for a fact I’d get one as I love the web OS thing.

Palm Pre 1.4 updater gubbed my Pre battery

This became available on the o2 network here in the UK a few weekends ago and I eagerly latched onto it. Still no paid apps though which is of greater importance to me than the ability to have Flash on the Pre. I was able to download however, free of charge, as were many others, Sims 3 and Monopoly. I left the Need for Speed game though although it was also up for grabs for nowt.

The official Palm “changelog” is pretty big, various enhancements to email, calendar and contacts being noticeable and of course the major thing is the video capture ability. Palm also claim that there are some battery life enhancements but we will need to wait and see about that.

Anyway, battery life on the Pre with the extended Seido battery was actually pretty decent prior to this update. I could squeeze virtually 2 days out of it which was acceptable in my view. Since the update however things have taken a very nasty turn for the worse. Things are okay with the actual phone switched off and even with wifi on in the house and the Pre connected, it is only dropping about 1% per hour just sitting minding its own business. The second I turn the phone back on things go completely awry. It will lose on average 15% per hour, again just sitting there doing nothing. It can’t be the battery as things are fine in standby or even with wifi left on and it only starts draining badly with the “radio” on.

I tried some drastic measures including two full wipes and restores, turned off all the things that might have been causing the battery drain (push Gmail, GPS etc etc) and, one by one, deleted all apps that use internet access to see if I could find the culprit but to no avail. Even in stock mode, fresh out of the box with no 3rd party apps on board it is still losing a ludicrous amount of power each hour and I can’t seem to get it stopped. I can’t use the Pre at the moment which is a pity as I really like it and I’ll just to have hang on and hopefully the problem will be solved by an update or I will stumble across something in some forum somewhere that points to a solution. Worryingly, having scoured through the PreCentral forums, very few others appear to be having any battery problems sin ce the 1.4 update

It’s a pity Palm couldn’t have sent down the wire a wobbly slider fix when they were at it…..

Palm Pre update

The Pre has become my favourite phone over the past month or so despite its wobbly build and mediocre battery life. It has so much going for it elsewhere that I kind of forgive it for its shortcomings. It’s certainly not the hardware that endears it so though but rather Web OS which is my favourite OS and it just works so well, it never gets in the way and you always feel like you are in charge whereas on Android I sometimes feel like I’m fighting it. It’s a bit disappointing to me that there are so many Palm fans and ex-Palm users out there who have just abandoned or dismissed the Pre purely on the basis of an hour or two’s play in an o2 store or through word of mouth. They’re missing out in a way and if Palm can get a better hardware device along the lines of the Pixi form factor out over here then it should be a winner. I just also wish, and again I suspect I’m in the minority here, that more devices these days had a scroll type button/pad/wheel as continually having to touch the screen on smartphones to scroll up and down pages can get a pain. Sometimes, I just like to have a physical scroll button control like there is on the HTC Hero to navigate through longer pages on websites and RSS feeds for example.

Not long to go until March when the promised App Catalogue brings paid 3rd party software to the UK and Europe plus there is the soon-to-arrive v1.4 of the OS which will add video recording and Flash, the latter being something that a lot of people seem desperate for whilst I’m more in the Steve Jobs and Apple “bag of hurt” camp. I’ve already lined up some software and my first purchase will be NewsRoom RSS application. I use this on the Hero and this app is probably the only reason why I still keep the Hero charged and alive. When it’s available in the UK the Hero will be going on eBay. NewsRoom is the best implementation of a mobile RSS app on a device that I’ve ever used, better than any iPhone app and considerably better than any of the limited Pre software in this category.

This is like a golden age for smartphone lovers and the promised land is just around the corner. The iPhone is great and hopefully the next gen model later this year will will lift it higher, there are some great looking Android phones coming out like the revamped Hero/Legend and Web OS is fab as well but just lacks a great device. A couple of years ago I had a succession of duff devices from mainly the Windows Mobile and Symbian stables but since then the stakes have been raised considerably and the phones I currently own are some of the best I’ve ever used. Even the Hero with its iffy keyboard and annoying sliding screen is still way ahead of anything I was using two years ago and I suppose it jolly well should be. Even the much derided Windows mobile looks like it will be back in serious business when v7 appears later this year. That just leaves RIM and BlackBerry out in the cold as their OS is looking a bit flaky and needing an overhaul. Extremely functional they may be but it’s all rather bland and uninvolving and with no mainstream touch screened model available all that tiresome menu clicking and scrolling up and down through long menus becomes a tad tiresome after a bit. It has for me anyway and hence the Bold 9700 will be on eBay soon, there are just going to be too many other better devices out there in the next 3-6 months to justify hanging on to something insipid like the 9700.

Welcome to webOS and Palm Pre multitasking

Welcome to webOS, Verizon Users! | PreCentral.net.

So, the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus have both now appeared on the US carrier Verizon. Are these the people with that odd CDMA or whatever it is standard? Is there another country in the world that also uses that phone standard?

There is a good deal via Verizon, buy a Pre and get a Pixi free. These are the specced up with bigger hard drive models that may also sport better build quality, certainly in the case of the Pre Plus anyway although that wouldn’t be too hard. All joking apart, the Pre and Web OS is a delight to use. You might think that having multi-tasking on your 2010 HTC Hero or latest WM device is the bees knees in sophistication but compared to the Pre’s card system you’re living in the 1990’s chums.

On my very nice Hero I never know what is running and have to pay infrequent visits to the 3rd party Task Manager app to see what’s happening even after purportedly closing an app via its in-menu…errr…menu. On the Pre, swiping a card up and off the screen very much kills it stone dead. It’s simple and it is elegant and it’s the way that modern smartphones should handle it…nae messing and get this, I can decide myself which apps to close. On Android and WM you don’t get the choice yourself of which apps that may be hogging memory should be closed, often the underlying OS will do it for you…how very uncivilised and barbaric in comparison.

Palm Pre Patches…

One of the great things about the Pre is the very good support available on sites like PreCentral and the real “community” feel (not a phrase that I enjoy using but there you go) that results in a whole heap of people working behind the scenes to add things that make using the Pre a better experience for the rest of us. Actually, before I go on I just noticed the other day how few Pre based websites there are aside from PreCentral….PreThinking is okay but doesn’t get updated very often….and that is it aside from PIC, which was of course around a long time before the Pre anyway. There are loads of BlackBerry sites out there although admittedly also a lot more phones but it doesn’t seem to be happening for the Pre yet out there in the big world wide web.

Anyway, back to the patches thing. At the last count there were over…errr….loads of patches covering just about every area of the Pre OS. I’ve installed about six and the ones I’d recommend are the email “swipe to delete confirm” patch and the 4×4 v3 launcher patch. The former adds a confirm delete notice when swiping to delete an email, it’s a bit too easy to inadvertedly delete an email with a casual swipe and this patch stops that happening. The launcher 4×4 patch allows you to see more of your app icons in the launcher view so results in less scrolling. Both available of course via Preware on PreCentral.

I also installed a patch to replace the battery icon with a percentage icon but I’m not sure if this, pyschologically, was a good idea as you now have a very visible reminder of the battery level dropping as opposed to not really noticing any drop before. Still, it stops you having to press above the battery icon to bring the menu down in order to see how much power is actually left.

Install Failed Palm Pre

Install Failed – Restart Required – Palm Pre and Palm Pixi Forums.

Since I applied the update to my Pre I had had trouble installing applications from the Palm store. One or two worked fine but the majority failed to install and any updates to existing apps were absolutely out of the question. Annoyingly, the app would get right to the end of the download bar and then I’d get the ‘Install Failed” message. The Pre would then prompt me to restart but the app had still failed to install.

I googled the above and was lucky to find this thread. i followed the instructions and bingo….I’m back in business. Another bonus today was the return of the free AccuWeather application to the catalogue in the UK. It had stopped working and I assumed would not be available again but lo and behold, it is back up and running.

SecuStore and News Feed RSS on the Pre

SecuStore | PreCentral.net.

Okay, a quick mention for a couple of new apps available via PreWare. This highlights a problem that us Euro Pre owners face as we await the official Palm Catalogue offering us paid software. I had a couple of really good applications a month or so ago, one for storing personal info and one an RSS app that synced with Google Reader, but they were both demos due to expire and “graduate” to the official Palm software store. Well, they both did and good luck to them but it leaves us Euro Palmers a bit stuck.

Replacements have thus been sought and luckily found. First up is SecuStore which is rather decent and then there is a new bit of software from the chap behind loads of classic Palm apps, Hobbyist Software, which has one of the simplest yet nicest icons I’ve ever seen and is called News Feed. It’s especially good although it doesn’t sync with Google Reader and you have to add feeds manually but when you have then navigation is done really well in the app.

Since I applied the latest update I’ve had more problems on the Pre in 2 days than I had in the previous 3 months with some odd resets and some updates failing to install from the Palm catalogue. The Pre has been getting a bit of dissing over at PDA247 in the forums, mainly from people who I suspect have never really used one in anger but who seem authorative enough, in their own opinion anyway, to knock it. Fair enough I guess but they’re missing a bit as the Pre has a very nice underlying OS, some decent apps and is more likely to get better than worse in the next 6 months or so.

Back to work and some tidying up

Yuk, back to reality today and it was not nice. January is such a miserable month with virtually no redeeming features and lurking at the end of it is February, another traditionally crap month. On that positive note I laid into my work PC today and attempted to clear away some of the gadget crud I have collected over the past couple of years. Man, there was some pointless stuff there including copies of SD Cards that had been used in my Centro and Treo 680, totalling over 2gb and they just had to go as I will never use them again. Even worse and feel free to call me a traitor here but I uninstalled Palm Desktop, something I never thought I would do, and various other Palm based desktop software that I have not used for months and months and frankly cannot see myself using again. I’ve left ListPro on as I hope that someday I’ll be able to use it on the iPhone or iPod Touch although that is looking more and more unlikely.

I also transferred about 150 bits of software, mainly for old devices and platforms that I will also most likely never have need of, onto a portable USB drive and deleted them off the PC too. I’ll stick these on the external HD I have at home just in case I never need them again although I doubt I will.

How to Use Preware for Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes | PreCentral.net

How to Use Preware for Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes | PreCentral.net.

I mentioned this before too but feel it is worth pointing out again as there is some good stuff in the Homebrew application catalogue (Dr Podder and Feeds) and some useful “patches” to enhance useability. The former is still relevant to UK and European Pre owners bearing in mind how our official Palm App Catalogue access continues to be very limited.

Verizon Palm Pixi Clears FCC with WiFi

Verizon Palm Pixi Clears FCC with WiFi | PreCentral.net.

This is interesting news, if it is true. I really like the Pre and Web OS as it is potentially the second best OS out there. It makes BlackBerry OS look like what it is, an outdated OS held together with some Blue Peter sticky tape that is about as intuitive as an Ikea instruction manual…mind you, you could say the same about Windows Mobile too. Palm has done a great job with the OS, it is stable, easy to use, dispenses with a whole load of unnecessary menu stuff that Joe Bloggs couldn’t give a monkeys about. It was a brand new thing to me obviously when I got my hands on the Pre but getting to grips with the OS tooks about 5 minutes…..a tribute surely to the Palm software engineers?

Anyway, what lets the Pre down is the hardware. Living with its creakiness and wobbliness is a worrying experience and Palm should have gone for a more traditional slider style, a la Nokia, to have avoided the inherently flawed wobbly design. Ironically, it is the hardware that rescues stuff like the BlackBerry and makes them reasonably appealing.  RIM should buy Palm and pinch the OS. If the Pixi were available here in the UK tomorrow, with wifi I would be all over it as it combines the classic Treo shape in a nice slim, solid looking package. But, it needs a scroll button, as does the Pre…desperately.

Palm Pre Apps update….errr……nowt

Over in the US, Pre owners now have access to 500 plus applications, many of which are paid. Here in the UK, the total sits around 145 which is not exactly ideal and is a lot less than our American owners can enjoy. Still, some US owners are not exactly over enthusing about the quality of stuff available, judging by some of the comments in this thread on PreCentral. This one in particular is quite apt.

This is pathetic. A whole bunch of the same junk apps we’ve seen before. How many language translators and unit conversion apps do we really need? $.99 to browse a handmade crafts site? $1.99 to get quotes from Ted Kennedy? $.99 to play tic tac toe? Are you kidding me? Not to bad mouth any of these developers, but these are really weak.

Palm needs to get some big players involved like Gameloft and EA and they need to do it yesterday. I hate impressing my iPhone buddies with amazing multitasking and when they ask what apps I can get the only answer I’ve got is currency converters and the pathetic Palm developed Facebook app. We need some big players to bring it on home and Palm needs to open up GPU access pronto.

WordPress Blogging App Coming to webOS | PreCentral.net

WordPress Blogging App Coming to webOS | PreCentral.net.

Yahoo…another jolly good reason to continue using the Pre over the superior-hardware-toting but inferior-application-sporting HTC Hero….a right good looking version of WordPress.

Good show chaps. Hopefully, if it is free it will be available for us UK Palm Pre users.