Apple acknowledged, that its loyal Mac fans and continued to cater to it, rather than try to be a PC wannabe.

Does Palm not recognize that they are like the “Apple Computers” of the PDA world?

I have been a loyal Palm user from the time of Palm Vx, another Vx, Sony Clie (Vx won out!), a donated M515 (did not like the poor color screen), two Zire 71s (or was it 72s? — memory fades as it was a while ago), E, and now an unlocked quad-band worldphone, the Palm Treo 680 (bought directly at a Palm store) with multiple accessories for most of my units.

Most of the Palm units were around $500 each when I bought them, so that is a lot of moola’s that I have spent over the years supporting the company.

After a lot of research, I upgraded to the Treo 680, and was very pleased, EXCEPT for one thing: The marketing “geniuses” at Palm dropped the very thing that made a loyal supporter for all these years: their fantastic Graffiti engine and software, AND the fact that as a stable, no-nonsense OS, they had enough 3rd-party applications or even “hacks” that other loyal users had created that it became a truly indispensible virtual mobile work platform.

Over the years, I have had well over 2000 contact information in my Palm units, and was able to sync it all to the next upgraded PalmOS unit with no difficulty.

So imagine my surprize when the Treo 680 did not do Graffiti out of the box!! Who thought of that one at the powers that be at Palm????????

it’s like having a Ferrari with a 90kmph (55mph) governer on it and an artificially derated acceleration curve that takes15 sec to get to 90kmph.

Wow, what a shame!

Fortunately, there was a 3rd party app. that allowed me to use Graffiti for the most part. It has a few minor bugs, but then the built-in keyboard helps overcome it.

Also, since I have over the years kept my PalmOS/Desktop contacts separate from my Outlook contacts, now I am looking for a new PalmOS device that still supports this OS from Palm, as the Treo 680 had a fall and the built-in microphone stopped working.

I took the unit apart (it’s past its warranty period) and was able to get the microphone working, but it still is soft, so I sound “far away” to the listener on a phone call — not too professional.

Therefore, I am looking to upgrade. Unfortunately, Palm does not really shout out that their new units with WebOS are backward compatible with their old PalmOS.

Is it backward compatible? Does it still even have the Graffiti engine?

I would appreciate if anyone could share this information on this forum if they have this knowledge.

Also, I have two related questions: 1) Can Blackberry units convert PalmOS created archives and upload the contact information into their units? 2) Do Blackberry units have Graffiti-like handwriting recognition, either natively, or through 3rd-party applications?

Any input would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance!
ACB

Apple just release the long over due MMS software update. Palm better come up with a FREE update to allow Pre owners to use their older PALM OS software applications.