Farewell Palm OS :-(

Well, after being a loyal Palm user since 1996, I've finally thrown in the towel.

I started my love of the Palm OS with Palm Pilot 1000 in 1996. Once I tried my friend Mark's Palm Pilot, it was love at first try. The form factor, PC integration, Grafiti, and 3rd party apps were revolutionary. I think I got a whole movement started at Netscape and couldn't stop talking about how great it was.

Since then, I had every iteration of the Palm Pilot eventually moving on to the Treo Smartphones. I was obsessed with the Treo 600 when it came out in 2003 (I was so jealous when my neighbor Phil got his first). But after the 650, 680 and the 700P, I started to sense that Palm definitely lost their edge. It was hard to convince myself and my friends of the virtues of the stale Palm OS while seeing all the advancements being made by its competitors. I finally had it with all the lockups, the resets plus the bulkiness of the Treo.

After trying no less than 10 devices, I've settled on the Blackberry. I'm currently using the Curve 8300 and it makes me realize how Palm lost their lead by not being able to innovate. Curve's got the right form factor for a QWERTY phone, thin, decent screen, good battery life, and just can't be beat as a messaging device. I'm looking to get a Curve 8320 for the WiFi feature which Palm has never been able to put in the Treo. If RIM can support 3G, get both GPS and WiFi in, and a real browser, they'll have the ultimate messaging device. iPhone is close but they are missing a real QWERTY keyboard, GPS and 3G.

Farewell Palm. It really was a pleasure knowing you and using you the last 12 years. But life is short and I must move on. I still have a Palm V in the storage room and one day I'll turn it on to reminisce. Sniff...