Rather than repeat the play-by-play that my twittering did for me this morning (also made the short hour wait go by), I'll share my initial thoughts and how they compared to my PREconceptions (har de har har. Thanks everyone, I'm here all night. Try the veal!)
I decided to run the upgrade for my phone to get the 1.0.2 version of the OS, so I have about 10 minutes to kill. (Update: Pretty accurate actually)
Hardware form impression
Once in the store, we were given a chance to hold and play around with a working Palm Pre on display. It's a good look device, for sure. Very sleek, clean lines, and shiny in all the right places. Some early reviews have complained that it feels plastic-y. I can see why they would say that, but it's not a Fisher-Price toy cell phone plastic. It's a very lightweight plastic with an ergnomic feel. Presumably they could have made it feel "harder" or more "metallic", but I prefer the weight savings that you get with such a light phone. You are likely going to be holding this phone up a lot more than your old one, and it will be nice not to have to work out in that period of time.
Sprint set-up
The Sprint Rep actually ran through setting up the Palm Profile for me. I would have rather done it myself, but I suppose it's more efficient to have her do instead. It took under 2 minutes. She also sped me through the tutorial on some basic gestures. (which I was already mildly familiar with thanks to the Internets!). Once paid out, they mention that there is a Palm "specialist" that can walk you through some additional things in the store.
Palm "specialist" and Palm Pre "training"
Feeling much like an RPG or more accurately an MMORPG where you are sent off to perform some tasks to level up, I went to get some useful tips from the Palm specialist fellow. Although I skipped on some of the advanced gesture training, we got both my Gmail and Outlook hooked up pretty quickly. The only oddity was needing to have Outlook fail on the default POP pull, so that you could set it up as an Exchange account manually. Otherwise, if you have a decent set up on Google and Outlook, you'll have everything flow in pretty nicely. I stuck around to hear a couple more tips, and then I ran off to play with stuff at home.
Contacts
One thing that's been mentioned and relatively significant in my opinion, is the fact that you can't control the contacts that are pulled in from Google, Outlook and Facebook. Google and Facebook both have nice list features which allows you to specify targetted groups of interest. Unfortunately, that type of sycronization isn't supported yet. I'm staying away from syncing with Facebook for now.
AppCatalog
Though it's relatively light right now, most of the Apps I downloaded (Tweed, Pandora, Accuweather, etc.) downloaded and installed pretty quickly.
Multi-tasking
Pretty much the promise of the videos I initially watched came to fruition. I had fired up Pandora as a background, and I was easily able to switch back and forth between different cards that I had connected to Tweed, Facebook, email and some settings that I was updating. I still feel like I'm scratching the surface on this one.
Touchstone
I'm pretty glad I took one of the last ones they had in the store. The new phone cover's matte backing is quite nice. If it wasn't obvious, you need to use the new phone cover to use the Touchstone's inductive charger. There were reviews that say that the inductive charger is slower than direct charging, but compared to my old WinMo phone charging, this seems to charge at a reasonable rate.
Keyboard
The spacing seems fine to me, compared to my old phone. A bit rubbery, but a hell of a lot more accurate than any virtual keyboard in my opinion. It did take me a little bit to switch from where letters and symbols were placed though.
Verdict
Wow. I'll write up another set of thoughts in about a week.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
PREparing for the PRE (Part 2)
I like to think that I pay attention to technology a bit. Somehow CES came and went, and I missed out on all the Palm Pre hoopla. Fast forward to April of this year, and some random browsing leads me to some Palm Pre marketing videos which hit a perfect sweet spot with me. All my random complaints on the limitations of WinMo seemed to be addressed. Even if in practice, I may never do what they showed in those videos, I kept on saying "That's me! That's what I want to do!"
Multi-tasking. True web browsing. Full contact integration. A better IM and contact screen. Better maps and true GPS. A device better suited to listen music to. The list kept growing in my head.
An aside: One thing that I realized about myself is that once I fall in love with a device, gadget, concept, etc. I can be pretty relentless in acquisition. Until the brink of death. Haha!
Needless to say, I'm pretty pysched. I'm prepared for somewhat of a line when I pop over an hour before the store opens.
I know that there's a lot of chatter about Palm and Sprint's ability to "compete" with the iPhone, and I really think that they have a decent chance, even without knowing what Apple will announce at WWDC. In my opinion, despite the so-called weak inventory of launch apps, they will have a chance to get a large number of applications quickly, if Facebook apps prove anything at all. Basically, just like with Facebook, developers will write apps (especially crappy ones) as long as they know that there are enough people out there to use them. Even better if you make it easy for them to write it versus having to learn a potentially newer language like you have to do for iPhone apps. This was supposed to be the promise of WinMo that never occurred. Not only was development difficult, you still had to learn a new language in a manner of speaking to develop on WinMo. I'm really excited to see what people will be able to come up with in the next month or so. Once they publicly launch the SDK, I may even write up an app or two if it makes sense to, to help automate some work related activities.
Well, this is it. I'm PREdictably excited!
Multi-tasking. True web browsing. Full contact integration. A better IM and contact screen. Better maps and true GPS. A device better suited to listen music to. The list kept growing in my head.
An aside: One thing that I realized about myself is that once I fall in love with a device, gadget, concept, etc. I can be pretty relentless in acquisition. Until the brink of death. Haha!
Needless to say, I'm pretty pysched. I'm prepared for somewhat of a line when I pop over an hour before the store opens.
I know that there's a lot of chatter about Palm and Sprint's ability to "compete" with the iPhone, and I really think that they have a decent chance, even without knowing what Apple will announce at WWDC. In my opinion, despite the so-called weak inventory of launch apps, they will have a chance to get a large number of applications quickly, if Facebook apps prove anything at all. Basically, just like with Facebook, developers will write apps (especially crappy ones) as long as they know that there are enough people out there to use them. Even better if you make it easy for them to write it versus having to learn a potentially newer language like you have to do for iPhone apps. This was supposed to be the promise of WinMo that never occurred. Not only was development difficult, you still had to learn a new language in a manner of speaking to develop on WinMo. I'm really excited to see what people will be able to come up with in the next month or so. Once they publicly launch the SDK, I may even write up an app or two if it makes sense to, to help automate some work related activities.
Well, this is it. I'm PREdictably excited!
PREparing for the PRE (Part 1)
Add June 6 to the dates of product launches that will soon become part of my geek history. Although relatively short, I've had a number of memorable geek gadget launch stories.
PS2
I somehow had the vision to pre-order it...except I happened to be out of town due to work that whole week. My little brother got to receive it instead. I can't remember if I let him open it or not to start playing Madden. On launch day, I do remember hitting up a Detroit-area Best Buy to buy overpriced specialized PS2 Monster S-Video cables. Who would have known that this would have been my easiest experience for something I was dying to have?
PS3
With my Sony fanboy levels at historic levels, it would be a shock to no one that I was DYING to buy this, no matter what the price point. Well, check that, I wanted to pay up to the retail price point, but not the ridiculous pre-order bundles that a lot of retailers were doing. At this point, the internet combined with store employees to try to give people an idea of inventory levels, and people lined up everywhere! I don't remember how many places I tried to hit up, but all that awaited me was utter failure. Best Buy in Downer's Grove, Circuit City. Heck, I think I even walked into a K-Mart. By noon that day, we gave up. Thank gosh for my buddy Fran who hung in there, came along and stayed until the end. In fact, some weeks later, he found a PS3 at a Game Stop and scored me the PS3 finally.
Wii
Was I looking forward to getting a Wii? Not at all. One rumor was that on Black Friday, some locations were going to get a PS3 or two. So an hour before opening, I hopped over to a relatively unknown Gamestop to find a line of only 3 people. All of whom had lined up for a Wii. The store opens. The first 3 people promptly get their Wiis. Then it's my turn.
Wes: Did you get any PS3s?
Gamestop: No.
Wes: Let me get a Wii. (Since I was there anyway, what the heck.)
Gamestop. Ok. Announcement: That was the last Wii in the shipment.
In retrospect, I probably should have tried re-selling on ebay for twice or even three times the cost. Part of me was still upset to have lost the PS3 to people that were only re-selling, which is probably why I ended up keeping it. I barely play it at all. I let my older brother borrow it in the meantime.
Metal Gear Solid / Fallout (Video Games)
Yeah, yeah I know these aren't quite gadgets. The Metal Gear Solid line, had about 30 or 40 people ahead of me, though I think that some of them were lining up to get the special edition PS3 that was available too. I easily got my game, and played it that very night. Well worth getting it quickly.
Fallout was a bit amusing in that my local Best Buy was supposed to have a launch event that a smattering of publicity announced. I showed up and OOPS, the store is completely dark! Turns out they cancelled it, with no more of announcement publicly than a small piece of paper on their door. I wasn't as upset as a local blogger crew who apparently had planned to cover the event. I had to quickly drive over to a Gamestop to pick up my Collector's Edition.
Samsung ACE
My entry into the world of smartphones, my previous phone had limited data and email capabilities, and the promise of a full keyboard and work email integration had me salivating. After months of stalking the stores, and online stories about the release, I finally called Sprint Telesales and ordered mine, to receive it a couple of days later. It did a number of things well, but was horribly held back by the limitations of Windows Mobile. Amusingly, I also got it for its World Phone capabilities (it also had a GSM SIM), but I never once travelled anywhere that had GSM.
Once I really needed to push it, it couldn't do what I needed it, or rather wanted it to do...which brings us to today...
PS2
I somehow had the vision to pre-order it...except I happened to be out of town due to work that whole week. My little brother got to receive it instead. I can't remember if I let him open it or not to start playing Madden. On launch day, I do remember hitting up a Detroit-area Best Buy to buy overpriced specialized PS2 Monster S-Video cables. Who would have known that this would have been my easiest experience for something I was dying to have?
PS3
With my Sony fanboy levels at historic levels, it would be a shock to no one that I was DYING to buy this, no matter what the price point. Well, check that, I wanted to pay up to the retail price point, but not the ridiculous pre-order bundles that a lot of retailers were doing. At this point, the internet combined with store employees to try to give people an idea of inventory levels, and people lined up everywhere! I don't remember how many places I tried to hit up, but all that awaited me was utter failure. Best Buy in Downer's Grove, Circuit City. Heck, I think I even walked into a K-Mart. By noon that day, we gave up. Thank gosh for my buddy Fran who hung in there, came along and stayed until the end. In fact, some weeks later, he found a PS3 at a Game Stop and scored me the PS3 finally.
Wii
Was I looking forward to getting a Wii? Not at all. One rumor was that on Black Friday, some locations were going to get a PS3 or two. So an hour before opening, I hopped over to a relatively unknown Gamestop to find a line of only 3 people. All of whom had lined up for a Wii. The store opens. The first 3 people promptly get their Wiis. Then it's my turn.
Wes: Did you get any PS3s?
Gamestop: No.
Wes: Let me get a Wii. (Since I was there anyway, what the heck.)
Gamestop. Ok. Announcement: That was the last Wii in the shipment.
In retrospect, I probably should have tried re-selling on ebay for twice or even three times the cost. Part of me was still upset to have lost the PS3 to people that were only re-selling, which is probably why I ended up keeping it. I barely play it at all. I let my older brother borrow it in the meantime.
Metal Gear Solid / Fallout (Video Games)
Yeah, yeah I know these aren't quite gadgets. The Metal Gear Solid line, had about 30 or 40 people ahead of me, though I think that some of them were lining up to get the special edition PS3 that was available too. I easily got my game, and played it that very night. Well worth getting it quickly.
Fallout was a bit amusing in that my local Best Buy was supposed to have a launch event that a smattering of publicity announced. I showed up and OOPS, the store is completely dark! Turns out they cancelled it, with no more of announcement publicly than a small piece of paper on their door. I wasn't as upset as a local blogger crew who apparently had planned to cover the event. I had to quickly drive over to a Gamestop to pick up my Collector's Edition.
Samsung ACE
My entry into the world of smartphones, my previous phone had limited data and email capabilities, and the promise of a full keyboard and work email integration had me salivating. After months of stalking the stores, and online stories about the release, I finally called Sprint Telesales and ordered mine, to receive it a couple of days later. It did a number of things well, but was horribly held back by the limitations of Windows Mobile. Amusingly, I also got it for its World Phone capabilities (it also had a GSM SIM), but I never once travelled anywhere that had GSM.
Once I really needed to push it, it couldn't do what I needed it, or rather wanted it to do...which brings us to today...
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