NY Times and WSJ blast Palm's Windows-powered Treo

REVIEWERS at the influential Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the New York Times, didn't like the Windows Powered Treo 700w, which is finally starting to be available.

Two months ago I said here that this was a very unwise move, and that the company risked annoying its core users base and the PalmOS development community. Palm Inc.'s ceo Ed Coligan tried to calm down the waters shortly after the WinMob Treo announcement, strongly denying that "Palm's support of Palm OS is either wavering or short-lived", and promising the company would stick to the PalmOS as well in future devices.

Now that the 700w is available, the NY Times' David Pogue says in his review titled "A Marriage Not Made in Heaven": "How on earth can the (PalmOS and Windows) approaches be reconciled?. As it turns out, not very easily". And he proceeds to call the Treo 700W "a Frankensteinian mishmash" and says that while some of its features are great "others are so clumsy, you smack your forehead".

Another memorable segment on the NY Times story: "Alas, even after all that plastic surgery, you can't escape the fact that you're basically running Windows". Then he blasts the limited Start-Button approach to launching applications, and complains about the Windows Mobile memory management "Every time you open a program, it stays open in the background, even if you close its window. Sooner or later, you'll run into the "Program Memory Low" error message, requiring you to shut down programs manually in a special list box".

Okay, you must be thinking, "this is a single case of someone who obviously doesn't like the superb outstanding Windows Mobile OS from the Redmond juggernaut that everybody must love!". Well not exactly, because on another major newspaper, the Wall Street Journal's Walter S. Mossberg says titles his review "New Palm Treo Uses Microsoft's Software, but it doesn't beat the (PalmOS powered) Treo 650".

Mossberg's verdict couldn't be clearer: "Despite some nice new features, the Windows Mobile software is still inferior to the Palm software for one-handed use on the go. Its crucial email and phone functions are also weaker". He says he found "a serious bug in its email software" and concludes that the Windows-powered Treo 700w "is neither as easy to use nor as powerful as the Treo 650". The screen on the 700w offers lower resolution than the PalmOS powered Treo 650, and the WinMob model "costs twice as much" Mosberg notes. So that makes it two of the major US newspapers concluding that the Windows-Powered Treo is in fact no better than the PalmOS powered Treo 650, quite the opposite, the supposed inferior beats the "advanced" WinMob device. Which of course is no surprise to most PalmOS users.

I wonder what Ed Coligan and the chorus of MSFT parrots in the financial media must be thinking now. Hey Ed, it seems that you managed to annoy your core PalmOS users, and release a half-baked windows-media device that has been blasted by Wall Street Journal and the NY Times tech specialists. Now that's what we call a very dumb move. Only time will tell if Mr. Coligan will continue playing the Redmond card and annoying the PalmOS users who still make up the bulk of the company's profits, after this batch of revealing reviews. µ