Why the Palm is Better Than Anything

[From Ben Weber Roselle Park, NJ USA] As I sit at work, I see one coworker fussing over his Ipod Touch, making vaguely obscene finger gestures on it. Another coworker is getting his super-smart phone to organize his daily meetings, redo his Xmas card list, while creating a smart playlist of AC/DC’s love songs. I know, though, in their hearts, they’re envious of my Palm TX for several reasons:

1. Predictability: Do you know how many new Linux distributions come out each week? Do you know that Apple has released 4, count’em, FOUR releases of their Leopard Operating system already? Has your Windows machine covertly rebooted itself at night to install yet another security update? Not Palm. Palm’s does not bother their users with frequent (or even infrequent) software updates. The Palm user can rest assured that the same bugs, er, features that have been there for years will be there for years to come.

2. Simplicity: The other day, I was walking behind a gentleman on the street who was listening to an Ipod, texting someone with a phone in his right hand while reading a newspaper in his left. He walked into a lamppost, and was unable to blink his eyes in unison the rest of the day. Multitasking? Who needs it?

3. Branding: Nobody walks up to an Ipod touch user and says “Hey, nice WalkMan!”. Nobody walks up to a MacBook user and says “Hey, nice Apple II”. But people will always say to me “Hey, you’ve got a Palm Pilot!”, even though Palm Pilots were around, oh, 11 or so years ago. Simplified branding means not having to worry about keeping track of new models…they’re all Palm Pilots, and bring to the mind of the general public the hottest technology of 1997.

Still, my TX still remains one of the most important pieces of electronics I own. Go figure!