Yeah, I think there's a human tendency to want to push things to their most extreme conclusion. I'm not saying I'm not guilty of this too. The problem is that we see only a small piece of what's going on. There's a lot of internal stuff at any company. Some of this is actually bad stuff that would make us even more pessimistic, but it seems that at Palm, at least in the past, we've seen internal development that we had all underestimated. The past isn't always a perfect predictor of course, so just because Palm has resurrected herself a bunch of times doesn't mean that this time will be fine too, but I think there is at least as good a chance that they will pull through as not. For some those 50/50 odds are too indeterminate and disconcerting and so they feel they need to push that to one conclusion or another.
But really unless you are either investing money in Palm, it's not really necessary. I really like Palm, it's people, and its products, and so I WANT them to succeed, but I'm not under any illusion that things are tough right now and they may not. Luckily though, I only have my phone as an investment. If WebOS goes away, I can always buy an Android device as my next one, but I still have over a year before my contract is up, and by then we'll surely know the answer to all of this. Of course when new devices come out they are tempting, so we'll see if there is a new WebOS device out this summer for Sprint, I may decide to sell my Pre and pay an "upgrade fee" without actually effecting my contract. The one thing I will say for WebOS as far as my decisions go is that my investment in it is the time I've spent learning the phone, how to hack/tweak it, etc., plus about $25 worth of apps give or take (I haven't actually totaled it). So it will be annoying to have to spend the time relearning some of this stuff for Android, but fun as well. If I wasn't a busy father of a 4-year-old it would be all fun, but time is definitely not on my side these days! :) I think what people have said about tech journalism is true also. I think it is still plagued with a lot of people who have very strong opinions about one company/technology/industry or another and it seems just as much based on personal bias or generalizations then it does with actual fact and good research. I'd bet you that most of the tech jounalists out have never taken an actual journalism class, and certainly few have a degree in journalism. So their tendecy to bias is much greater and you need to take their opinions with a much bigger grain of salt that you might. They may know a lot more about tech issues but they also can be led astray fairly easily... Levi Wallach [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
