Hey Chuck,
You cannot expect the Pre to do everything the Centro did. I know that sounds odd, a year into webOS, and it sounded odd to me, given that it's the same company. But, it's a different model. It's a model to compete with the current competitors, not a model to compete with the Centro. PalmOS is all but dead, and so there's no point looking back, except to try to drive things to "fill in" with the function you remember from the past. If you're looking for the degree of configurability you're used to, Android and Windows Mobile or the Blackberry are your best bets. The Pre, like the iPhone, is designed to be an elegant, simple, basic unit on first release, right out of the box, that addresses a perceived current set of requirements. They're not MY requirements, but the success of the iPhone indicates that my requirements differ from at least a large segment of the population (which, I infer, you don't inhabit either!). I very much enjoyed the Pre during the year I used it. It was exciting right out of the box and offered an elegance I hadn't seen in PalmOS or BBOS. Over time, however, the easily-but-un-removed limitations, the slowness of the hardware, combined with a perceived "it's toast" attitude that was becoming prevalent, further combined (in my case) with the absolutely terrible hardware build quality of the Pre (the Pre+ is much more solid), led me away to Android and the HTC EVO. I'm living in Android-land now, and am happily doing most of what I did with my Treo/Centro/BB (albeit with more screen taps than before), plus enjoying the rich app infrastructure that adds a touch of fun to the whole experience. I hope HP takes webOS to the next level, 'cause competition is good, and I'd switch back to webOS if it could catch up a bit. My $0.02US Cheers, Don From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 1:45 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Treo] Pre Plus (on AT&T) -- Please Convince Me It Shouldn't Be Returned! I used to post here a lot back in my 600, 650, and early Centro days, but haven't much in the past year or two since the board's focus has now (rightly) turned to the newer WebOS devices. But I just got my new Pre Plus from AT&T yesterday and, unless you all can help me change my mind, I'm so sorry to say that I think Palm has really missed the boat with the phone, and WebOS. What a gorgeous phone, but my beloved Palm functionality has almost totally been lost. My first tip was the ridiculous way I had to struggle to remove the back cover to get to the battery and sim card. Then after my first ultra-positive impression of the device's sharp, sleek look, and the great way it fit into my slightly smallish hand, I was shocked at the sudden, buried memory that there was NO micro SD card support for the device! My god, who can live their lives inside just 16 gigs of resident memory these days?? But, alas, things were only about to get worse from there. After almost 10 hours of work, I was never able to get the Pre to sync with Outlook on my Windows7 laptop using classic (I Googled and Bing'd; I saw the videos on the Chapura and Palm websites; and I even did several searches here getting back only Yahoo!s lame "Search server is busy(code=300)" error code each time), finally surrendering my personal contacts and calendar items to the nebulous, and somehow sinister feeling Google "cloud". And then when I found I wasn't even going to be able to stream XMRadio or RadioIO, I just gave up and this sleek, sexy device went back into the box. I didn't even have the heart to look for AT&T's hidden free "voice dial" I've had on every Palm device since . . . way back when. Did I miss something here? I didn't have this much trouble converting all my data to WinMo 6.5, and the things I'd lost to the HTC Tilt2 (no DateBk, it's larger size) were much easier to forgive and work around -- and I'd always secretly WANTED that OS to fail! Someone whose happily using their PalmPre daily for business AND pleasure, please tell me that I shouldn't give up -- it's really worth it! Please! I really want to go back to Palm; I really wanted this "smart" phone and WebOS/Classic to give me back at least a part of what I lost when my Centro finally gave up the ghost in March. Now, I'm just left with a a nagging, uncomfortable feeling stirring in me that says Palm got just what it deserved when Apple, Droid and Microsoft stomped them into the dirt last year -- and I really DON'T want to believe that. Chuck B. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
