palmOne Launches WiFi Card but Leaves Treo 600 Stranded

Unfortunatley it's a power issue with the SD slot...I hear you - it sucks.

btw - (sorry second comment same person) there's no memory on the card either. It's going to be tough to deal with attachments in email with this thing...

Yeah, unfortunately the Treo 600 doesn't really comply with the full power requirments of SDIO cards like Wifi and Bluetooth and GPS cards. Unfortunately, even the new rumored Treo Ace is not supposed to have this, which is a real shame. This will be a major disadvantage of the new Treo over the various PPC models that support SDIO fully as well as the MDA III and other PPC devices that are going to be coming out over the next 6 months that even have Wifi BUILT IN!

Plus, in addition to the comments above, it's not like they are only discriminating against the Treo. The zire 71, all other tungstens - devices with SD slots that are supposed to work, aren't compatible. I think that the real let down is that the sdio technology is poor, difficult to write drivers for, and difficult to make devices for.

What are they doing? The Treo is hot property, as is the rest of the Palm range of devices. They need to support them fully no matter what.

If they can get over the problems and provide a WiFi card for all Palm devices no matter the restrictions, their products would be the best in the world far exceeding all others.

You want a better slice of the market. Provide better support and additions.

Palm.........pull your finger out, is all I can say.

But you know what - I'd humbly submit that there's not big a need for Wi-Fi on the 600, since it ALREADY has wireless connectivity. Yes, I know - 1XRTT or GPRS is nowhere near as fast as Wi-Fi, but if you look at it from palmOne's point of view - putting Wi-Fi on the 600 is less of a priority than putting Wi-Fi on other devices, and here's what I believe their thinking to be:

1. The carriers are their customers on the device, and most of those carriers could view Wi-Fi as taking away from their core revenue (I know T-Mo and others have Wi-Fi plans, but the reality is that most of them view Wi-Fi as a threat, for now at least). So - pOne might be getting some pressure to put the 600 Wi-Fi card on a slow roll.

2. And if you look at the connectivity needs on the 600, I find the current speeds just fine. It's what I call 'device-relevant bandwidth'. I'm not downloading music, or streaming video, or watching ESPN In Motion - none of those things. I personally find the 1XRTT speeds that I get with Sprint's network to be fine. Of course, you could make the argument that since I've never used Wi-Fi, I don't know what I'm missing, and I just don't know all the goodness that I could be having. Well, maybe so - I can't refute that. But - for how I use the device, and I'm a power user, the speeds that I get are fine. This isn't a PC after all, and what I do with the device is fundamentally different on the 600 than what I might do on a laptop. Thus, I conclude, there's a less of a need for Wi-Fi on the 600 than with a full blown laptop.

So - I'd say those are some of the reasons that palmOne hasn't yet come out with a Wi-Fi card for the 600. Another possiblity is that Wi-Fi just be bundled into the next gen product - you never know....

Thanks for all the comments guys!

The best conclusion that I can come to is for palmOne to get all of us over in a room at headquarters for a friendly chat...together I'm sure that we can figure something out!

Joking aside, we're all aware that we're suffering from Handspring legacy issues at the moment and although I had half expected these to have been sorted out for the Ace I guess that we'll have to keep our fingers crossed to see whether the next gen 'Zen' is up to scratch.

Also, leaving our disgruntlement aside, palmOne have some _real_ competitive issues to deal with as others are catching up on Treo's lead FAST...

Cheers, A.