It is reported that on September 24th, 2009 Premium Apps will be made available in the Palm “App Catalog” – this excites me to no end.    Of course this announcement comes amid controversy of Palm dumping Windows Mobile in favor of the Linux-based webOS platform – a strategy I whole-heartedly favor.  Linux can be very stable, I have servers that haven’t gone down in 2 years without a restart, so I see this as a good choice to go in a good direction.  At least Palm can focus on innovation and not have to deal with MS issues.

Could you imagine a Smart Phone you could use for 2 weeks straight without a restart???  Ahhh to dream!

Palm is also having some financial issues related to sales projections – I am a firm believer in build a product, make it work, stick it out and you will rise to the top of the food chain.  This takes patience and the willingness to stick by convictions.  I tend to avoid “analyzing” companies based on their “business model” alone since most of what we are shown of a given companies so called business model is built on conjecture and pretty powerpoint slides rather than on the stability of the product that they are selling – I don’t buy for the packaging, but it sure is nice to find a product that works as advertised TODAY (meaning I don’t have to wait for the next release to experience the promise of what I was sold).  Hey, and if the packaging makes me happy too, then SCORE for everyone!!  That is the company I will stand behind through thick and thin.

‘Wish more products were bought and sold based on stability, compatibility, ease of use, end user experience and a real humanitarian corporate culture.

Why didn’t I go with the iPhone when it first made the scene?

I simply did not  ”buy into the hype” – The fact that the iPhone can brag “thousands” of Apps is really good for them.  The fact of the matter is, the intuitiveness of my new Pre as compared to my “experiences” with the iPhone far out weight waiting for a few “Apps” that I don’t really need.  I need a stable device that facilitates real-time communication not eye-candy.  (Although, I have to tell you that my Pre is really, really a stunning gadget ...and it has a built in vanity mirror!! Oh, yes they did!!)

I did a lot of research on the iPhone prior to choosing the PalmPre – in fact, there are many reasons I did not chose an iPhone when it first came out and literally waited years for the Pre. I did not like the idea of a “visual” keyboard, I need to feel little buttons under my fingers to feel like I am writing something.  This is one of the reasons I didn’t get a Blackberry Storm, also no WiFi and it debuted on Verizon – and well, Verizon is the devil as I said in previous posts.

In addition to the iPhone’s unappealing visual keyboard, I did not feel comfortable going with AT&T – In NYC a lot of the cell towers that AT&T uses to support the iPhone are the same T-Mobile towers that had been dropping my calls for years.

Ok, so I have had a few days with my Pre and on SPRINT – I haven’t had any dropped calls, I get my emails, texts etc without fail, it hasn’t crashed and I can watch the live streaming on SPRINT TV!  I am going to set up an encoder and see how it does for live webcasts, since I am a webcast producer I should be able to tune in to a stream to make sure things are hunky dory.  At any rate, I will keep posting about my Pre and experience on SPRINT, I will be going out-of-town next week so this will be my first “roaming” experience.

By the way, the final plus that made me choose SPRINT was their AnyMobile AnyTime guarantee.

On a performance note, my Pre alerts me of new email before I receive it on my desktop with a 10Mbps connection.  Let’s see what happens when I head north for the week!

This was Nico reporting on her new Palm Pre, over&out!!