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Why I'm Dropping My Palm Pre

For the last 16 months*, I have proudly carried a Palm Pre, despite the snickers of iPhone fanatics and attacks by Android fanboys. I was a Palm loyalist and had been using Palm products since the days of the original Pilot. I defended the platform as growing and full of potential, with more apps coming just around the corner. The phone's sluggishness would surely be addressed in another point release. I even liked that sharp edge at the bottom of the phone. Despite all this, I walked into a Sprint store last week and sold my Pre back to them for $22 and change, knowing it might be the last Palm product I ever own.

Read more on PCMag.com...

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5 Reasons the HP Slate 500 Works for Businesses

HP finally released details about its much anticipated Slate product. We now have a name, Slate 500 Tablet PC, and a price, $799, but what seems to be lacking is a clear market for the device. Talk to HP and they are very clear it this isn't a consumer product designed to go up against the Apple iPad, and it is a good thing, too. It would get crushed. That said there is a chance—not a guarantee—that it is could catch on in vertical segments, for a these five reasons.

Read more on PCMag.com..

Windows Tablets Can't Match the iPad's Magic

The Apple iPad went on sale six months ago. Having been lucky enough to get some hands-on time with the device before it hit shelves, I knew it would do well. It was head-and-shoulders above anything else on the market. Giving it an Editors' Choice was a no-brainer. In the days before the launch, wherever I brought the iPad, I was swarmed with strangers wanting to touch the device, swipe the screen, all imagining what they would do if they owned one. Despite all this, at no time did I think the Apple iPad would sell more than a million units month.

Steve Jobs calling the device "magic" is just goofy, however. The iPad's stunning success is completely explainable without divine intervention. Here is why the iPad is kicking ass, and why it will continue to do so well into 2011.

Read more on PCMag.com.

 

Ditch Mobile Apps, Invest in the Mobile Web

Even as participants at this year's ThinkMobile Conference showed off their latest Apple iPad apps, they expressed a deep exasperation at the effort and cost required to build separate applications for every mobile platform. After all, the iPad is just the latest in a long line of mobile platforms that developers and content providers must support in order to reach new audiences, a range that now includes the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Badu, Symbian, and, if one feels charitable, Palm's webOS. Meanwhile, everyone I spoke to said that the future was really in mobile Websites based on open Internet standards. So what is the hold up?

ThinkMobile is MediaBistro.com's bi-annual mobile conference, which, in the interest of full-disclosure, is a media partner of the PCMag Digital Network. (The program was also curated by PCMag.com contributing editor, Jamie Lendino.) The idea is to bring leaders in the technology and media spaces together to build better mobile products. Right now, that seems to involve trying to build half-dozen apps for marginal platforms and hoping a unified mobile Web eventually takes hold.

Read the full column on PCMag.com....

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Smartphone Face-Off: EVO vs. Droid vs. iPhone 4

My segment on the The Debrief with WNBC's David Ushery. in which I show him the best phone on every major wireless network. You can read the full reviews on PCMag.com or just watch the video and get the cheat sheet.

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How to Get Over Apple iPhone 4 Envy

On the off-chance that you missed it, the Apple iPhone 4 went on sale this week. By all accounts--PCMag's included--it's an impressive device. (Check out mobile expert Sascha Segan's Apple iPhone 4 review.) It's faster, sharper, and more powerful than its predecessors and has access to a vast library of applications only a few clicks away. Most of us, however, won't buy one. Either we are trapped into contracts or AT&T's coverage stinks in our hometown. Still, the appeal of the iPhone is palpable—and Apple hasn't even started airing commercials yet. How are the vast iPhone-less masses to deal with the inevitable iPhone envy? I have some suggestions. 

Read my entire iPhone 4 column at PCMag.com.

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Confessions of a Foursquare Junkie

My job pretty much guarantees my status as an early-adopter of new technologies, but I am relatively new to the Foursquare phenomenon that is sweeping digerati circles. In part, that's because the app was just released on the Palm Pre a few weeks ago, and unless you can use it on your phone, Foursquare is pretty useless. Now that I have it, I fell into the predictable pattern I follow with all new technologies: curious discovery, frantic addiction, and finally the desperate search for some intrinsic usefulness. This is usually when a wearied cynicism sets in, along with a deep regret for all the time I have wasted on another useless technological distraction. Not this time, though. As the numerous announcements at Mobile World Congress this week confirm, the mad dash to deliver location-based services is just beginning. Continue reading...

5 Palm Pre Plus Tips for Verizon Users

Sprint's monopoly on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi has expired, which is good news for the millions of Verizon subscribers out there—and even better news for Palm. With two major networks, Palm just might—might be able to hold on in a mobile market increasingly dominated by the BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android platforms. Purchasing a Palm Pre for Sprint makes me marginally invested in the success of the webOS platform, so I wanted to offer some advice to new customers on Verizon, including some usability tips—and a couple of warnings. Continue reading...

Texting—And 8 Other Things NOT to Do While Driving

A report out this week shows that drivers are 23 times more likely to get into an accident while texting than while not texting. The study, conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, found that in the moments before their accidents, drivers spent an average of five seconds looking away from the road. At highway speeds, that is enough time to cover the length of a football field.

This news has legislators across the country working on laws to ban Driving While Texting (DWT) in order to get drivers to, well, watch where they're going. But that isn't the only technological threat that needs to be addressed. Read more...

My Palm PREversion

Bye bye, BlackBerry. It's not you, it's Pre.

Just one year ago, I was using this space to gush about my BlackBerry conversion. After years of carrying a Treo 650, I was upgrading to a modern smartphone. One that could deliver my e-mail, show my appointments, and make pretty clear voice calls, to boot. And the truth is, my BlackBerry 8330 still does all those things fairly well.

But a year has passed—a year I spent watching snotty iPhone users wave their fancy touch screens in my face as they boasted about the awesomeness of their platform. "Want to know the airborne speed of an unladen South African swallow? There's an App for that!" Somewhere in the last 12 months, my conversion was PREverted. Last week, I bought a Palm Pre.

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