[geeks] Be

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 03:55:28PM -0400, Kurt Huhn wrote:
> > Oh well, I'll keep my PalmOS Handera cause it works good for reading
> > books and carrying personal info, and leave all that cool whizbang
> > multimedia junk to people who can afford it.
> > 
> 
> I was going to sell my Palm Vx, but I've decide to keep it.  PalmOS is *not*
> the best OS for a plamtop (IMO), and I *would* like to see something with
> features like WinCE, but without all the extra overhead that WinCE carries.  If
> there's an OS that can do that, it's probably BeOS.  I just hope they're not
> too late to market...

I like the simplicity of palm.  I think it is important to keep that.
But they also need better coordination between file systems.  Running
a ramfs with the Be file system to replace the PalmOS db would be one
way to do that (albeit a way with too much storage over head at the
moment).  Also, it seems clear that people are soon going to want
MP3s and other audio tasks, and video is also forseable.  BeOS has
efficient means for handling both.

For instance for starters, imagine that memos, address, dates, and
todo lists are all cross linked.  You can attach dates to things to
do, and memos to address to appointments and so on.  Using the BeFS
would make this easier to do that I believe it currently is in
PalmOS.  Now imagine being able to dictate into memos while you are
driving.  I would love that.

Or, perhaps this.  You are my father, and inspector mainly for
insurance companies.  He needs appointments to be kept, attached to
Maps and addresses.  While there, he takes pictures and checks boxes
and enters data on a form.  Imagine having the camera download the
pictures and attach themselves to the forms on the palm pilot.  When
the device fills up with data from a few sites, it could download it
all to a flash card.  At the end of the day, insert the flash card
into a desktop, and load a program and hit print and it prints the
already prepared reports.

Ok, I over simplified the second one a bit.  Mainly because it would
be too hard to describe everything he does.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd