Another ending and beginning for Palm

Today marks the final day of Palm as we have known it for some time as it now becomes a division of HP. My friend Dieter put together an enjoyable walk down memory lane as he took a look back on his Palm history and hopes for the future. Palm was the leader in the PDA market and was the first to come out with smartphones that rocked the mobile world and set the bar for some time. I started using Palm devices in 1997 and my online user name of "palmsolo" comes from that long Palm history. Thanks for all the great years Palm and let's hope that HP continues to develop and improve webOS moving forward.

Palm Computing began in 1996, a division of US Robotics at the time, with Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan. My first Palm was the Pilot 1000 that had the US Robotics label on it and I was so enamored by the ability to replace my Franklin Planner that I saved up and continued to upgrade through the Palm lineup for years. My Palm devices in those days included the Pilot 1000, Palm III, Palm IIIx with axxPac slot, Palm IIIc (I can still clearly remember how excited I was about color on my PDA), Palm V (an unbeatable form factor at the time), and so on. I own a few of these still today along with a Palm Pre Plus. I stuck with Palm at times when it didn't make a lot of sense, but there is a special place in my heart for the company that got me hooked on these mobile computers and I hope that we continue to see the Palm name used at HP.

Palm had some interesting times in its history too with the founders leaving Palm Computing, a 3Com subsidy at the time, to start Handspring. We then saw Palm Computing become Palm Inc. and then later merged with Handspring to become palmOne with the software becoming a company known as PalmSource. palmOne then purchased shared rights to PalmSource to become Palm again. PalmSource was aquired by ACCESS Systems, but then Palm, Inc. bought back the Palm OS source code. We then saw the unthinkable happen when Palm started selling the Treoo 700w, a Windows Mobile operating system device. Palm was on the ropes when they rocked the smartphone world with their webOS and Palm Pre announcement at CES in 2009. I still think that webOS is one of the best mobile operating systems and hope that HP can make smartphones running webOS into viable competitors to the iPhone and Android devices.