Like lambs to the slaughter...

Looks like Palm couldn't wait to get in on the scene for another failed device to go on your Microsoft table top computing surface, or not as the case may be. Initially I was excited - I'm not a big fan of Palm, I've always thought their operating system PalmOS really blew - however they certainly innovated in the device market. But having been a long time fan of Psion devices which have always had a superior operating system (that still lives as Symbian in many Nokia phones) I realized that Palm usually lags others in the innovation department.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that their new Foleo device is too big, too heavy, too battery limited and too functionality limited. As others have pointed out already you can get a smaller, more functional, longer life laptop that can probably have its own built in contacts and network cards. The only differentiator here is price. At $500 the folio is cheap - around the entry price for laptops - but it delivers less functionality than the equivalent vanilla laptop. But as Apple has shown time and time again sometimes less, and more proprietary is more to a niche market.

I personally think if Palm had made their Foleo more like the last of the line Psion devices that had a keyboard and were designed to work with an external network access device, then they would probably have a shot. Those devices were about half the size, weight less than a pound, fitted i n your pocket, worked for days at a time on a battery charge (some even used AA batteries!) and were great standalone devices. The only thing they were missing was a cellular modem with 3G access, something that just wasn't around back then. In reality we're talking about something that's about 50% to 100% bigger than existing Windows Mobile devices from HTC and the like.

Table Top PC - another Microflop device genere

The table top computer surface/computer has to be one of the dumbest I've heard of this year. If the report is to believe then it seems that Microsoft just doesn't learn - they have flopped so many times trying to reinvent the PC - from the PocketPC, to tablet PC, to UMPC, they have all pretty much tanked - and the table top PC will do the same.

The reason is even if people wanted it then it just wouldn't work. All flat surfaces in homes gather junk - books, coffee cups, keys, bills and if that surface is touch sensitive then that just isn't going to work. And even if the table was magically clear all the time (maybe you hire a maid to clean up your PC table, rather like cleaning up your hard drive) it still isn't going to work because looking down at something isn't any sensible way to get information. Who places their newspaper or magazine flat on the coffee table and reads it? Almost no one. And to get a decent view of the information you would have to stoop over it anyway - a back pain inducing stance. Guys (and we know it must have been guys who designed this), you need to either hold a screen in your hands like a regular book or phone, or sit in front of it like a regular TV or computer screen. So seriously, give up trying to reinvent the computing device and get back to working on your OS upgrade which from what I've heard should be called "Hasta la Vista" (dudes).

Catch the Pidgin!

Having switched to using Linux for the majority of my basic communications activities I'm now using the successor of Gaim for instant messenging. Due to a deal with AOL they switched the name from "Gaim" to "Pidgin" and they have adopted a cute little pigeon logo reminiscent of the "Catch the pigeon" cartoon.

Pidgin supports text chat on Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google (via Jabber XMPP) and more - everything I need except Skype which I often end up doing text chat on because I don't have a microphone handy. I'm not sure why Skype can't adopt the open standard of XMPP or play nice with universal chat apps like Pidgin, that's too bad.

I'm happy to be able to get all my chat apps boiled down to one - its less resources used, fewer updates to track, etc. etc.

One warning: the 2.0.0 release of Pidgin seems to have a bad bug that means a new user will not be able to add a Yahoo account - it will crash. Other IM accounts work fine, and those who used previous Gaim based releases will be okay. At fix in 2.0.1 is promised to be out soon, unfortunately that's a big bug to have slipped through on the major 2.0.0 release and debut of Pidgin, I wonder how that happened?

The Beginning of the End of Windows Domination

I know some people will tell me "Beginning? It's the middle if not the end of the end already..." and others will say "You're a crazy pinko Linux fanboy, it'll never happen" but I'm sorry, I think I'm right. I've been right on things before (and wrong too) but this time I really feel it. I'm subconciously connecting many dots of Linux and Mac adoption, channeling the anti-Micrsofot zeitgeist, witnessing how Windows fails to satisfy its users and confuses others, and watching wave after wave of online OS-agnostic network centric apps step into core home computing roles.

Notice also that my title didn't say "End of Microsoft", it says "End of Windows" and I didn't actually say "End of Windows" period, but "End of Windows Domination". If you want something more definitive than that then I'd say I'm predicting:

"Within 10 years (ie. by 2017) the operating systems in use at home and business will move to a three solution installation base of Windows, Mac and Linux, such that Windows alone will no longer be the dominant (by percentage) installation".

Basically I'm looking back at how far we have come from ten years ago (1997) when users were suffering with the hideous Windows 95, desperately awaiting Windows 98 with great, soon to be dashed hope, and still years from the first truly useful and stable Microsoft home operating system (Windows 2000). I won't put the end of domination date any sooner than ten years hence, although I actually think with greater than 50% certainty my prediction will be "obvious" if not reality within five years. I think it is likely that Linux installations will exceed Windows installations within a 10 year time frame.

I also think that there is a strong likelihood that as Linux and Mac users begin to dominate as a combined user base Apple will start working on a system that will yield a high level of compatibility with Linux such that Linux programs will run on Mac OS and visa-versa. This will not be so hard since the vast majority of Linux computers are on Intel hardware, and MacOS is already Unix based. This will be an important strategy for Apple as they get sufficiently big to start becoming a large and fruitful (pun intended) target for viruses, malware and disgruntled users viewing them as yet another proprietary evil-doer (as eventually happened to Yahoo, Google, YouTube and all the other once shiny never-do-wrong upstart little guys). So watch out for Apple flavored Linux in attempt to cut of Ubuntu domination at the pass.

I also think that the underlying operating system running on a computer will largely be irrelevant by 2017 since a) huge amounts of storage and processing will be done online only, and b) local "thick client" applications will delivered as a self contained virtual machine. As such the underlying operating system on a machine will just not matter, so long as it can run a virtual machine host and support a "browser" like environment for online apps. More important than the operating system will be which suite of personal information management apps a user adopts to manage their email, browsing, media management and document processing. Microsoft will certainly compete in this space, but judging by their initial efforts they have a long road of development or acquisitions to hoe.

In the mean time I'm doing my best to become OS agnostic long ahead of the curve. Most of my document storage and communication is done via open source any-platform apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin and my important documents are often to be found stored in IMAP folders and anywhere other than my home computer. This means I can move from computer to computer with relative ease - there are few if any expensive and proprietary apps that tie me to any one system or OS. Even in my professional life I spend 95% of my time writing platform agnostic code consisting of standardized and widely supported languages like Java, JavaScript, XML, HTML and CSS.