I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool Palm PDA user. I was working in a corporate IT department back in the 1990s when US Robotics introduced the first PalmPilot, the Palm 1000. I climbed the Palm upgrade ladder as new models came out (The Palm Vx was my favorite, a genuine home run in design and functionality). Fast forward to today, and although I don’t use a Palm-based PDA personally (I’ve been a BlackBerry guy for years now), I still deal with them on a regular basis in my line of work.

So I was surprised to learn that, despite Windows Vista being available to the public for six months, Palm Desktop still has some serious issues with this latest incarnation of Windows. A friend of mine was telling me about his struggles trying to get a customer’s new Windows Vista PC working with his new Palm PDA. The Palm Desktop application would just not launch properly, stopping dead in its tracks at the Palm splash screen. And yes, he was using the very latest publicly available release from Palm.

Then I saw a post on one of my favorite technology blogs, Download Squad, that announced Palm had just released a beta of Palm Desktop that supports Windows Vista.

So let’s review:

• Microsoft releases Windows Vista to the public on January 30, 2007
• Palm releases Palm desktop 6.2 Beta to support Windows Vista on July 24, 2007

Ummm… what’s wrong with that picture? And the above timeline ignores the fact that various pre-release versions of Vista were available to developers and OEMs (and just about anybody with a keen interest) for months before its official public release. So how is it that it took six months for a major PDA manufacturer to just now come up with a Beta version of its software that officially supports Vista? I don’t really know.

If I were a conspiracy nut, I’d say that Microsoft rigged Vista so that there would be issues with Palm Desktop, driving people to Windows Mobile. Or perhaps Palm just dropped the ball. Suffice it to say that Palm Desktop is just another casualty of the Vista upgrade wars. Whatever the true reason may be, one thing is clear: it’s the user that suffers.

So when I am dispensing advice to people about switching to Vista, the first words out of my mouth are: “Are you sitting down?”

Tags: palm desktop, vista problems