Amazon Slashes Palm Pre To $79.99 as smartphone wars intensify

I really like the Palm Pre.  I have a good friend with one and he loves it.  It has a super-nice interface - the best one out there in my opinion.

It's a shame when a company really turns it's sinking ship around ... but its bilge pumps still aren't keeping up.  Their kiss of death happened a mere 3.5 years ago, with their embrace of Windows Mobile, destroying every single useful differentiator they had with the rest of the market.

Don't get me wrong - I love my iPhone - it's defintely the most well thought, well-constructed phone out there.  But the Pre was a competitor that was actually worthy - a phone that I would be happy to purchase and to own.

Palm deserves to die.  They relentlessly refused to significantly improve Palm OS for nearly a decade, giving other companies ample time to surpass them.

I used to be a Palm fanboy.  I had a Handspring Visor, Treo 180, Treo 600, and finally a Treo 680.  And I kept hoping that Palm would finally update Palm OS into something more modern.  Nope.  They never did. I got fed up and ditched my 680 for an iPhone 3G, and never looked back except in disgust.

Now Palm's WebOS, which is basically just a browser, is too little too late.  If they had released the Pre about 5 years ago, they could have been where Apple is now.  And I have no doubt that they could have released a Pre-like phone years ago. Could woulda shoulda.

But no, Jeff spent all that time and money on the ridiculous Foleo, Palm spun off its OS group to a Japanese company, they kept warming-over their existing phones to make consumers think they were advancing their technology, and finally they're in a position where they can't compete any more.

I doubt Nokia would want to buy Palm now.  Nokia's presence in the US market is small, but so is Palm's.  Buying Palm wouldn't help them much.  But I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft snapped them up.  Just out of  clueless desperation.

RIP Palm.

I bought the Pre the week it came out, and I loved it at first. Gorgeous screen. Gorgeous design. Super shiny. But now, only 4 months of having it, it looks old already. I always keep it in its leather case, the official Pre case made by Palm. But there are scuffs all over it! Yeah, the screen was scratch-resistant like they said....for only like 2 months. But the subsequent action of pulling and putting the phone in its tight case, eventually scuffed up the screen too. It's getting more scratched each day...exponentially. Is it that the scratch-resistant film they put on the screen is starting to wear/rub off? And the sliding mechanism isn't as smooth as it used to...only after 4 months of use. So I can't imagine the condition of this phone after another 20 months into my contract.

Palm also needs to support their webOS with applications. Their Marketplace is still in Beta mode last I checked. And the coolest App I have for it is Checkers and a weather App...lol. The Zune HD has only been out for about 6 weeks, and I already have some really neat Apps for it like: Project Gotham Ferrari Edition!!!