D-

- Didn't pay attention in class. Kept flicking boogers at classmate's head.

I was kind of looking forward to this. I have Kodak V1253 right now, had a P850 before this (I needed the HD video, hence the switch) and was looking forward to the 24x zoom. Unfortunately the video really does look too upscaled, and the pictures are noisy as hell. Gonna have to pass on this one.

Not well suited to games? The hell you say.

I said it in the big expose thread on the Pre: It's awesome, and Palm really pulled a rabbit out of their hat with it, but until they finally give some love to the entertainment sector (for the first time in Palm's history) the Pre will not be considered competitive to the iPhone, Android, or even Blackberry. And that is a damn, cryin' shame, because the Pre looks like it could have had long legs if Palm hadn't cut them off at the knees. Palm had better get some cutting edge prosthetics attached (read: a real SDK with a proper programming language and access to a solid graphics API) pronto if they really want to return to relevancy. And I say this as a former Palm fan. (Owned 5 PDAs and 4 Treos over the last 8 years.)

iPhone fan checking in, but also a former and long-time Palm user. I have to say I'm mightily impressed by the Pre. It looks impossibly slick -- far, _far_ more than I expected Palm to pull off. To be honest I counted them for the next best thing to dead and didn't think they could whip something out that was modern and competitive -- but they did, by FSM they did it with _class_. Unrestrained props to them for that.

BUT. The complete Web-based development is going to be its Achilles heel. It'll make utilities and productivity pretty awesome, but here Palm _still_ haven't changed and are totally ignoring the entertainment sector. They did this with all of their PalmOS-bsaed PDAs and smartphones; there was almost zero support for gaming. Developers had to develop their own game engines from scratch. This is going to hurt the Pre unless Palm gives developers unfettered access to whatever graphics and sound hardware is under its hood with solid APIs and preferably something a little more powerful than XML and JavaScript.

I really, _really_ like what Palm have cooked up there, but they're going to remain steps behind the competition until they get off their butts and finally pay some serious attention to the entertainment aspects of a device for once.

Groovy. It's just a pair of flares and a porn stache away from a night on the town after a visit to Sea World.

Layer perspective tool is not their friend.

Can someone please tell me why remotes these days have an alarming tendency to be modelled after a maxi-pad? Is there some kind of subliminal message here I'm just not getting?

Okay, tell me Bit didn't come straight out of Schoolhouse Rock. He should be singing, "I'm just a bit, and I'm sittin' on perpendicular hill..."

Mr. Prentice needs a reality check. Multitouch taking part in replacing the mouse? Have you ever leaned over your desk for long periods of time to manipulate on-screen objects? It's all very fine and well if you've got a nice easel-style display, but we're not in Star Trek territory yet. Neural interface actuators? Sorry, Gibson's era hasn't arrived yet either. Facial recognition? Where's that going to come into play? Look at what you want to click and stick your tongue our for a left click, or wiggle your nose for a right? Perform a cunnilingus manoeuvre to scroll? No, dude. Just ... no. The mouse isn't going anywhere. All of these things may become adjuncts to the mouse and keyboard to one degree or another -- just like trackballs and touchpads have -- but the mouse is still going to be one of the two primary input devices for the foreseeable future.

That's no laptop. That's a purse. Sorry -- _murse_.