All the rumors about the Palm Pre coming to Verizon have been confirmed. Earlier today in a conference call with analysts Verizon stated that the Palm Pre would be coming to their network “early next year“. This is not good news at all for Sprint.
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Even though the Palm Pre has been available for well over a month, believe it or not, you were not able to order the device online. That was the case, at least, until today, as the Palm Pre is now available through Sprint’s website.
The Pre will cost you $199.99 on a 2-year contract after a $100 mail-in rebate. You still are going to have to shell out 300 bucks up front to get yourself one. This is kind of unfortunate seeing how the Pre’s biggest competitors, the iPhone and the BlackBerry, can be yours for $100 or more less out the door. At least those who still really want a Pre will probably be able to get one.
Can’t say that we didn’t really see this coming, but, Apple has released iTunes 8.2.1 that apparently nixes the Palm Pre’s ability to sync your library. Fortunately, drag and drop still works or you could always use a third party utility like doubleTwist.
I wonder if Palm and Apple will get into a cat and mouse game of updates that allows then prevents Pre/iTunes syncing?
[Via PreThinking]

Ever since CES, the smartphone world has been dominated with news of Palm’s new webOS and the device on which it runs, the Palm Pre. There hasn’t been a lot of good news coming out of Palm for the passed couple of years, however, when it comes to the Pre reviewers are raving about it, new blogs covering the Pre are emerging, and some are even calling the Pre an iPhone killer.
Just how big will the Palm Pre and webOS be?
by Robb Dunewood on December 15, 2008 · 7 comments
Remember Palm? They used to be the top dog in the mobile PDA business just a few years ago but it seems like lately the company is struggling just to stay afloat.
Next month at CES in Las Vegas, Palm will debut it’s new OS along with the device that will run it.
Palm is expecting Nova to capture 2% of the market now dominated by the BlackBerry followed by the iPhone. Will this be enough to save the company?
What do you think?
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Remember back in the day where the gadget to have for everyone that was anyone was a Palm Pilot? It’s hard to believe that devices from Palm once held the rock star status that is today reserved only for the BlackBerry and the iPhone.
Palm was so big that Palm Pilot almost became a generic term kind of like Xerox. It really didn’t matter what type of PDA you had, most people referred to it as a Palm Pilot.
It is kind of sad seeing where Palm has fallen to. 10 years ago they were on top of the world. Today their stock has been downgraded to sell and is sitting at $5.76. Research in Motion, on the other hand, moved into the top 5 of wireless handset manufacturers and opened up today at $137.50.
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Even a company that is dwindling away into nothingness like Palm that is known to build some of the buggiest PDA’s known to man can get a good cheap shot in when you can’t keep your service up for more than a few months at a time.
Sure, you’ve got to reboot your Windows Mobile running Treo once or twice a day, however, when it’s up, you can pretty much send and receive email without worry.
There have been rumors about a new Linux-based revamp of the Palm OS, possibly code named Nova, floating around for some time now. You would think that with all the bad things happening to Palm lately rumors of a new OS would be a positive thing.
Well leave it to Palm to put bad spin on that too. Engadget Mobile is reporting that Palm doesn’t plan to have Palm OS II devices out until early 2009. This right, the one glimmer of light that could possibly better the companies position in the wireless market is over a year away.
If Palm really wanted to right the ship they needed to release this new OS about 6 months ago. With it coming out over a year from now, not only have they missed the boat, but the lake that boat sailed on has completely dried up.
The other day I was in Best Buy and I happened to notice a Palm device that that cost like $500 and it had no cell phone capability built in. It was straight “old school” Palm Pilot like.
I couldn’t believe it. I knew that Palm still made PDAs that weren’t Treos, however, I had no idea that they cost $500. I figured that there was a misprint on the price so I asked one of the dudes in the blue shirt how much this thing was supposed to really cost and, low and behold, it truly was $500.
Someone please explain to me how a Palm Pilot with no cellular technology can cost so much more than a Treo that does all of the same stuff plus doubles as a cell phone? I just don’t get it.
I guess that Best Buy wouldn’t sell them if people weren’t buying them. I just had no idea that the $500 PDA that isn’t a cell phone also market was still a big one.