I wrote back in April about why I didn’t have an e-reader, even though I’m a fairly avid reader. Then, two months later, I ordered an Amazon Kindle 2. The only thing that really changed in those two months was the Kindle’s price, which dropped precipitously from $250 to a much more reasonable (but still a bit high) $190. I still went back and forth over whether a single-use device was really worth that much, but I eventually gave in. Had it dropped to $150, there probably wouldn’t have even been an argument.

I chose the Kindle over the competitive Barnes & Noble Nook, which has a WiFi-only model for $150, because Amazon’s larger selection of books and the Kindle’s always-there 3G ‘Whispernet’ together seemed to justify spending an extra $40. The Nook’s main advantages are its color touchscreen, located below the nearly-identical-to-the-Kindle e-ink display, and that it runs the open-source Android operating system and is thus more hackable. The touchscreen was neat, but I found it unnecessary (and surprisingly laggy) when I tried it out. I’m not particularly interested in hacking on an e-reader either, since the built-in software in both the Kindle and Nook are quite sufficient for reading…which is the whole point of the device. Having said that, the Nook is a fine device and a worthy competitor to the Kindle.

Sony also offers a line of e-readers but, in typical Sony style, they seem to look good on paper and perform poorly in reality. They lack the slick integration with the online stores offered by the Kindle and Nook and, worse, every time I’ve tried to use one in a store it’s been broken. Not the way to sell a product, guys. Between the Kindle’s arrival in July and today, Amazon has discontinued the Kindle 2 and replaced it with a new model at the same price and has also introduced a cheaper WiFi-only version at $140 (both currently available for pre-order). They also sell a grossly-overpriced Kindle DX for $380.

While many in the ‘net punditry have tried to write comparisons of these e-readers with the Apple iPad, they are different devices that serve a different purpose. The iPad does a million different things, and one of them is being an e-reader, but for serious readers there is no real comparison. The dedicated e-readers like the Kindle are just e-readers and are built exclusively for that purpose. If you read now-and-then between YouTube videos, emails, and Facebook status updates then maybe the iPad will suit your usage fine. If you like to read for a while without distraction, then you should be looking at a dedicated e-reader.

Why? More than anything else, because of the display.

The iPad is a great all-around device, but it uses an LCD display just like a laptop or smartphone. This is great for reading emails, viewing web pages, watching videos, and so on…but if you’ve ever tried to sit down and read on one of these devices for hours on end, you’ll quickly find your eyes bothering you and, worse, you’ll find yourself constantly interrupted by those very emails, Facebook updates, and whatnot popping up periodically. The Kindle, Nook, Sony readers, and others use an innovative e-ink display with no backlight that is very well suited to displaying text, but not to much of anything else.

What this means is that looking at text on a true e-reader is very, very similar to looking at text on paper. You rely on ambient light, so you can’t use them in the dark but you can use them in bright sunlight. A book’s page on the Kindle 2′s screen looks basically like a book’s page in a book, except for a bit darker background. Amazon says that the upcoming Kindle has better contrast, which will be nice I guess, but the Kindle 2′s has not given me any trouble in real-world usage.

There is a glare sometimes from overhead lights, which is remedied by adjusting the angle you hold the device. A more anti-glare screen surface would be a welcome improvement. Also a faster refresh rate on the e-ink display would be welcome. In order to prevent ghosting and other problems related to the e-ink technology, the Kindle flashes the entire screen when it refreshes (when ‘turning’ the page). You get used to this fairly quickly, but it was distracting at first. If they can make it happen faster, that would be cool.

Overall, I really like the Kindle’s size and ergonomics. The large ‘next page’ buttons on either side of the display seem to line up perfectly with your thumbs when you hold it naturally, and the five-way navigator nub makes it quick and easy to get around the menus and lists of books. The Kindle includes a physical keyboard (where the Nook has its secondary touchscreen). This is nice when I need to enter a quick note, but doesn’t get a lot of use day-to-day. Personally I’m kind-of torn about this. The keyboard seems like it’s a waste of space that might be used for something else (like the Nook’s touchscreen) but, at the same time, I find that the Nook’s touchscreen makes it feel more like a gadget and less like a book. Books, of course, don’t have keyboards…but there’s something about the physicality of buttons, as opposed to displays, that I like about the Kindle. It feels ‘real,’ instead of like a window into some electronic universe.

The battery life seems to be quite good; even with the 3G network connected, I consistently get many days of use before needing a charge. It’s also really easy to turn off the 3G connection if you want to extend your battery life. The e-ink display, in addition to being so easy on the eyes, uses no energy except when it is updating. In fact, when you put it to sleep with the power switch it puts gray-scale pictures of authors or old books and artwork on the screen. It just leaves them there with a message saying, “Slide and release the power switch to wake.” Once again, e-ink is not like an LCD. ‘Off’ does not automatically mean ‘blank.’

Besides the keyboard and the basic array of navigation buttons, the Kindle has a power slider switch on the top and a standard headphone plug (for listening to audiobooks, MP3s, or so the Kindle can read to you). The volume toggle is on the upper-right hand side. On the bottom it has a standard mini-USB port for charging or connecting to a computer. On-board memory is 1.4gb, which is plenty of space for tons and tons of books. The new Kindle replaces the five-way navigator nub with a different arrangement, but it seems to me that it won’t be much better or worse. The new one is also quite a bit smaller—although the screen is the same size on the new Kindle, they have greatly reduced the size of the bezels around it. It also more-than doubles its memory to 4gb.

I added an Amazon-branded leather cover for my Kindle which is quite good, but way overpriced at $35. The Kindle actually snaps into the cover on the side. The cover gives the Kindle a bit more heft and protection and makes it feel even more like a physical book in the hand.

Navigation & Content

When you start up the Kindle, you’re presented with a very straightforward home screen. You can choose to sort it by title, author, or by ‘collections’ (folders, basically). I find it easiest to sort by collections. Books I’m currently reading I intentionally leave uncategorized so they appear on the home screen, while everything else is nestled in one or more collections. I basically leave mine broken down into ‘To Read’ (items I haven’t read yet), ‘Archived’ (items I’ve finished reading), ‘Church’ (Bibles, Missals, etc.), and ‘Reference’ (a dictionary, Bibles, the Constitution, and more). You could certainly break things down even more if you wanted to.

The Kindle also has a pretty decent search mechanism. From the navigation screens you can just start typing to search the device, or you can bring up the device menu and go to a more fully-functional search. You can search items on your Kindle, the Kindle store, the built-in dictionary, Google, or Wikipedia.

Getting content onto your Kindle is mind-numbingly easy. Amazon’s preferred method is that you use the Kindle store, which is accessible from any Internet-connected computer or from the Kindle itself. Assuming you have your Amazon one-click buying set up, you can buy any book or periodical in the Kindle store from the device itself. It’s downloaded to the Kindle and ready to read, generally, in seconds. Obviously this relies on connection to the Amazon ‘Whispernet,’ the free, included wireless Internet access (which actually runs off AT&T’s network). The new WiFi-only model will only be able to do this when connected to a wireless network. If you choose to buy on a computer, you can choose which device(s) to send the book to.

Amazon also did a great job of integrating multiple devices. Kindle applications are available for Windows PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads, BlackBerries, and Android phones. You can move your books back and forth pretty seamlessly between your various devices and, by default, it’ll even remember how far you’ve read between the different devices. I installed the Kindle app on Melissa’s iPad, for example, and she has access to any of the purchased books in my library.

Unfortunately (though understandably), this slick integration only works with content you’ve bought from Amazon—which isn’t the only way to get e-books. In addition to Amazon’s AZW and Topaz formats (either DRM-encumbered or not), the Kindle will support unencumbered MOBI books, text files, and PDFs. Amazon also provides a conversion service to process HTML and Microsoft Word files into a Kindle-compatible format, though delivering these wirelessly to your device comes with a small fee. Connecting the Kindle to a computer’s USB port mounts it like a flash hard drive, and it’s super easy to put compatible files on it. Additionally, you can use the free third-party Calibre software to manage your e-books from your Windows PC, Linux machine, or Mac (much like iTunes manages music).

E-books of classics with expired copyrights are available free from places like Project Gutenberg, which can be a great way to get a head start on starting your e-book collection without spending much money. For the Kindle, you should download the MOBI formatted books. For pretty much any other e-reader, you should use EPUB. Unfortunately, the Kindle does not support the emerging EPUB standard. It’s the only major e-reader that doesn’t; EPUB is used by the iPad and Nook by default, and is also supported on Sony’s readers. This is not a big deal—the format incompatibility can be overcome with free converters—but I would prefer that Amazon embrace the e-book standard that virtually all of its competitors have adopted.

This is less troubling than the fact that all of the e-readers use incompatible DRM schemes to prevent you from moving your own purchased content between devices, even when they use the same file formats. There are a few methods to remove DRM ‘protection’ from Kindle books so you have unfettered access to the content you have purchased; using these tools will make it easier for you to switch to non-Amazon e-readers in the future if you choose to. I keep an unencumbered backup of all the e-books I buy for this reason. Breaking DRM for purposes of interoperability is an expressly permitted exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but most of the publishing industry erroneously claims it’s illegal (come on guys, just read the law).

This DRM madness needs to end; if I buy a book for a Kindle, and decide in two years to buy a Nook instead, I have the right to take my purchased content with me to the new device.

My only real gripe about getting content on the Kindle—which applies just as much to Kindle’s competitors—is that there’s no way to get my paper books into my e-book universe without buying them all over again. When I started using my computer to manage my music, and my iPod to take my music with me, I was able to ‘rip’ my existing CD collection into the computer so that my collection includes both new music purchased electronically and music I had before on CD. While more difficult (and involving more quality loss), I could have imported music from vinyl records, cassette tapes, and 8-tracks too without too much trouble. There is essentially no practical way to import my existing book collection into the computer and/or the Kindle.

I would like to see a way to scan a book’s bar code (or some other fairly easy method) and get a discount on that book through the Kindle store. I don’t expect it for free, especially considering that it costs Amazon to operate the ‘Whispernet’ connection over-which it’s delivered, but if I bought a $30 hardcover it seems a little silly to have to spend full price to buy it again. The publishers already got my money (and already ‘licensed’ the content to me, according to their tortured understanding of copyright)…so let me use it on my exciting new device that is going to be notable part of the salvation of the publishing industry. So far I’ve only re-bought two books (not counting the Bible), and both of them were priced well-under $5. No way am I paying over $5 to gain access to a book I already bought.

Books

Of course, the main reason pretty much anybody buys a Kindle or one of its competitors is because they love to read. That’s the whole point, after all—bringing books into the digital age and making reading fun again. The Kindle succeeds. Amazon really hit the nail on the head here, recreating as closely as possible the experience of reading a book. Where the Kindle deviates from the old world of books made of dead trees, it does so logically—remembering where you left off without a bookmark (eliminating those joyous moments where you close the book without one and have to find where you were), letting you add notes without cluttering the margins (and without having to find them later), and so on.

When you click on a book with the five-way navigator from the home screen, it takes you directly to wherever you were last time you were reading it (or, if you haven’t read it before, it takes you to the beginning—usually past all the pointless acknowledgements and copyright notices). You can also tap to the right on the five-way to get the book’s information like its title, author, and cover. From this screen you can also navigate through the book, view your notes and marks, or search inside the book. This is also one place that you can add a book to one or more of your collections (you can also do this from the collection’s page en-masse).

When you’re reading, the screen is very simple. On the top, you get the book’s title, 3G wireless status, and battery status. On the bottom you get an indication bar showing where in the book you are. Other than that, you just get the book. No distractions; no interruptions. It’s just the book. You can also press the ‘Menu’ button to get a little more information and a number of options (similar to those on the book’s information screen). From here you can also bookmark the page, or add your own annotation. I like to highlight interesting passages and add a note so I can come back and find them later, and the Kindle actually syncs these up to their servers (along with your position in the book) so you can read your notes on any of the other Kindle apps…at least in books you bought from Amazon.

When you’re in the book, pressing one of the two large ‘Next Page’ buttons on the Kindle advances to the next screen. There is also a ‘Prev. Page’ button, but only for the left hand…on the right side this is a ‘Home’ button that returns you to the device’s home screen. On the upcoming new Kindle, there is a ‘Prev.’ button on both sides and the ‘Home’ button moves down above the five-way navigation—a nice improvement. As I mentioned earlier, there is a slight lag when the screen refreshes as it blanks out the e-ink. You will probably find that you get used to this the more you use the Kindle and, in fact, I now naturally press the ‘Next’ button just a hair before I get to the end of the page so the next page is ready for me at the right moment. With a little practice, reading a book on a Kindle quickly becomes as natural as reading one on paper.

Of course, you can buy books super-easy through the Kindle Store (discussed above). Best of all, if you’re not sure whether a book is worth it, you can usually get a chapter or two for free and upgrade it to the full version if you decide you like it.

Periodicals

In addition to books, you can subscribe to a large number of newspapers and periodicals through the Kindle store. These are billed on a monthly basis to your Amazon one-click account, and are generally quite a bit less expensive than their print counterparts (and, even better, they don’t come loaded up with all the advertising you see in print). Periodicals are delivered magically through Amazon’s ‘Whispernet’ when they come out.

I am subscribed to The Washington Post Kindle edition, which is $11.99/mo. You can start a free 14-day trial subscription of pretty much any available newspaper and, if you hate it, stop your subscription before you start getting billed for it. Note, however, that this is an ‘opt-out’ kind of thing. If you take no action after starting a trial subscription, it will automatically become a pay subscription.

Like books on the Kindle, clicking on an issue of a periodical takes you to wherever you were before or, if you haven’t started reading it yet, it takes you to the beginning. For the Post, the beginning is the lead front-page article. Personally, I prefer to go to the issue’s information page (again, same way as on a book) and go to its content page and select the ‘view articles’ link showing the number of articles from there. That gives me a quick overview of what’s in that section and I can choose articles that look interesting (and ignore the rest). You can press the ‘Back’ button (below the five-way navigator) to jump back to the section list.

As long as the ‘Whispernet’ is connected, each day’s Post downloads to the Kindle every morning at around 5am and is ready for reading when I wake up. The Kindle keeps several previous issues on the device, and you can mark particular issues to be kept indefinitely and ‘clip’ articles you want to hold on to. So far, the only one I’ve clipped is my own Letter to the Editor that was published earlier this month.

All-in-all, I think that the Post is probably worth $11.99/mo.…but just barely. It’s hard to justify paying anything for something that is basically free on the Internet. The cost of most newspapers’ and magazines’ Kindle editions is somewhere between the online price (usually $0) and the paper subscription price. The closer it gets to the online price, however, the better. Unless you spend a lot of your time reading a particular paper or magazine’s stuff online, the convenience of the Kindle edition probably isn’t worth the cost. However, if you currently subscribe to the paper version of a periodical, you’ll probably save some cash by switching to the Kindle edition. Of course, for many magazines, that means losing the color and probably many of the photos. For a newspaper that’s probably not a big deal.

Other Features

While the Kindle is essentially a one-purpose device—an e-reader—it does have a few little extras.

The most useful one, which I use constantly, is the built-in dictionary. Once again, mind-numbingly simple is the name of the game. If you see a word you don’t recognize in whatever you’re reading, just navigate to it using the five-way navigator and wait a second. The definition of that word (or at least the first couple lines of it) will pop up at the bottom of the screen. If you want to see the full-length description, just press the ‘Enter’ key on the keyboard and the full definition pops up. Just press the ‘Back’ button to return right to where you were. You can also search the dictionary from the built-in search mechanism.

Another useful feature is the ‘text-to-speech’ tool. The Kindle can actually read to you (albeit in a somewhat unnatural computer voice). This isn’t very useful to me at home, but I do use it occasionally in the car. I plug the Kindle’s headphone port into my car’s audio-in port and tell it to start reading, so I can ‘read’ on my way to and from work. There is some room for improvement here; there are only two voices to choose from (male and female), and it does occasionally mangle words bad enough that I have to stop it and look at the screen to see what the heck it tried to say. Generally, however, it does the job and is a very cool feature. Some publishers have chosen to block this feature in certain books—the scourge of DRM strikes again—but the vast majority of books I’ve bought support this, as do all the ones I added on my own from Project Gutenberg.

The Kindle, as of software version 2.5, also has the ability to post passages of what you’re reading to Twitter or Facebook. Once you’ve set it up to link to your social networking account, you just highlight the text you want to share and press “Alt-Enter” on the keyboard. Then you can enter your comment(s) and press ‘Share.’ In seconds, the Kindle posts it up to your Twitter and/or Facebook account. I probably wouldn’t miss this feature much if it didn’t exist, but it is a nice touch.

Finally, the Kindle comes with an experimental web browser. When you search Wikipedia, it’s actually just loading Wikipedia pages using this browser. It’s very basic, based on the same old, mediocre NetFront engine that was behind the Palm Blazer browser on old Palm OS phones, but it works…sortof. Let’s just say that the Kindle is not a replacement for your smartphone. Browsing is free over the ‘Whispernet,’ at least for now.

Amazon has announced that the new Kindle will come with an experimental WebKit-based browser (using the same rendering engine used by Google Chrome, Apple Safari, the iPhone and iPad, Android phones, Palm WebOS phones, Symbian S60 phones, and soon BlackBerries too). It’s unclear if this will be ported back to older Kindles, and it’s even more unclear if it’ll still be free on the ‘Whispernet.’ Amazon obliquely says that the new browser will be “free to use over Wi-Fi” and leaves it there.

Conclusion

All-in-all, the Kindle 2 is a great little device—if you get it with the right expectations. It’s not a tablet computer like an iPad. It’s not a smartphone. It’s an e-reader. Its sole purpose is to eliminate the need to lug around printed books and, at that, it generally excels. The e-ink display is wonderful for reading, the software is easy and straightforward, and the little bells-and-whistles that Amazon snuck in here-and-there don’t get in the way. This is a device for people who want to read, not for people who want their device to entertain them with Twitter feeds and YouTube videos.

And for people who do indeed do a lot of reading, it’s well worth buying—especially with the new $140 version coming to market soon, which drops the ‘Whispernet’ and works on WiFi alone. Had the cheaper, WiFi-only version been available at the time, I likely would have saved the $50 and bought it instead. The ‘Whispernet’ 3G connection is cool and all, but I really almost never use it except when I’m at home and could have been on my WiFi network anyway. At $140 (and even at the WiFi-only Nook’s $150), an avid reader can probably justify the expense for what is basically a single-purpose device, especially since you’ll save money buying e-books instead of print books.

Who is the Kindle wrong for? Well, for one, if you don’t do a lot of reading it’s probably a waste. If you only read now-and-then, it doesn’t make economic sense to spend $140 or $190 on a reading device. Indeed, even a moderate reader probably won’t make up the cost of the device in e-book savings—especially as the cost of e-books begins to creep inexplicably upward—unless they buy a lot of hardcovers and new releases. It’s also wrong for readers who spend much of their time reading photo- or color-heavy books and periodicals. The e-ink display is absolutely awesome for reading text, and it even does a decent job at gray-scale photos, but that’s about it.

But if you don’t fall into one of those groups, and you love to read, you should definitely give the Kindle a look. It’s also worth checking out the Kindle’s primary competition, the Barnes & Noble Nook, which comes with a very similar set of features and capabilities at a similar price. Personally, I prefer the Kindle for Amazon’s broader e-book selection and because I find the Nook’s secondary screen more distracting than useful—the Kindle, to me, feels more like a book, while the Nook feels more like a gadget. To each his own, I suppose, but if you are in the market for an e-reader they are both worthy devices. You should try both out and see what you think. To try out a Nook, you can go to any Barnes & Noble bookstore. To try out a Kindle, your options are more limited; they are on display at some (but not all) Target stores and are in the hands of millions of customers.

Direct YouTube Link

• 1992 – Palm founded by Jeff Hawkins, Ed Colligen, and Donna Dubinsky. The Pilot handheld PDA becomes a big success in the subsequent years.
• 1995 – Palm is acquired by US Robotics Corp.
• 1997 – US Robotics (and Palm) are acquired by 3Com.
• 1998 – Palm’s founders, unhappy with 3Com’s direction for the company, leave and form a new company called Handspring.
• 2000 – 3Com spins the Palm subsidiary off into an independent company with an IPO on Nasdaq.
• 2002 – Palm creates an independent subsidiary, named PalmSource, to manage and license the Palm OS operating system and renames itself, the device maker, to PalmOne. PalmOne spins PalmSource off into a separate, independent company.
• 2003 – PalmOne buys Handspring, bringing the founders back into the company.
• 2005 – PalmOne buys the rights to the ‘Palm’ name, jointly held by PalmOne and PalmSource, and renames itself back to Palm, Inc. PalmSource, meanwhile, is bought by Access, Ltd. PalmSource/Access struggles to create a worthy successor to the badly aging Palm OS operating system (it never does).
• 2007 – Equity firm Elevation Partners buys a 25% stake in Palm, Inc., giving them a badly needed lifeline.
• 2009 – Palm finally announces its own home-grown mobile operating system, WebOS, and a new ‘Pre’ smartphone. The system is well regarded, but doesn’t sell especially well.
• 2010 – Palm, Inc. is acquired by Hewlett-Packard.

Obviously, this timeline had a lot of wrong turns. The splitting of Palm into two companies will likely go down in business history as one of the dumbest things a technology company has ever done, and PalmSource’s failure to deliver a worthy successor to the old Palm OS for so many years is a blight on their record and seriously hurt Palm[One]‘s ability to compete in the market. While WebOS is still, in my humble opinion, the absolute best mobile operating system available, Palm has struggled to produce competitive hardware at a fast enough pace to compete with the Apple, Google, and RIM juggernauts.

This week—perhaps as early as tomorrow—Palm, Inc. will cease to exist. It will become part of venerable Hewlett-Packard, Inc. (HP). The expectation is that Palm won’t be a subsidiary (as it was under US Robotics and 3Com), but will become an internal unit at HP. It’s unknown at this time if the Palm name will live on, but it looks like Palm, as we loyal customers have known and loved it for so many years, will be gone.

The good news, however, is that with HP’s backing there’s a good chance that WebOS will land on better and better hardware in the months and years to come, and that HP/Palm/whatever it’s called will live on and regain its former standing in the mobile market. Long-time fans like myself are cautiously optimistic. Palm is dead; long live Palm.

Update: It’s official; Palm no longer exists as an independent company as of this morning (7/1), and is being de-listed from Nasdaq. In other news, PreCentral.net stole my post title! :-) At least in the near term, Palm is being labeled as a subsidiary of HP but it’s unclear if this is a temporary or more-permanent arrangement.

…With imagination and guts, the leadership of these venerable corporations can ensure their survival and even regain a leadership position in the industry. If Apple Computer could come back from the brink of bankruptcy to become the computer, music, and electronics leader it is today, the ‘big three’ can orchestrate a similar turnaround.

But it will not be easy, and for that reason I am not convinced that each of the ‘big three’ will still exist in ten years’ time. If I were to hazard a guess, at least one of them will either slide into bankruptcy or be bought-out by a competitor (if they can find any value in it) within the next decade. But I am very optimistic that at least one of them will survive, and that they will do so by implementing some or all of the recommendations I have made in this document—cutting abusive UAW contracts out of their financial equations, improving product quality and value, and being innovative rather than reactive.

All-in-all, I wasn’t all that surprised when two-thirds of the ‘big three’ went bankrupt (Chrysler and GM). Nor was I surprised that one of the ‘big three’ is still surviving and doing pretty well in the market (Ford). That’s basically what I said would happen; though I was a bit surprised at how quickly things fell apart for Chrysler and GM.

I certainly didn’t predict everything though. Fresh off of ‘going private’ under the leadership of Cerberus Capital Management, I would have expected in 2007 that Chrysler would be in the best position to turn itself around. Less than two years later, Chrysler was a bankrupt shell of a company jointly owned by the United States government and Italian automaker Fiat. I am thoroughly disappointed in Cerberus; they had a great opportunity and missed it. I’m also surprised that Ford was able to survive and, indeed, do very well for itself without breaking the UAW union or eliminating a large portion of their dealerships.

Of course, most surprising of all is the billions upon billions of dollars that you and I have unwittingly ‘invested’ into Chrysler and GM. This was an illicit misappropriation of our tax dollars and is absolutely unacceptable. If any company deserved our support, it was the one that was actually doing what it needed to do to return to solvency.

Regardless, I pointed to five things the American auto industry needed to do to turn itself around in 2007:

1. Break the UAW.
2. Simplify product lines.
3. Eliminate under-performing dealerships.
4. Top the reliability rankings.
5. Win consumers’ cost/benefit analyses.

While no company has done all of these things, Ford has taken a serious crack at it and is continually improving itself (to the point that I’m [very preliminarily] considering a Ford for my next car). Beginning immediately before its bankruptcy, GM has also begun to implement many of these changes. Chrysler seems to have missed the memo, but it is essentially gone as an American automotive manufacturer already and I hold out no real hope for them anymore.

Break the UAW

Sadly, none of the ‘big three’ have managed to accomplish this most central task. As I discussed in my 2007 analysis, the United Auto Workers union shares much of the blame for the state of the U.S. auto industry. They have artificially inflated wages and benefits far above what is properly competitive and established an entitlement atmosphere where bad employees keep their positions indefinitely and good ones are not well rewarded for their efforts.

While Ford has managed to deal with this monkey on its back, I am still somewhat concerned about their long-term viability as long as the UAW has a stranglehold on their factory labor. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, and other foreign manufacturers operate car factories in the United States without union labor; they pay fair wages, but have necessary flexibility in hiring and firing based on performance. As such, foreign-branded cars made in the U.S. by American workers are built cheaper and better than their American-branded counterparts.

Ford has made great strides in their build quality, which I will discuss later, despite the UAW’s interference, but a car made at a UAW Ford factory will always have a higher cost of production than a comparable car at a Honda factory even if they’re both here in the U.S. This means that, as long as the UAW has a labor cartel at Ford’s factories, the company has two choices: charge more for its cars than the competition, or make less profit on each car than the competition. Neither of these is a winning strategy in the long term.

I applaud Ford for keeping the UAW under control, as much as they can, but the reality is that the UAW is a cartel which obtains its labor agreements through extortion (the threat of a strike). If the UAW won’t become an ally and partner with Ford (and Chrysler and GM), they must be broken. Detroit has one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S.; there is no shortage of people willing to work in a car factory without a union contract.

Simplify Product Lines

The unnecessary duplication and overlap between the various marquees of the American car companies has long been more a hindrance than a help. I made a series of recommendations to each of the ‘big three’ in my 2007 piece and, while things didn’t go exactly as I recommended, I am pleased to report that the basic end goal—an easy, straightforward array of products—is slowly becoming a reality.

Ford has been quietly divesting itself of its duplicative and low-volume brands. They have sold (or are in the process of selling) their stakes in Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover. They have also announced their intent to shut down the unnecessary Mercury brand, which has no unique products of its own. Ford Motor Company will, essentially, be Ford and Lincoln. Additionally, Ford has begun to more actively share their products around the world. A new commercial van, the Transit Connect, has gone on sale in the U.S. and originates from Ford’s European division. The upcoming Ford Focus redesign will be a world-wide product, replacing the unrelated European and American versions of the Focus. The European Fiesta is also coming to the United States soon. The more Ford does this, the better. There is no need to produce three completely different mid-size sedans (for example) in moderate volume when you can produce one in massive, world-wide volume.

GM has also embarked on a reactive, post-bankruptcy effort to cull its unnecessary brands. It is working to divest itself of Saab and Opel, and is planning to shut down its Pontiac, Hummer, and Saturn groups. However, even post-bankruptcy, GM seems afraid of going all the way. Chevy and GMC still compete with one another selling the same trucks; Buick and Cadillac still compete among themselves in the American luxury market. Buick has no reason to exist except as a foreign brand (they are quite successful in China). GMC only has reason to exist if Chevy stops selling trucks. GM has also done a poor job of utilizing its foreign divisions except for Daewoo, the one division it should stop utilizing. Get some Holden’s over here from the Australian group. Share some technology! You’re the biggest car company in the world, and most of your best cars aren’t even sold in your home country!

Chrysler, meanwhile, was in a pretty good position at the start. It only had three brands—Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep. All they had to do to simplify their product lines was get rid of the Jeep Compass and move Chrysler a bit more upmarket. As far as I can tell, they haven’t bothered to do either.

Eliminate Underperforming Domestic Dealerships

There were way too many dealerships for each of the ‘big three.’ Seriously. I can’t find the actual statistics as I write this, but I seem to recall that Toyota dealerships averaged over 1,000 sales per month, while ‘big three’ dealerships averaged more like 100 or 200. What this meant was that the quality of each dealership was less than it should have been, and many dealerships were constantly teetering on bankruptcy themselves.

Ford seems to have avoided a major cull of its dealerships, but this should still be on the table. It’s better to have an awesome dealer 20 minutes away than to have three crappy ones in a 5-20 minute range. Personally, if I were running Ford, I would strive to have nothing but the most excellent dealers, and I would expect that each dealer sell the full Ford/Lincoln product line. It sounds heartless, I know, but dealers are the public face of the brand. Every bad dealership experience sours a customer not only on the dealership, but on the brand. Ford (and the others) can’t afford to have any bad or even mediocre dealers in the network.

Chrysler and GM both embarked on a huge cull of their dealerships when they were teetering on the brink, and received hearty public criticism for it. I don’t know what the methodology was, but I have heard many anecdotes about great dealerships being closed while poor ones stayed open. Personally, what I recommended in 2007, was that these companies make it known in advance that they will be shutting down underperforming dealers, and let them fight for the right to stay in business. This competition would drive all the dealerships that survive to be better and stronger. This would have been a better approach, but it would have required time…a luxury that Chrysler and GM had run out of.

Top the Reliability Ratings

While the UAW was the single biggest cause of the implosion of the U.S. auto industry, many pundits and consumers would cite reliability. Ask any Honda, Toyota, Nissan, or Subaru driver why they didn’t buy a Ford, Chevy, or Dodge. Most of them will cite a poor reliability experience with a ‘big three’ car from some time in the last twenty years or, if they are younger, a generic ‘I wanted something reliable,’ kind of statement. After all, most younger drivers have never owned a ‘big three’ car because their poor reputation preceded them.

I blamed the UAW and their culture of poor performance for much of the reliability problem in my 2007 piece, but I’ve tempered this view in the time since. Ford, without breaking the UAW, has managed to challenge the Japanese manufacturers in reliability and build quality in recent years. This proves that a poor management culture at the ‘big three’ was as responsible as the UAW for the quality mess they found themselves in, and that strong management can counteract and even overcome the poisonous influence of the union.

I would not have predicted in 2007 that Ford’s reliability would have come so far. While the Fusion was already available at the time, and often received high quality scores, I counted it as a fluke rather than the beginning of a new trend. Ford has proved, however, that the Fusion was the beginning of a new focus on quality and reliability. Many of their other new models rate high as well, and Ford now finds itself in the top-five of many brand reliability rankings. I can’t praise Ford enough for this. Product quality, more than anything else, is what saved Ford from the fate of Chrysler and GM. That’s exactly how it should be.

However, sadly, Chrysler and GM both seem to have missed the memo on this one. Even in their post-bankruptcy desperate reorganization, I’ve seen no indication that their quality will be improving any time soon. Maybe I’m wrong. Mark my words: without reliable products, Chrysler and GM will never be solvent companies again for any period of time.

Win Consumers’ Cost/Benefit Analyses

In the end, people will buy a car if it is a good value for their money. When U.S.-branded cars cost more and perform worse than their foreign-branded competition, people will buy from the foreign-branded competition. It’s really that simple.

What’s complicated, however, is exactly how to go about winning a cost/benefit analysis. There are a lot of ways of doing it. You can be successful selling half-way decent cars for a very low price (e.g., Kia). You can be successful selling technologically-advanced luxury cars at a very high price (e.g., BMW). You can be successful almost anywhere in-between, as long as you’re ahead in something. For too long, the American companies were behind in everything.

Again, Ford leads the way in this area. The Fusion is competitive with its foreign competitors on price, features, styling, and reliability. That’s why it sells so well. The Escape also does very well in the small-SUV market. The company, however, needs to repeat this success in other areas. The groundwork is laid for a Ford resurgence, but we’re not quite there yet. The new Focus and Fiesta models will hopefully repeat the Fusion’s mid-size success in the compact and sub-compact markets, but there’s more to do. It can still go very badly for Ford if they let-up now.

GM is faced with much stronger difficulty in this area. Ford has been working for years to restore its reputation while GM continued producing, primarily, unreliable lemons. Even if Chevy came out with the world’s greatest car tomorrow, and sold it for $1,000 less than its competitive vehicles, most people would ignore it because they will assume an astronomical ongoing maintenance cost. GM needed to fix this five years ago so it could begin reaping the benefits now. As it is now, most people wouldn’t take a Cobalt or Malibu if somebody gave it to them for free (which should happen, since we own the company now…right?).

Chrysler, meanwhile, made strides in reliability (rising from ‘bad’ to ‘mediocre’) during the early 2000′s but failed to keep its products up to date. The PT Cruiser and 300 have both been on the market, basically un-changed, for about a decade. This in inexcusable. Once again, even if they were cost and quality competitive, they just can’t be feature competitive with newer, fresher vehicles from its competitors. It appears that Chrysler spent no money whatsoever on research and development over the last ten years, and it shows. Ten-year-old designs don’t win a cost/benefit analysis against a new, cutting-edge competitive vehicle.

All-in-all, the developments since my 2007 piece have been 1/3 promising and 2/3 disappointing.

GM shows some half-hearted progress but doesn’t seem willing to go all the way. Chrysler, as I mentioned earlier, can probably be written off at this point…I will remember my ’78 Jeep ‘Honcho’ pickup (from the AMC era) and ’98 Chrysler Cirrus fondly, and wonder what might have been if Cerberus had the guts to take some risks and turn the company around when they had the chance.

But, to my pleasant surprise, Ford is doing fairly well. With continued quality leadership, I think the company can completely right itself and show the world that American cars really can still be great. It might not be too long before I can proudly go to a dealership and buy an American-branded, American-made car without having to sacrifice my money and patience in the name of patriotism. Won’t that be nice? Keep it up, Ford. There’s still more work to do, but you are on the right track.

However, WebOS does have its limitations and its little usability annoyances. This is where apps and patches come in. With the addition of a handful of excellent apps from the official Palm App Catalog and some patches from the unofficial PreWare universe, your Palm phone can be even more awesome than it was from the factory. Here are the key apps and patches I’m using on my Pre Plus. Most of them will work on any of the other Palm phones too, like the original Pre and the Pixi/Pixi Plus.

Official Apps

These are my favorite apps available from the official Palm App Catalog. Every Palm phone comes with the App Catalog built in and these apps are only a few taps away on any Palm phone. In fact, you can even tap them right from this article and dive right in.

• Checkers—Free from Keen Studios, the mindless and classic game ‘Checkers’ on your WebOS phone allows you to play against the phone or, over the network, against your friends or significant others. There’s also a ‘pro’ version available for $0.99.
• Classic—If you’re an old-timey Palm OS user and have a couple lingering apps you just can’t do without, MotionApps has you covered with Classic. The 7-day trial is free, and the full version is a [slightly overpriced] $29.99. It lets you run the vast majority of old Palm OS apps in an emulator right on your new WebOS phone.
• Dictionary!—This free dictionary app by Hampton Catlin is clean, simple, straightforward, and useful…just the way I like it! It seems to use the free WordNet database, as best as I can tell.
• Done!—One of my biggest disappointments from Palm’s on-board PIM apps was the task manager. It was meager, at best. Done! fills in the gap nicely for $3.29 from Tiger Country Software. The app integrates seamlessly with the free ToodleDo online task manager.
• Elizabethan Insult Generator—Free from Floating Stone Design, this app is absolutely useless and, yet, endlessly entertaining. It strings together old-timey terms into an old-timey insult.
• Epocrates—It’s not something I use every day, but when I need it I’m glad I have it! This free app from Epocrates, Inc. is a useful database of medicinal knowledge. You can read up on medicines, check their interactions, and even identify a pill by its shape, color, and markings.
• Facebook—Free from Palm themselves, the WebOS Facebook app is a good tool for keeping up with your friends, making status updates, uploading photos, and more. The people at Palm are pretty rapidly improving the app and adding new features.
• Fandango—This free app from Fandango.com makes it mind-numbingly easy to find movies showing near you and buy tickets right from your phone. It even adds the movie to your calendar; pretty slick. It would be more useful if there were any good movies…or if theaters were clean…or if moviegoers had any basic common courtesy anymore.
• No-Nonsense Weather—Not to toot my own horn, but my own free weather app is a must-have! At least for me ;-).
• OpenTable—Free from OpenTable, this app is like Fandango for restaurants. You can find restaurants near you and make reservations instantly on your phone. Pretty cool.
• Pack ‘n’ Track—For $7.99 from Syntactix LLC, Pack ‘n’ Track makes it super easy to track your UPS, FedEx, USPS, and other packages. It’ll even give you WebOS notifications when your packages reach their way-points on their way to you. The price is a little high for what it is, but it does its job very well.
• Poster for WordPress—From Gabriele Nizzoli, this $1.99 app makes it easy to update your WordPress blog on the go. While it is not [yet] as fully featured as the official WordPress apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, it’s being updated and improved pretty quickly by the developer and already does most of the important stuff.
• X-Plane—This $9.99 flight simulation app from Laminar Research is the lighter, mobile version of the incredibly realistic X-Plane flight simulator for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It uses the internal position sensors on the phone as your flight controls. Unfortunately, it is only available for the Pre/Pre Plus. Pixi/Pixi Plus users are left out for now.

PreWare

Unlike Apple, Palm takes a friendly ‘hands-off’ attitude toward the homebrew and unofficial app community. This means that, if you’re willing to put in a little effort, you can unlock all kinds of extra stuff on your phone—make it faster, make it perform better, and unlock hidden features and functions. The rest of this article is unofficial apps, performance hacks, and patches that make your phone better…but first, you need to install Preware.

• Preware—The universe of unofficial apps, hacks, and patches starts with Preware. Installing Preware is a slight challenge, at least for non-technical users, but once it’s done everything else in this article is at your fingertips. You’ll also have easy access to apps (‘web’ and ‘beta’) that are officially available through Palm’s distribution system, but aren’t in the app catalog. This includes beta and development versions of some of the official apps listed above. There are several ways to install Preware; follow the directions carefully!

Unofficial Apps

There are a number of apps available through Preware that aren’t available through the official channels, for whatever reason. Some of them work with unofficial APIs that aren’t Palm supported, or mess with the innards of the phone.

• Internalz—Free (for now) from Jason Robitaille, Internalz is a file manager for WebOS. It’s really the only practical way to manage your filesystem on the phone itself without mounting it as a drive on your computer.
• JSTop—From the awesome WebOS Internals team, this free application lets you monitor what’s running on your phone and kill stuck processes. This is rarely required, but occasionally comes in handy. Also, on the Pixi/Pixi Plus, turning on JSTop’s garbage collection system seems to improve the phone’s performance.
• Pre Backup Utility—Free from DrewPre, this is an awesome little app that backs up your settings and files to a compressed file on your WebOS internal memory, from which it can be downloaded to a computer. It lets you restore quickly after a hard-reset and pick up right where you left off.
• Terminal—Free from the WebOS Internals team, Terminal is a window to your Palm’s Linux-based OS core. From there, you can SSH into remote machines and do other fun, nerdy things. From Preware, you can also install a number of command line tools familiar to any Linux nerd.
• zcorder—Another missing feature in WebOS is the ability to record voice memos. zcorder by Prenosticator is a fine temporary solution until Palm either makes a memos app or, at least, provides an official API for somebody else to do it in an official app.

Performance Hacks

The Pre ships with a 600mhz processor intentionally under-clocked to 500mhz, presumably to save your battery life. In reality, most Pre processors can be over-clocked up to 800mhz without problems. Increasing the clock speed to 600mhz or higher has a noticeably positive impact on the performance of the phone. Thanks to the always incredible WebOS Internals team, now it’s easy for mere mortals to make this happen. NOTE: While these hacks are well tested, there is always a risk to over-clocking a processor. If you’re unlucky and things go horribly wrong, Palm probably won’t cover this under warranty. Be careful.

• UberKernel & Govnah—The performance combo of the UberKernel and the Govnah app allows you to run your Pre (though not your Pixi) faster than Palm’s defaults allow, and use various governor techniques to keep it from destroying your battery life. I’ve configured mine so, when the screen is on, my clock speed jumps to 800mhz and the performance is blazing fast. When the screen is off and the phone is idle, it drops way down below the stock 500mhz setting to sip the juice and keep the battery happy.

Patches

WebOS is awesome, and most of the included apps are great, but there’s always room for improvement. Because WebOS is almost infinitely hackable, the developer community has created patches (available through Preware) to repair system shortcomings and improve usability. I have tons of patches installed; here are some of my favorites. Search for them in Preware to install.

• 4×4 Icons v4 No Arrows Plus More—Changes the app launcher to 4×4 icons (instead of 3×3) and has other visual enhancements.
• Add Date—Simple and useful; adds the date to the clock at the top of the screen.
• Add Move to Folder Button—Adds an icon to the Email app to let you quickly move a message to a mail folder (instead of having to use the pull-down menu).
• Advanced Reset Options—Changes the way the shutdown menu works to give you more, and more useful options.
• Confirm Delete—Gives you a confirmation/cancel option when swiping to delete emails (reduces erroneous deletes).
• Device Menu Remix with Flashlight—Changes the system menu to have brightness controls, GPS on/off, and a toggle to use the LED flash as a flashlight.
• Disable Charging Alert Sound—If you find the charging alert sound annoying, this disables it. That is all.
• Faster Card Animations—Makes the phone feel faster by speeding up the animations.
• Match State to Area Code—When you get a call from an unrecognized number, this will display the state it’s coming from (based on the area code).
• New Card Button—Adds a ‘new card’ button to the browser so you can quickly launch a new, blank browser card.
• No Draft Text—By default, if you start a new email and abandon it, the email app will save it as a draft. If you find this more annoying than useful, this patch disables this so drafts only get saved if you ask to save them.
• Read/Delete All Email—Gives you buttons to mark all emails as read, or delete all emails (with confirmations in both cases).
• Send All Contacts via Email—Send yourself a backup VCard of all your Palm contacts (with all Synergy sources combined).
• Snooze Duration Selection—For some reason, alerts only give you ‘snooze’ or ‘dismiss’ options by default. Snooze is for 5 minutes and that’s it. This patch gives you a bunch more options about how long to snooze (e.g., 5, 10, 15, 30 mins…or different lengths of time before the event).
• Swipe to Delete—Lets you swipe to delete contacts, which makes it consistent with pretty much every other app on the phone.
• Timestamps Clean—Add useful, clear timestamps to your SMS/IM messages.
• Video Downloads—Gives you an option to download YouTube videos direct from the included YouTube app.

As such, it would seem that I would be really interested in some sort of e-book device like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or the new Apple iPad. I do a lot of reading today, and I have bookshelves full of novels, textbooks, reference books, and more. While I get my news from the Internet (as opposed to an old-fashioned newspaper), I still do my more serious reading from actual, physical, paper books. I have not jumped on the e-book bandwagon, and I doubt I will any time soon…though I would like to.

The reason is simple. To contrast, I switched to the digital music ecosystem very early and haven’t looked back. I buy most of my music online, and when I have to buy physical CDs (usually because a particular album isn’t available digitally) I immediately ‘rip’ the music into my computer and the CD goes into archives that I have never really needed. Instead of juggling many hundreds of CDs, I carry around one iPod. This is extremely convenient, and I’m totally on-board with it. But this system works for me, in large part, because my iPod and computer have all my music—including CDs I bought well before I had a computer with a big enough hard drive to hold them.

The Kindle, for example, is an excellent piece of technology…but how do I put my existing collection of books into it? Getting my CDs into my iPod was no problem when I got onto the digital bandwagon; getting my physical books into a Kindle, short of buying them all over again, is apparently impossible. As such, it would initially be worthless to me until I had built up a new collection from scratch; worse, that new collection would not be integrated in any way with my old one. I would have two collections of books: one physical, one electronic.

If that wasn’t enough of an annoyance, e-books in the Amazon store are priced way too high. Why would I buy a Kindle for $250 and then pay $9.99 for ‘Glory Road’ by Robert A. Heinlein when the same book sells as a $10.87 paperback? Given than the production cost of an e-book is $0, I think they can afford to sell e-books for at least 20% or 25% less than their dead-tree counterparts.

The iPod worked, in large part, because you didn’t start with a blank slate…you started with a lot of music you already owned, and then went on from there in the digital ecosystem. The iTunes store (and, later, the Amazon MP3 store) sealed the deal by making digital distribution of new music you wanted to buy much less expensive than buying CDs had been. It was a win-win. In both e-book parallels, it’s a lose-lose.

If Amazon wants me to buy a Kindle, or if Barnes & Noble wants me to buy a Nook, or if Apple wants me to buy an iPad, here’s what they need to do:

1. Give me a way to migrate my book collection at no-cost or minimal-cost. Here are a couple ideas:
   • Give the reader devices a built-in bar-code scanner. I could scan my physical books’ bar-codes and get an immediate download of the e-book version (perhaps with a small processing fee, which must be 10% or less of the ‘full’ e-book cost). I know, there’s a good chance of fraud with this approach—e.g., I could just go to the book store or library and start scanning things.
   • Let me box up my physical books (or, at least, their cut-out UPC codes) and send them to the company in return for e-book versions of everything. Charge me for shipping and, again, 10% or less of the full e-book cost. Recycle the books (or UPC codes), of course.
2. Don’t overcharge for e-books! Seriously! Paperback novels should be in the < $5 range. Any inclination I had to buy one of these devices is very, very quickly demolished by the fact that it wouldn’t be even slightly cost effective…in fact, I’d probably lose money on the deal.
3. Lower the prices of the devices. I can eat $150 for a device of dubious value much easier than I can eat $250. At less than $100, I’d have bought one already.

The whole micro-blogging idea has some value, I suppose, but Twitter’s big flaw (in my humble opinion) is that it is just a micro-blogging platform. It does absolutely nothing else. Facebook’s success lies in that it is a micro-blogging platform, a regular blogging platform, a photo sharing platform, a social network, and more all rolled into one in a relatively usable and integrated system. You can use it for almost anything you want.

Twitter seems oriented entirely toward pointlessness (hence, I have deemed it The Land of Twits). People who use it a lot post multiple tweets per day that don’t even approach the usefulness of a normal blog post. Even if these Tweets had value, a recent study has determined that only about 21% of Twits are ‘true users’ (users with at least 10 followers, who follow at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times). Really, all I use Twitter for these days (aside from posting links to my site) is reading Conan O’Brien’s tweets; that’s about all there is going on out there.

Stick a fork it in; it’s done. I’ve said it all along: Twitter is a fad, and will disappear as quickly as it arrived…probably fairly soon.

I’ve noticed that many of my female friends have been complaining lately that the clothing styles are really bad this year, and I’m starting to understand what they mean. I cannot think of any reason whatsoever that any sentient human being would buy a pair of shoes like this.

It seems like some sort of jewel-encrusted starfish carcass, which I doubt is a flattering look. So what’s the verdict, lady readers? Would you wear these shoes?

I guess if you’ve convinced me to stop, look at an ad, and take its picture you might call it a success. This strange kitty got my attention at the grocery store for some reason. I didn’t end up buying ‘The Goodlife Recipe,’ but now their strange kitty is on my website for no apparent reason whatsoever. That has to count for something.

I’ve never known a cat with eyes that big. It looks a little crazy to me, especially since it thinks in triangular thought bubbles. I think the tongue should be picking the nose; that would have added an extra notch of crazy and matched the eyes and triangle thoughts well.

When you consider the message of this ad though, seriously, it tells you that ‘The Goodlife Recipe’—which is apparently a cat food—is either intended for strange kitties or will make otherwise-normal kitties turn into strange kitties. Excellent messaging, I think, because normal kitties are boring.

Palm’s update mechanism is dummy-proof: the phone downloads the update and installs it on its own while it’s charging (usually overnight, I’d assume). From what I’ve been reading, this is spread out over time to prevent Palm’s servers from getting overloaded. If you’re a nerd like me who can’t bear waiting for the OS to do its own thing, you can also manually initiate the update whenever you like. I did it Sunday morning, as soon as I read online that the update was available. I have no idea how long it would have taken for the phone to find out on its own.

The update probably took a half hour or so to download (over WiFi) and install. Download times likely would have been quite a bit longer over the data network, even on 3G. After completing the download the phone reset itself and installed the update (with a classy, no-frills, round progress indicator). Without any hiccups, everything was ready to go

The biggest new feature Palm brings out with WebOS 1.4 is video recording. Palm took their time bringing this feature to the platform, but they did a good job with it. It records in the MP4 format and allows for limited editing and direct sharing via YouTube, Facebook, email, and MMS. Beyond this major feature addition, WebOS 1.4 mostly offers increased polish and incremental improvement. The LED in the gesture area will now blink to indicate you have a waiting notification. When you launch an application, a ‘placeholder’ card shows up immediately which lets you know it’s doing something (and lets you preemptively close the app. if you opened it in error).

Performance seems to be slightly improved and ‘snappier,’ and battery life seems to be improved. I seem to be getting about 20% better battery life so far, which is pretty significant. All-in-all, a solid improvement. Thanks, Palm! :-)