no more Palm...

[artoodeeto]

I'm sure this isn't a surprise, since Palm's been on the ropes for awhile, but now it's official - HP's buying them for $1.2 billion...

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-28/hewlett-packard-will-acquire-palm-for-1-2-billion-update1-.html

I remember years ago working at Micro Center and even then the Palm selection wasn't great. I'm rather surprised they hung on so long, actually. So now HP's going to be foraying into the phone market, should be interesting.

[Luke122]

Wow.

[simon275]

Hp will get the most value out of Palm patents rather than their brand. I am suprised apple or google didn't buy em just for the patents.

[Trace]

Yup. I'll be curious what comes out of HP in the way of phones.

[Oneslowz28]

At least you dont have to worry about finding the new Pre prototype in a bar and selling it to gizmodo....

[Trace]

Haha, that's what you think!

[BuzzKillington]

1.2 billion?! I would have never thought that company would be worth that much considering smartphones have taken over. Who needs a palm when there are blackberries, windows and android phones out that, needless to say, are also phones so there's no need to carry two devices.

[Oneslowz28]

They had a smart phone market. Have for years.

I think they wanted the patents also. But HP tried the PDA thing with compaq back in the day and failed. I still have 2 or 3 of them laying around somewhere.

[crenn]

Mmmm... Compaq iPaq Pocket PCs.... now that brings back memories.

[LiTHiUM0XiD3]

only the fondest memories... like never having to worry about floatin offa the earth... having your pocket PC anchor in the pocket it barely fits in :) (any of them)

[artoodeeto]

I remember those iPaqs. I remember being responsible for trying to sell them whilst thinking "why the #!@$## would anyone want this thing??"

You know, working in a computer store really brings to attention just how many more failed ideas there are than successful ones. It's hard to describe the sheer number of products that sat on the shelf day after day, year after year, without anyone so much as glancing at them. There used to be boxes of palm software marked down to a fraction of their former cost and still nobody would buy them....a whole wall of 56k modems collecting dust...and then the products that made you wonder how the heck they ever got to production (the stuffed-animal mouse that doubled as a computer mouse cover, the ultra cheap Epson and canon printers that fell apart when someone sneezed in front of them).....ahhh...the memories. :)

For anyone living near Sunnyvale, CA, I don't know if they're still around but there used to be this great place called Weird Stuff Warehouse, out on Caribbean Drive (Mathilda hooks around to become Caribbean, which then hooks around to become Lawrence). they used to sell some newer computer parts, but mostly they had this ENORMOUS warehouse full of ancient stuff. 5.25" SCSI hard drives, PCB's of every kind imagineable, cables up the wazoo....I miss that place.
*edit - just looked them up, they're still there:
http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=sunnyvalestore