While HP may be the biggest consumer PC seller out there, they’re also tops when it comes to business purchases. We’re talking both big corporate and small shop buys – this is what we in the business refer to as “diversification” and “scale,” wherein HP is capable of selling their products to large and small groups across multiple industries and revenue levels.

With such scale, we’re pleased to see HP using their multitudinous business contacts to push webOS. In fact, not that long ago the HP’s “Small Business Education Series” email newsletter heavily and exclusively featured Palm smartphones. Very smartly, the email focused on the benefits of webOS, noting:

• webOS multi-tasks like no other. HP was sure to put emphasis on flicking between “apps & docs,” as business users don’t just care about multi-tasking with browsers and games.
• You can add up to sixteen email accounts. Yeah, we didn’t think about that either, but we can see how some small businesses can have multiple accounts (sales@, support@, admin@, etc) with one person managing them all.
• Touchstone!
• Wireless cloud syncing magics, otherwise known as Synergy. No need to plug in, unless you want to transfer files, that is.
• “Zero-touch IT support,” as in Palm manages for you the security “from the server, to the cloud, to your phone. Simple.” Granted, that’s a big of an over-simplification, but we’ll allow it.

And then there’s noting that every Palm phone, be it a Pre, and Pixi, or a Plus variant of either, is available for free on your choice of major American cellular carriers (excepting T-Mobile, of course). And the oh so lucrative accessories too, like the above mentioned Touchstone charger, fancy colorful backs for the Pixi, and the requisite cables, batteries, and Palm-branded cases. Though we’ll take the opportunity here to point you to our own PreCentral accessory store for that – we’ve got a bit more diversity and scale in that department.

Source: HP

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It’s the curse of the modern smartphone: a zillion chips and sensors and a bright powerful screen and umpteen radios all sucking power from battery tech that hasn’t seen drastic improvement in the last decade. And it’s also one of the biggest Achilles’ heels of the Palm Pre and Pre Plus. It’s been a while since we last visited this area, with the Pre and Pixi having now launched onto several new networks across the world, it’s high time we revisit the land of electricity. After the break, we break it down…

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As you know, the Touchstone charger and associated induction back use built-in magnets to align and secure the Pre to the charger. The magnets on the charging “puck” are the more powerful of the sets, but those in the Pre’s back could be strong enough to cause problems if inadvertently placed. I write this post because this morning after I was awakened by my Pre’s daily alarm, I grabbed the phone, killed the alarm, grumbled on the way to my computer (a MacBook Pro that crunches numbers through the night), and then set the Pre on the right palm-rest area (no pun intended) of the laptop. To my bemusement, the computer immediately went into sleep mode. So I pushed the power button on the laptop, it turned back on, and after a second went back to standby. “This is odd,” I said to my empty living room, so I turned it on again. And it turned off again.

Oh wait – that’s right, the MacBook uses a magnet to activate sleep mode.  Whoops.  Although the magnets on the Touchstone battery door are fairly weak (far too weak to disrupt a hard drive, one hopes), I imagine that it’s possible that they could disrupt other bits and bobs in a way similar to what happened to my MacBook.

The first thing that comes to mind is credit cards and access/ID cards. Every credit card and most state/federal/corporate ID’s have a magnetic strip across the back that can be disrupted by magnetism. Thankfully, since these cards’ magnetic strips only need to be written once, they are what’s called high-coercivity strips and are thus not very coercive to magnetic interference (as tested by Mythbusters). But hotel room key cards are a different story; they use low-coercivity strips to allow easy and quick rewriting for new customers, and are thus prone to failure in the face of magnetism. You or somebody you know has had a hotel key card stop working and the only explanation you (and the front desk) could conjure was that your cell phone had killed it. Most cell phones don’t even have magnets and yet are capable of causing wanton key card destruction, let alone the low-but-powerful-enough magnets in the Touchstone back.

Again, the magnets on the Touchstone Battery Door are very weak, so it’s not as if they’re a hazard.  Still, any of you have magnetic horror stories, courtesy of your Pre?

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The Palm Car Charger for the Pre is a compact and convenient USB charger that will keep your Pre topped off while on the go. We know car chargers are fairly important accessories to have, especially when it comes to smartphones. You never know when you’ll need to get a few precious moments of juice. The problem was always finding a charger that wasn’t an eyesore in your vehicle.

Enter the latest addition to the Palm family of chargers. This time, you have a device that looks good, supplies enough power to charge your phone while listening to Pandora and using Sprint Navigation, plus it comes with a data sync cable for the Pre.

Oh yeah, it gets points for working with my Touchstone Charger in my car. Your mileage may vary (excuse the pun), as I’ll explain after the break.

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Technically, it’s not supposed to work. As many of our members have discovered, your typical 12-volt car power outlet is not enough to work a Touchstone Palm Pre charger, and even most in-car AC converters aren’t up to the task of charging sans wires. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Bretov over at iSmashPhone.com had the will and hardwired his Touchstone charger into his BMW, taking advantage of the empty slot where his iDrive control knob would have gone. It’s a bit more involved than just plugging in the micro-USB car charger, but like many of us, Bretov would rather do more work now than deal with the silly micro-USB plug every time he got in the car. Now all we need is Palm to come up with an OEM solution to this so we can stop cutting holes and splicing wires in our cars.

[via: Engadget]

Thanks to Dave in our forums for the tip!

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According to a PalmGoon source, there are “minor rumblings going around that the company might do away with the mail-in-rebate for the Palm Pre in favor of an instant rebate.” Sprint, it seems, is feeling customer pressure from partners Best Buy and RadioShack, who will be offering the Pre with the $100 instant rebate instead of the mail-in nonsense that Sprint has perpetuated for all these years.

Sprint obviously doesn’t want to lose sales to their partners (despite the fact that they’ve partnered), and converting the mail-in-rebate to the instant variety also will give potential Pre customers an extra $100 in the store to buy other things, like a car charger or Touchstone dock. Those accessories are where the Sprint stores make their money, not phone sales.

Then again, 1Reaper in our forums has just heard that the mail-in-rebate is here to stay at Sprint Locations:

I just spoke with a friend, Sprint is keeping the mail in rebate, they received all the info and paperwork on it today during their staff meeting.

Not a big surprise.  It looks like our June 6th options are as follows: line up at a Sprint store and deal with the mail-in-rebate but have a better chance at Pre stock or line up at a Best Buy for the instant rebate but risk what we expect will be smaller in-stock numbers.

Thanks to Slingblade in our forums for the tip!

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It was only justifiable for a phenomenal product to launch with a revolutionary must-have accessory.

Pre fans, meet the Touchstone – A wireless charger for Palm’s killer Smartphone.
Wireless Electricity
Wireless energy transfer is the process whereby electrical energy is transmitted from a power source to an electrical load, without any connecting wires in an electrical grid. This [...]

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