Palms

Remember Palm - the first smartphone and PDA company that everybody stopped using way back when? Well, it had come out with Palm Pixi and Palm Pre, 2 phones based on its new WebOS platform, but both have crashed and burned rather ingloriously.

The company is now mulling a sale. Should Microsoft buy it? After all, MS has bought most of its most successful products (Word, Excel, etc.) and its smartphones haven’t been doing too well recently. Plus, Redmond needs some new blood and ideas to stanch the outflow of brain and bodies.

Anyone for re-starting Microsoft’s famous picnic and restoring some of those lost benefits that have sent people over to Google and other competitors?

iPad: The All-Device Killer

Apple fanboys will praise each and everything the company does, whether it be the new iPhone or its insane restrictions on third-party applications on its devices. Every time the company comes out with a device, dire predictions are made about every other device and Wall Street rewards AAPL with huge increases.

With the new iPad, the same cycle is repeating itself. Now, iPad is an awesome device in itself – the Apple Newton from the mid-’90s had tried something along its lines but the timing was wrong back then. And, the predictions this time around are:

1) The iPad will kill the netbook; 2) The iPad will not kill the laptop dead, but it will seriously wound its mass appeal; 3) The iPad will also kill or seriously cannibalize sales of the iPod Touch; and 4) The iPad could even cut into iPhone, BlackBerry, and Droid sales.

All hail the iPad and surrender to the power of Steve Jobs.

UPDATE: Several problems with the iPad are surfacing, most importantly its wi-fi issues and the same-old same-old gripe with applications.