Mark my words, it won’t be long before we start hearing statements like these in tech settings:

“My system pulled a sidekick — all my data’s gone!”

“We just got sidekicked off the server!”

“Make sure your backup data is good — you don’t want to be sidekicked in the face.”

“Yesterday my system worked fine — today it’s just a sidekick!”

Don’t be fast to judge, I feel so bad for those poor Sidekick owners who are now without all of their personal data. It is an unthinkable situation and it demonstrates the importance of keeping data backed up. Those of us who have lost a system, only to discover our backup (that had been duly maintained) was no good, know exactly how demoralizing the Sidekick issue can be. Sometimes things make so little sense you just have to joke about them to keep sane.

I can’t prove it, but I believe that Apple updated my Palm Pre to iPhone 3.0! Now before you blow me off thinking I am crazy, here’s my thought process. I looked at the Pre after syncing it with iTunes today and find the following iPhone 3.0 features front and center:

• Copy/Cut/Paste: check
• MMS and A2DP: check
• Spotlight (integrated search): check
• Turn-by-Turn Navigation: check
• Google Maps: check
• Push Notification: check

If it was only one or two iPhone 3.0 features I would think it a coincidence, but this is just too many. It definitely looks like my Palm Pre is now running iPhone 3.0.

When word comes out about an upcoming tech product, the first thing that starts appearing is how this new product will be a “gadget x killer.” You know what I’m talking about. There have been no fewer than a dozen smartphones that were going to be the big “iPhone killer.” Some of these gadgets were going to be “BlackBerry killers” or “Windows Mobile killers.” It seems that every new smartphone is going to kill off some other phone. That must mean that competition is a bad thing if we all want a new product to kill off an existing one. It must be better to have only one product in a category, right?

Netbooks, those cheap, little notebooks that have taken the tech world by storm, have been “notebook killers” since they appeared. MIDs have also been touted as “notebook killers.” Those notebooks must need killing off with everything out to get them. Those of us who cover the tech world must believe it is, so as we keep anointing products as killers of something else. It must mean that competition is a bad thing, or we wouldn’t want it killed off so regularly.

Consumers feel that way, too, no matter what you think. Check the comments on a review of any new tech product, and you’ll be inundated with claims that the product will kill off the competition and that it will be deserved because all other products “suck.” In any given tech category, there is obviously only one product that deserves to live and all others need to go away. It’s repeated too often to not be true.

Now that we have come to grips that competition in the tech world is a bad thing, there only remains one important task. That is deciding which single product in each category is the one that lives. That will be the hard part, I am pretty sure.

Clearly, they’ve achieved that goal based on the screen capture below from my netbook. In fact, they’ve accomplished something that not even Apple has done with Mac OS X, nor has Canonical done with Ubuntu: They have the operating system running without any RAM! If Microsoft can do that, just think of what’s next: computers without displays that project images right in your mind or entering text using a pen instead of keyboard. Oh wait…

OK, I’m joking about the RAM issue, although I was surprised to see that Windows 7 didn’t show any RAM in the System section of the Control Panel. Hey, it’s a release candidate, so there are still going to be bugs, issues and challenges to fix. Besides, I need a little humor in my life these days due to recent events, so maybe this was Microsoft’s way of trying to make me smile.

All kidding aside, I like the new “Pen and Touch” status included with the system specs. I don’t recall if that was there with the beta builds or not, but it’s important. Windows 7 adds touch and ink improvements and consumers need to know if their hardware is capable of using them or not. You can also see that my MSI Wind with no RAM 2GB of RAM scored a Windows Experience Index of 2.1. That number represents the lowest subscore, which was the Graphics component. Next lowest was the Processor subscore at 2.2. Gaming Graphics was a 3.0 while the Primary Hard Disk score was 4.9. Ironically, the Memory (RAM) score was a respectable 4.5; not bad since I was expecting a big, fat zero!

Since I had planned to give Ubuntu 9.04 a good look, I’ll be putting that OS back on the netbook. Again, I’ll do this in a dual-boot configuration so I can pick and choose my operating system upon booting.

12:01 Las Vegas

“We at Palm have a dedication to advance the technology in the products we produce and will not be happy to be second to any. We intend to reclaim the place at the top of the heap in a product group we invented with the first Palm Pilot and advanced further with the Palm Treo. We are always analyzing what we do with the aim to make it better than anything else on the market.

“That self analysis has led us to realize that the latest product in the Palm family fell short in certain areas and we could not be comfortable releasing it like that so we are canceling the Pre. I know the Pre has excited a lot of people who watch these things and it’s true we put a lot of innovation into the Pre but we can do better.

“There are those who will no doubt say deja vu- you came close to the release of the Foleo and canceled it prior to launch and you’d be right. The Foleo was so advanced a concept that it was simply too far ahead of its time. We were going to release it prior to this whole netbook craze and that shows how appropriate the Foleo was in its day. The problem with bringing the Foleo to market at that time was the divergence of the phone and the notebook. We realized the requirement that users bring their own phone, an older Treo at that, would not fly and that is why we stopped the Foleo before bringing it to market.

“This same process has led us to realize that the Pre is not the product that our customers want and need. There is only so much you can do with a phone, even one as advanced as the Pre. It is a case of the Pre being too far ahead of its time just as the Foleo was, and we can’t introduce a product that falls short in the area we feel is the most important.

“Imagine how productive you would be if you had a netbook-like device that was self-contained, including a phone. You could do all the work you need to do, hang out on all the social networks you enjoy, and also have the best phone on the market. Yes, it’s a dream but we at Palm are going to bring that dream to our customers.

“I am proud and excited to introduce you to the Palm Peo (Pay-o). The Palm Peo may look like the Foleo, after all the Foleo was an advanced, highly portable notebook type of device. But that’s where the resemblance ends. The Palm Peo has all the things you expect a notebook to have but is also a top-of-the-line phone. That’s right, we put the Pre in the Foleo and produced the Palm Peo.

“You only want to carry one device with you to do all you need to do both business and personal, and the Peo is your device. Imagine you get up in the morning and check your stocks right there on your Palm Peo. It’s always connected no matter where in the world you roam. Then you check your schedule to see what kind of day it’s going to be. Once you get to the office you can work on all the documents you need to until lunchtime. You decide to see if your friend Sue is free for lunch and you tap on her picture on the Peo screen. The Peo begins dialing Sue and when you hear her answer all you do is close the lid on the Peo and hold it up to your ear. You’re talking to Sue and make lunch plans and when you’re finished you simply set the Peo down and open the lid. The call is automatically ended, just that simply.

“I am convinced that the Palm Peo will be the converged device that revolutionizes the netbook/ notebook/ smartphone world. One device, all the time. There’s nothing better than a good Peo.”

Colligan’s announcement seemed to stun the press as only one question was put to him when his statement concluded. When asked if he knew what Peo meant in Spanish, Colligan said no and was heard to be asking an assistant off-stage what it means.

SLOOF LIRPA

Congratulations on landing the big Late Night gig, it’s a good show, and you are doing good things with it already.  The “I’m a big geek” meme is original, and you are already doing a good job milking it to make things a bit different on your new show.  Kudos for that idea.

Please take this letter in the spirit in which it was intended.  You will not be taken seriously as a geek until you have Kevin and I as guests on Late Night.  I understand you are new to your job and all; that’s why you have so far taken the “easy geek” route.  Having Kevin Rose of Digg/ Diggnation and Joshua Topolsky of Engadget on Late Night was frankly an easy way for you to go.  Sure, Digg is the biggest geek social media site on the planet, and engadget is the biggest gadget site.  I realize that makes these guys an easy call to have as guests on your little show — but come on, that’s the easy way out.

The fact is, you are not going to be taken seriously as a geek until you have Kevin Tofel and I, James Kendrick, as guests on Late Night.  Now before you rip into this idea, know that I understand that jkOnTheRun is not the biggest and flashiest gadget site out there.  That’s why a move to have us as guests on Late Night could only be taken as solid proof that you are a real, certifiable geek.  Taking the hard way, now that shows guts, and I’m sure you have them.

I’m pretty sure that Kevin and I have handled more gadgets than those other guys combined.  I mean, come on, our tag line at jkOnTheRun is “…using mobile devices since they weighed 30 lbs.”  Thirty freakin’ pounds!  That shows how long we have been doing this geek stuff, and you can tap into that gadgety geek goodness on your show.  That would sure get you tons of geek cred on the street.  No question about that.

Make no mistake, Kevin and I are geeks all right, the exact sort you are already using to build up your geek meme on Late Night.  But we’re not ordinary geeks, no sir, we are PROFESSIONAL geeks who do this for a living.  We don’t sit around drinking beer and pretending to play on laptops.  Nope we do this geek thing FULL TIME.  We are a part of the most respected tech network on the Internet, GigaOM.  You’ve heard of them, I’m sure.  You need that if you are ever going to be taken seriously as the true geek of late night.  Trust me on that.

I hope you realize that this entreaty is based on respect for you as a late night host.  We want to see you succeed at this Late Night thing and we’ll do anything we can to help you in this endeavor.  We’re there for you, man.

Take care,

James Kendrick, jkOnTheRun

UPDATE: I have tweeted this challenge to Jimmy Fallon.  If you’d like to see us on his show then get your own tweet in too!  @jimmyfallon

(via geek culture)

We have a simpler take on this news and it’s nothing sinister.  We’ve been calling for an Apple netbook for a year and we believe that this call has not fallen on deaf ears in Cupertino.  We believe that netbooks have become such a big player in the notebook market that Apple realized they simply must produce one of the smaller netbook devices.  Sure it will be patently Apple, cool design and a bit more expensive than other netbooks but they can’t ignore this market any longer.

Jobs made it clear he couldn’t do the netbook thing so we think others at Apple told him they had to do it.  Jobs stuck to his guns saying no to the nascent netbook market so he’s out.  Tossed to the curb.  Hanging out behind the Moscone Center.   It’s sad to see him go this way but let’s face it, netbooks are everything.  Just spin around the web and you have to agree.

NOTE: the opinions of this writer do not necessarily represent those of anyone with half a brain.