Riding high on its previously-introduced sister products -- the Handheld PC and Palm PC platforms, now dead and transformed into Windows Mobile, respectively -- Microsoft's Auto PC initiative was promised to herald a revolution for in-car entertainment and productivity.
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Mr Kusnetzky predicted that sales of information appliances - from stripped down terminals used primarily to access to the internet, to smart mobile phones and handheld computers such as the Palm Pilot - would outpace PC sales by 2004.
The center console area includes the palm shifter (inspired by a PC mouse) for the "by wire" drive selector.
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The software updates itself automatically over the Internet, and is available for each of the four main device platforms: Palm's Palm OS, Microsoft's Pocket PC and Windows CE, and Symbian's EPOC.
The computing giant today announced a major acquisition, admitted that it needs to get out of the PC business, confessed that the Palm deal so far has been a dud, and provided disappointing earnings guidance.
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The first Palm-based PDAs were marketed as a companion to the PC.
If not, Palm hardware is destined to suffer the same fate as all those forgotten PC makers of the 1980s and MP3 players of the 1990s: commoditized, converged, consolidated.
The world already knew that HP planned to release a tablet PC running webOS, the operating system it acquired when it purchased Palm.
"Windows CE handhelds have not been a success compared to Palm or Psion because of the fact that Microsoft has been trying to squeeze PC applications into a smaller mobile device, " said Harris-Evans.
Not only is Microsoft losing out on cash thanks to this blunder, but it also puts PC owners at risk from unscrupulous PCC sellers who might try to palm off an illegal copy of Windows onto users.
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