Hey Brother! Welcome Back Palm!

Michael Bluth, (Jason Bateman) from Arrested Development, made a surprise appearance today during Palm's CES keynote.

Palm appeared to rise from the ashes today with their take on the iPhone form factor with a slick, sliding keyboard. You may have heard a small wimper at 11:30AM PST when Windows Mobile Officially became irrelevant.

My Quick Take:
I am so glad I stuck it out with my tattered 700P for all these years. I wanted to jump headfirst into the walled garden of the iPhone, but Apple's arrogance prevented me.

The GREAT:

• Not APPLE!
  
• Gestures under the screen!- cool idea
  
• Form factor. Same weight as the iPhone + physical keyboard.
  
• Replaceable battery (I actually don't care that the iPhone's battery is not removable, but this is a plus for the Pre)
• Re-charge, Cable Free!
• DataViz Sponsorship=Documents to Go= NATIVE MS FILES on device
• Wi-Fi
  

Questions:

• Why no SD Card?
• 8GB? why not 32GB?
• 3MP Camera?
• What is the battery life?
• Track ball :(
  
• MobiTV sponsorship? Will SlingBox still work?
• Will current Palm aps work?
• Desktop Sync? So much emphasis on the cloud, will it still sync native files with my laptop? I NEED native files to work on when I am on a plane and outside Wi-Fi/Cell coverage.
  
• Push Email? Corporate Email Support?- Will Corp Email be left to WinMo? (see WinMo comment above)
• No Stylus- Handwriting Recognition seems to be a thing of the past with smart phones. I miss Grafitti I.
  

We will obviously learn much more about this device in the coming months. Release is for the first half of 2009, but it has yet to be certified at this point so anything sooner than June seems unlikely.