R.I.P Palm Treo

Yesterday it was officially announced that the next Palm Treo will be running a Microsoft operating system

I think this is shit! So does Forbes it seems

"When Palm announced today that its new smartphone would run an operating system from Microsoft, it was the equivalent of Coca-Cola agreeing to fill its bottles with Pepsi."

I'm a proud owner of a Palm Treo 650 and it's been great. The best thing about this phone/PDA isn't it's size, it's processor or antenna, it's the operating system. PalmOS has always been known for it's ease of use. Not only in ease-of-use for beginners but also for experienced users. The designers have really thought about the user want to do with the system/menus/options/widgets rather than what can be done. M$ Pocket OS has some neat features too but it's generally clumsy and counter-intuitive. Looking at what David Lundblad has to say about the Pocket PC

"When users come up against functionality which works in a different way to how they expected it to, it creates a mental ‘question mark’. Every ‘question mark’ adds to a users cognitive workload, creating distraction."

Granted that I don't use my Linux computers much to sync my Treo, but if it had a M$ OS on, what are my chances of ever being able to do a backup with Ubuntu Linux?

I'll sit on my Treo 650 for at least a year or so and when it's later time to upgrade my first thought won't be to get the next Treo with M$ Pocket PC on it. Sad.