Let me start off this post by saying that Palm is one of my favorite companies, device makers, mobile OS', etc. and this isn't a Palm bash. I just wanted to give my thoughts on their response to a letter a TreoCentral forum member sent them. Bob-C from TreoCentral along with TreoCentral forum members, including myself, signed a letter asking Palm to fix the issues that plague the Treo 700p.

Steve Sinclair, Senior Product Manager - Palm OS Wireless Products, responded to the letter. It's very commendable when a company responds to a letter from it's customers on issues; and I give them props for doing so. Somehow what was in that letter is leaving a bad feeling with many current and future Treo 700p users (including myself) as evidenced by this thread at TreoCentral .

Click here to read the letter.

I'm extremely happy that Palm has acknowledged the issues and will fix some of the bugs. My problem, as it is with many power Treo 700p users, is the following:

"The last issue mentioned in the letter is a lag seen when switching between apps which is apparent to upgrading customers who are used to faster response times on other Treos or Palm handhelds. This lag is noticeable for some because it is taking longer than desired for the databases of the previous application to close and the databases of the next application to open.Aside from working with 3rd-party developers to minimize the lag while switching to/from theirapps, there isn’t much we can do to alleviate this as it is partly a result of the shared hardware design between the Treo 700p and Treo 700w/wx. I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing the frustration this is causing for some power users, but it has not been reported by a significant portion of our customer base. We believe we still deliver the best mobile experience and while this particular device is perceived to be slower than previous models, it is still faster than other smartphones on the market. We hear the dissatisfaction and will try to continue to make improvements in this area on future products."

Once again, I commend Steve Sinclair and the Palm team for acknowledging the issues. Something seems a little hypocritical to me: Palm only acknowledged the letter because of the amount of signatures but states that the issues stated in the letter aren't being reported by a significant number of users: "I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing the frustration this is causing for some power users, but it has not been reported by a significant portion of our customer base."

Like I said, Palm is one of my favorite companies and I love their devices. I have a Treo 700p, and a Treo 700wx (that should tell ya something). I just find it odd to respond to an issue, acknowledge the issue, and refuse to do anything about it because a large number of users haven't reported the issue. I'm still glad Palm responded to the letter, I just wish that the outcome was somewhat different.