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 Originally Posted by sudoer
I agree with you on this point. I believe they hoped to get the Pre2 on a major carrier but that the carriers saw two things:
- a phone that was not "advanced enough" to lure people back to Palm
- the carriers' own bad memories about their first (treo's) and second (Pre's) experiences with supporting smartphones.
Clearly the treo was a great phone but customers and customer service had to adapt to the more complex technology. (The carriers learned from those mistakes by instituting programs like Sprint's "Ready Now". I'm even "advocacy/training" emails from Sprint for the EVO that I bought him.
I think the problem with the Pre 1 was one of inconsistent build quality - but that was amplified by people returning phones that were not really defective just because customers were frustrated. I have another experience to support this: After 9 months of use, my launch-day Sprint Pre finally died due to the USB crack growing large enough to affect the digitizer. I know of several people who (inconsistently) had these replaced by Sprint (sometimes having to visit 2 or 3 stores before they became successful). By the time I brought my phone in for the problem, Sprint told me Palm was telling them that such phones were due to "abuse" rather than due to a design problem. I was able to get Palm to replace the phone, but Palm shouldn't have put Sprint in the position of having to say "no" to customers like me for an obvious design flaw.
So yeah, I believe Palm finally lost credibility with carriers and this (combined with reason 1) explains why the unlocked Pre 2 became a reality.
Beyond this one point (that for some reason I was willing to back you on), the rest of what you say feels a bit like you are arguing just for the sense of arguing. (That makes my reading here on P|C less enjoyable.) 
Well written post. As for the last paragraph, you might be right. Arguing is what happens on these boards, and I get just as caught up as the next person. It seems like there is a lot of Palm bashing, in part, because some of Palms chickens are coming home to roost, as the old ones say.
Time travel back a couple of years to the announcement of the Pre. Palm made a lot of enemies of people who once liked them, like me. When they thought they were on top, they were more obnoxious than the Apple community on our worst day. Palm was literally trying to steal iTunes out from under Apple, and daring them to do something about it. That ticked a lot of people off, and changed the way people saw Palm.
When it became clear that things were not going Palm's way... Well... They sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind. Is the new Palm, and the community of supporters any different, now? Apparently not. Do I hate Palm as a company? You bet I do. Then again, I hate Google even more. Yet, I am willing to admit that they are doing some really great things in the space.
I love where consumer tech is heading. I would love to see HP come up with an original idea and add something meaningful to the conversation. So far, I have seen little more than "me too" efforts from Palm and HP. I an naturally skeptical about either company's ability to execute. I am perfectly willing to be proven wrong. I love good tech wherever it comes from. But don't expect people like me to suddenly start treating Palm with any semblance of respect. I stand ready to eat my words if that is what the circumstances dictate.
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