Time for IT departments to stop supporting Palm OS

Palm OS was revolutionary (Second to Apple’s Newton OS) when it came out, however it is now getting long in the tooth. The latest version of Palm OS in use is Palm OS 5 or Garnet as it is officially known, which was released in June 2002, nearly 6 years ago. Even Microsoft managed to deliver a new version of Windows in that time.

Garnet has had services and features such as Wifi, Bluetooth, etc. bolted on to create a Frankensteinesque operating system. With all of these bolted on features it has become increasingly problematic. In the companies I work with we only have a handful of devices running Garnet left, but they are constantly having issues. These devices lock up, suddenly reboot, get corrupted, produce indecipherable errors, etc. (yes, I know that Windows does this all of the time too) and little is done to fix it.

With the launch of the iPhone and the latest stuff coming out with Windows Mobile why do IT Departments tolerate supporting such archaic devices/OS’s? If this was a computer it surely would have been retired, replaced, unceremoniously thrown from the roof top. From what I have seen, it is now costing the organization more to support this OS than Windows Mobile.

Now, I know that some Palm Fanboys (is there such a thing?) will say “wait for the Cobalt OS”. Oh, you mean that mythical Palm OS that was released in two different iterations since 2004, but has never been placed on a single marketed device?