Is palmOne just monkeying around with us?

[Colin Dunstan]

The Tungsten T5 is a disappointment for most of us. It didn't meet even our most cautious expectations - like integrating WiFi (which isn't too much to ask for, nowaday) and PalmOS 6.1.

But that is only half the story why some of us, including myself, are mostly fed up with palmOne. What has the company really been doing over the last year? Well, today I stumbled over this note, explaining in frighteningly obvious numbers how palmOne is using its shareholder money:

You'd think that companies would stop playing games with their options expenses, given all the attention stock options have gotten recently. But you'd be wrong. Take Palm One (PLMO), for example. In the company's recent Q, it reported quarterly earnings of 41 cents a share, a significant turnaround from the 74 cent loss they reported for the same quarter last year. News accounts, like this one by Reuters hailed the solid results. But the Q tells a slightly different story. Once options expenses are factored in, the company only made 29 cents a share, which (of course) is still better than a loss. But digging even deeper into the numbers, you see that to get to that 29 cent figure, the company monkeyed around with the options assumptions it was using. The moral here? Many companies are still betting on investors turning a blind eye to the things they try to bury in their SEC filings.

In my mind, I already made the switch from PalmOS to PocketPC. I will definitely not buy the T5, and I won't give palmOne yet another year time to release yet another refurbished TE. How about you?

[arshadomari]

The day that the T5 was announced I went & purchased an IPAQ HX4700... plus missing sync for ppc & virtual PC. no WIFI or Cobalt was an insult & the last straw... this from a dedicated mac user.

message written on my IPAQ...640x480 absolutely rocks!!!