PIC has posted a review of Palm OS for 2008. Not surprisingly it is a lot shorter than in previous years, but hopefully 2009 will be better.

"With a little more than a week to go until CES 2009 and arguably the most critical release in the company's history, we cannot overlook Palm's small but still news-worthy contributions to legacy Palm OS Garnet users during 2008. Regardless of what happens in 2009, for all its shortcomings OS 5.x Garnet remains a tried and true mobile OS that still enjoys a fair amount of developer, carrier, and user support. Let's take a few moments to review the most important events from Palm in what was unquestionably a transition year of carryover products and mild tweaks to existing devices.

The year kicked off with the arrival of the much-delayed Verizon Treo 755p in Verizon corporate retail stores on January 7th. The device had technically been available online and via the company's B2B network in December in an exclusive teal color scheme. While on the subject of all things anticipated and delayed, Palm and Access' long-awaited release of the final release version of the Palm Desktop for Windows Vista also occurred in January. Unfortunately, official Palm Desktop support for 64-bit versions of Windows still does not exist, despite the industry rapidly shifting to embrace 64-bit computing.

February saw the widely expected launch of the GSM version of the Palm Centro in both unlocked GSM and versions for AT&T and numerous other global carriers. Also in February we began seeing the first of many aggressively-priced Centro promotions. The device's razor-thin margins were no doubt a huge reason for Palm's battered earnings reports from recent quarters. One silver lining amidst this gloom was word that the little Centro had reached 1 million units sold in March..."

Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) is scheduled to hold a press event Jan. 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, at which it is expected to debut its Nova smartphone operating system.

Call it D-Day. Time to do -- or die trying.

Over the next two days, I'll game out two ideas for what Palm's hopeful sunburst will be -- one, a game-changer; the other, game over. Let's begin with the game-changer, an idea that would allow Palm to make good on board member Roger McNamee's pledge to "transform the cell phone industry."

Be kind, rewind with me
Innovators zig as others zag. That's the challenge Palm faces, to do something that neither Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) nor Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) nor Nokia (NYSE: NOK) nor Motorola (NYSE: MOT) has done or is doing now. I can think of one thing: handwriting recognition.

Handwriting recognition has vexed the industry for years. Only a few have made it work well enough to win customers. Apple tried with the Newton, which, in turn, birthed a series of non-starters such as Go's tablet computer. IBM (NYSE: IBM) was even in on handwriting... More at Motley Fool.