Palm announced today that it will soon be releasing a new Treo that runs Windows. Palmfans everywhere used to say it would be a cold day in hell before Palm devices would run Windows….boy were those chumps wrong.

I was thinking about Palm and the whole timeline and how they finally wound up with Windows Mobile on the latest Treo…

My first memory of Palm goes back to the good old days of the Palm Pilot 1000, sometime around late 1996. Back then, it was US Robotics who manufactured the Palm Pilot series of PDAs. Oh, how I jonesed for one. I think it was in 1997 when I finally got my hands on a Palm Pilot Pro, with a whopping 1MB of memory. I just about maxed out my Visa to get my mitts around that puppy. Pretty soon after I bought it, Palm split from USR and became their own company. They released the Palm III, I’m not sure if there ever was a Palm II – maybe that was what the Palm Pilot Pro was supposed to be.

I remember in 1999, there was talk of this new company called “Handspring” that was founded by some of the original Palm dudes. The decided they wanted to do their own thing and started their own company. The Visor PDA from handspring was pretty cool, it had this nifty slot where you could pop in a radio or mp3 player…even a GSM phone module! This was actually the start of something cool, and eventually led to the first Treo, which was basically a Palm PDA combined with a cell phone…SWEET! In the meantime, Palm was making some lame new PDA’s like the Palm IIIx and V [YAWN].

It was sometime in 2003 when Handspring released the Treo 600. Holy fragmented kilobytes, was that thing kool! It had been a long while since I had dumped my Palm for a PocketPC, but the Treo 600 had me lusting for Palm based device once again. Palm must have thought it was pretty cool too, because they decided to buy Handspring in 2004. It was actually more of a stock swap type merger, but the bigwigs made plenty of cash, that you can be sure of.

Shortly after the acquisition of Handspring in 2004, Palm spun off the software division into a separate company called PalmSource, and renamed the remains of Palm to Pa1m0ne. Whose bright idea that was, I have no clue, but this was the defining moment that would pave the way for Windows on the Treo.

The Treo 650 was released in late 2004 and I finally couldn’t take it any more. The high resolution screen, bluetooth, and other glorious goodies was enough to convince me to take the plunge. I ditched my PocketPC and plunked down the $450 for a spankin’ new Treo 650. I’ve still got that bad boy and it is so kool that I am now doomed to use a Treo-like device for the rest of my days.

But wait! That’s not where the fun stops. In May 2005, Pa1m0ne decided they REALLY wanted to be called just plain old Palm. Just one problem, PalmSource had a 55% stake in the Palm name. The geniuses at Pa1m0ne got rid of that problem by purchasing those rights for $30 million! THIRTY MILLION BUCKS….for a name.

So now we’re getting closer to current times, but there’s still a bit more drama yet to unfold. Just a few months ago, the “new” Palm decides that they would like to re-incorporate PalmSource back into Palm. Had they gone thru with this, Palm would have come full circle and been the same exact company they were just barely over a year before! Unfortunately for Palm, they were outbid by a Japanese company called Access (maker of mobile web browser NetFront). Access paid $311 million in cash for Palm Source. They claim to fully support the PalmOS and promise continued development.

A few weeks later brings us current. Palm just announced that they will be releasing the new yet-to-be-named Windows Mobile based device in early 2006. Windows on Palm. Amazing. I would have never guessed. The press announcement today was hosted by three big cheeses: Ed Colligan, president and CEO of Palm; Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft; and Denny Strigl, CEO of Verizon Wireless.

While I was watching some of the webcast, Bill Gates had the best smirk on his face, you could tell he was thinking, “0\/\/NZ0R3DDDDDDD!!!”

…and that is the story of how Microsoft conquered the once mighty Palm.