Hey, you guys at Palm, are you interested in building market share? Then do something about the gosh awfulness that is the Palm Desktop Application. In what way you ask is it awful? Let me enumerate.

1) It is ugly. Now in 1995 this design might have looked nice, but now its 2006 and its badly in need of a face lift.

2) Give us the ability to let the hot sync manager run as a service. We use it like a service, it always needs to be running, it should be a service.

3) The splash screen is not helpful. I don’t like startup splash screens, especially on programs that I run at boot. Give me the ability to turn the splash off. I know I’m running the Palm desktop, don’t rub my nose in it. And on a related note, give me the ability to keep the desktop running in the tray.

4) It has no hooks into any email programs natively except Outlook. Wouldn’t it be easy to make it work with the Thunderbird address book and Sunbird/Lightning? Then everyone could enjoy the coolness of an integrated workspace without using an insecure expensive product. That should make your product more attractive to potential users, nothing else to buy.

And that brings up my major proposal, to wit:

Palm makes money selling Palm hardware, nobody buys Palm desktop without owning a Palm, so why not give Palm owners a real advantage, by open sourcing the Hot Sync Manager and Palm Desktop? What’s the downside? There’s no revenue to loose and market share to gain from customers who can easily work like they want. Or, failing that, release the desktop as an extension for Thunderbird, how cool would that be, your Palm calendar and addresses in Thunderbird.

Its time for Palm Desktop to take the same path as Eudora.