More Touchstone Details Emerge 9

For the past few days Adam Kaufman, a Product Manager at Palm, has been answering questions on Facebook.  Besides his love of tequila, we did learn a few new Touchstone details.  When asked about the possibility of in-car usage, Adam replied:

One of the cool parts about Touchstone, is the micro-suction base that we use to adhere Touchstone to a desk or office environment. This allows for a firm base for your Pre and won’t cause Touchstone to be pulled off the desk when you pick up Pre. With that said, Touchstone isn’t suitable for a vehicle and isn’t designed for acceleration and deceleration. Stay tuned for cool new accessories down the road, and in the mean time, take a look at our new vehicle charger, it is really cool!! Found at http://www.palm.com/us/products/accessories/vpc.html

I never thought about it before, but a Touchstone-style vehicle charger could be incredibly handy for GPS or even just easy access to mp3 and phone controls with no hassle of plugging in connections.  Hopefully Palm has something in the works for the future.  Later on in the Facebook thread, Adam was asked about the charging time and efficiency, to which he responded:

When we developed Touchstone, that was one of our goals...if it wasn't as effective as the wall charger we include with Pre, we shouldn't do it. Check out our site: http://www.palm.com/us/products/accessories/dock.html#tab2

Touchstone charges at the same rate as our wall charger.

Wow!  I was not expecting to hear that. I really thought that the Touchstone would be inefficient and purely a cool-factor kind of item. If that kind of impressive charge rate proves true, it won't be hard for the Touchstone to be quite the hit.

And in case you're wondering, Adam Kaufman will continue answering questions in Palm's Facebook thread until Feb. 17th, so feel free to pop on by.