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The Helio is a smartphone? If that's true then the iphone seems still a little overpriced for its category. Or do you disagree that it should be cheaper given its profile?

Reconcile that with your "Windows is a closed system" statement.

It's called irony. Most people would call Windows Mobile a closed system because MS only provides source under controlled situations to special partners under NDA.

Connectivity is not a binary state

Actually, for those kind of environments, it is. It is like a vaccination - provoking an antibody response that seems qualitative but is in fact massively quantitative. But don't worry, I am sure that if Apple doesn't do it, another company will manage to rig up real groupware connectes for Apple's phone sometime next year.

I have yet to understand the fuss over push email

Yes, how could those tens of millions of people who depend on it be so wrong?

tell me how I'm supposed to do the things you mention using the Outlook client on Windows Mobile.

Well, you'd probably load the Blackberry client! People are also excited about the new IBM client for Notes, which promises to be a bit tighter than CommonTime. There are also an impressive array of custom Java apps out there - I even know one place that codes data integration applications for some of their mobile users with APL.

the editing features are a complete joke

Yes, they could be better. But you know what's worse? Having NONE AT ALL. And with my bluetooth roll-up keyboard I can at least type faster in a jiffy!

nothing so time critical should be bounced around corporate email servers with the hope that it is delivered within a minute or two.

Yes, that's why there's also secure IM.

I mean, sure, it depends what field you're in. For example, GPL-ing Java certainly helps Sun's competitors -- I guess in theory, some wicked-cool feature of Java can now be ported to Mono.

However, take something like Drupal. Pretty much any company implementing Drupal (or another open-source CMS) on their website is going to have to write some custom modules, or at least a custom theme. If they release their modules back to the community, so what?

For example: I used to work here. They are starting to use Drupal in places, and one thing I was planning to do (which never got finished) was create an easy way to take their Word documents (very well-styled, well-formatted Word documents) and convert them into HTML, for use in Drupal, via FCKEditor.

Now, if you've seen their homepage, you can see very clearly that they are in the magazine business, and the blogging/ranting business. I suppose, in theory, they have competition, who might theoretically benefit from any changes they made. But I was told, in very simple terms, that I could GPL and release whatever the hell I wanted. It's their content that's valuable to them; they were only paying for me to develop software because there wasn't any out there that did what they wanted.

If I help their competition run their website, it really doesn't matter at all to them.

Of course, if I licensed some of their articles under Creative Commons, it would kill them.

MySaifu is compatible with java programs, but it isn't a midlet environment, which is what you need to run Opera Mini. See this pocketpcmag blog post for full info on running Opera Mini on various devices.

Pocket PC Magazine publishes the results of their annual software competition. Among the nominations for best game this year, I really enjoy Bust'em, a complex breakout style game. The GameBox games ( Classics, Gems, and Solitaire ) are also a particularly good value at $10. Finally, don't forget to download Nethack for PPC

The 880 runs Windows CE, which has been remarkably robust (never needed a re-install and has only locked up once or twice). It uses CF cards for extra storage, and has a pcmcia slot as well.

I have regularly gotten 7-8 hours out of it, by turning down the screen brightness. The only thing that I really would have liked to see on it was a ethernet connector, but this machine dates from 2000 or so.

Whenever I am out using it, people ask me about it. I believe that there is an excellent market for systems like this - it just has to be low cost and with newer batteries, probably 10-15 hours are possible. University students taking notes in class in one good example of an application.

Actually, Palm didn't INVENT Graffiti, they simply brought it to market. Xerox successfully sued Palm for patent infringement. Palm has since stopped shipping Graffiti in favor of the JOT system originally featured on PocketPC.

BTW, Microsoft licensed both JOT and Calligrapher. Calligrapher, known as Transcriber in native PocketPC, is based upon Newton handwriting recognition.

The problem with ALL handwriting recognition is that english letters and numbers look too much alike.

Examples
1 I l |
5 s S $ 6 G @
Z 2 z
0 O o 6 8
. , ' "
( [
* + t T

A rational handwriting recognition forces the user to change their style of writing. Especially print writing. The methods of keystrokes are just too similar. I believe that US style of print writing will eventually change because of this.

Cursive writers actually have an advantage in natural systems. Cursive letters have enough difference that it's EASIER for the software to distinguish between two characters based upon pen strokes.

OK, back to the point. No Apple doesn't sell PDAs. But palm no longer sells PDAs with Graffiti. Ironically, a graffiti compatible system is now included with every PocketPC. Apple sold the FIRST PDAs, there is NO dispute about this. Apple COINED the term PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Kudos to Palm for making the concept cheap, simple and practical.

"PocketPC doesn't really have an advantage over Linux on PDAs ...
That's, ultimately, why Palm won out over Newton."

Well, PocketPC may win the PDA war.

July's issue of "PocketPC" magazine, as well as Issue 11 of "PDA Essentials", a British PDA mag published every 6 weeks, both report a Gartner study of PDA shipments in 2002. In general, PDA sales declined by 9% in 2002. However, while Palm lost 12% of it's market share (down to 55%), PocketPC *gained* 5% market share (up to 25.7%). Total sales were 12.1 million units.

I personally think Pocket PC offers a lot of sophistication that users appreciate and Palm is now scrambling to offer.

The T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition

Is the poster just dissatisified with existing software: or pissed because he wants to be computing star Trek style and never will?

Why has this not been modded up? This is a link to a review of existing voice-recognition software on PDAs.

Is the poster just dissatisified with existing software: or pissed because he wants to be computing star Trek style and never will?

I would buy it... I wonder if they could connect other stuff (like ethernet) this way... No, not wireless.

Here's a link
and A technology overview
and Another link...

My only question is why?

Why wouldn't you want a keyboard attached to the thing so you could enter text at a decent speed and fold shut to protect the screen? I mean, I can see the appeal of working with a tablet pc, but I thought the best design for this would be something like the Vadem Clio, which has a keyboard that folds behind the screen - Now if I only I could find a real machine in this configuration!

AT&T dropped it
Sprint, AOL, and Bell South mentioned here halfway down the page
I also have a vague recollection of the Sprint system being used for the some Hip Hop Awards that Busta Ryhmes hosted. Hope this helps.