Slashdot Mirror
Pocket PC 2002
Microsoft is holding some sort of launch event today for a pile of new Pocket PC devices. Pocket PC Thoughts has a bunch of news items; PDA Buzz has a report and pretty comparison chart looking at the different models, and I'm sure people will post more links in the comments. So, is this the mighty Palm-killer?
There are warehouses full of Palm devices they can't give away while HP, Casio, and Compaq are having trouble manufacturing Pocket PC's fast enough to meet market demand.
Unless these pocket PCs start being a lot cheaper, Palm still has some edge.
These are certainly nice and all, but with all those high performance processors, high memory, color screens - the price keeps running up. These are going to dominate the "pocket pc" category, and at the typically higher price, they have to be a 'pocket pc', because you couldn't afford a desktop as well. (If you can afford the desktop as well, then you're likely above the mass market.)
I'll still take a Palm-class device plus a good (and not pricey) desktop rather than a pocket pc anyday.
So, is this the mighty Palm-killer
Yeah, right up until someone modifies Code Red or Nimda to attack unpatched PocketPC's over their wrieless connections:
Executive 1: Hmmm... My PDA is being slow today. I wonder why?
Executive 2: Why did you send me this file to have my advice?
Executive 3: Boy, my pocket PC sure is heating up. It never used to heat up like-- AAAHHH!!! I'M BURNING! I'M BURNING!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
10 hours? Do people really put up with 10 hours of operating battery life? My palm pilot used to last over a month of regular use (before it met an unfortunate end with Mr. Pavement.)
I've even read one review where the guy was gushing about the GPS receiver with the colour screen and how he could use it to on hikes and trial rides. With 10 hours?
Are none of the new handheld companies doing anything about this? Do consumers not care?
Huh? I don't get it. MHz matters not on an organizer. What matters are ease of use, battery life, and cost. What's clobbering Palm is the fact that people are still happy with the Palms they bought 2-3 years ago and see no need to upgrade - not a wholesale shift to Pocket PC.
sulli
RTFJ.
So, is this the mighty Palm-killer?
Not according to IDC they're not. (Of course, how much weight you give the likes of IDC, Gartner, et al will temper this report).
I think the downturn doesn't bode well for PocketPC (nor Palm, frankly). PocketPCs seem to be geared towards business users (WAY too expensive for the average folk) and I wonder how willing business are going to be to plunk down a lot of money to take full advantage of what the PocketPC PDAs can do.
Palm are getting it in the shorts due to economy and saturation, MS will get it in the shorts due to the economy and the dubious usefulness of PocketPC devices beyond niche applications.
From the manual: "If you see a blank grey screen, you must scribble Control-Alt-Delete with your stylus on the touch screen to reboot"
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Unfortunately, Palms do their jobs too well. They just work. I have no need to upgrade my HS Visor Deluxe anytime soon. It's a PDA that synchs between all my boxen, keeps my calendar, and keeps notes for me.
... because they NEED to to do all that crap that they're pushing. Only an MS designed POCKET ORGANIZER would need 200mhz and 64MB of RAM.
... I mean come on, anyone else think that since the M* series that Palm has lost it?
Someone mentioned that PocketPCs are pushing 200-300mhz
Right now, Palm is the Unix of PDAs, works, doesn't look sexy, just works. If I want an MP3 player, I'll buy one, I don't need a PDA/phone/mp3 player/tricorder/geiger counter with battery life measured in hours.
On the other hand, that doesn't give Palm/Handspring an excuse to sit around and not innovate
The problem with palm is most users find they have to haul a laptop around (or find a workstation) in addition to their palm in order to satisfy all their needs. With Pocket PC we're starting to hear people say "With this thing I don't need my laptop anymore", and that's how many people can justify spending >$500 on a pda and why palm continues to loose market share to Pocket PC.
One day he got an iPaQ to replace his Palm Pilot. "Oh, are you going to run Linux on it?" I asked him. "No," he said, "I am running Windows CE."
When I asked him why, he said it was simply easier to develop software for Windows CE handhelds. Palm forces you to buy a developer kit, but you can use standard Microsoft tools to develop for Windows CE. Windows CE 3.0 even has the source code available.
Palm has a large legacy base, but they've missed the boat both with development tools and with color screens and MP3 playback. Why should I buy a Palm when I can buy a handheld PC that I can use as an MP3 player, voice recorder, and have wireless Internet access in full color to boot?
Dataquest thinks so too.
After 6 years they are within an ounce and a few 10ths of an inch of the first generation Palm (Pilot 1000). Of course the newer Palms are almost half the size.
If you want a palmtop which requires a holster but can show 30 second color videos and play Doom, then PocketPC is for you.
If you want a palmtop which fits comfortably in your pocket, and can store appointments, phone numbers, maps and play a game or two, Palms are still ahead (just get an older one and don't pay too much).
I was hoping my (borrowed) Ipaq would at least partially replace my laptop. Unfortunately, the PowerPC OS is still so buggy that the damn things are almost unusable for anything serious. After the third time it crashed (in the process wiping its entire filesystem, network card drivers, preferences, etc.), I gave up the idea of using it for serious work.
It's a neat toy, but if you rely on it, you can't have silly software flaws like that. The worst part is the synchronization software. At least when the Palm crashes, a quick Hotsync gets you more or less right back to where you were (assuming you're not too far away from your computer.) With the PocketPC, full backups aren't performed automatically every time you synchronize-- should the thing crash, you're stuck with the most recent explicit backup you made.
And I never could find a way to mount Windows network drives over the network-- a feature that would be extraordinarily useful on such a tiny system. It's a snap with Linux, just use NFS.
PocketLinux may well be the answer... But most users will probably be stuck with Windows, as I was (it didn't belong to me, and I wasn't sure I could restore back to WinCE.)
It's called check box marketing. And MS is really good at it.
:)
IE:
Comparison:PocketPC | Palm
Processor: 200Mhz | 16Mhz
Color: 16bit | Grayscale
Screen Size
Memory 64mb | 8mb
etc. etc. etc...
They do it with Xbox VS. PSX2 too. In the numbers game, MS wins. (Except for battery life.)
May as well mod me as redundant, cause I've said this before.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
You know, specs have little to do with overall computing experience. The total design integration between hardware, software and form factor for a specific price is the real test. But Palm is going to be in trouble unless they start delivering at least some hardware that beats Pocket PC devices on numbers alone.
I love my Palm device and it does everything I need and more. But it isn't flashy. Microsoft has always understood that consumers are basically stupid and look at charts like these to make decisions. Just seeing that each of these have 64mb of RAM opposed to Palm's 8mb dooms them.
Until somebody invents a clever word or phrase that can be used to rate price against crashes, app usefulness and security, Palm is going to take a second seat to Pocket PC. Consumer Reports always uses "Consumer Satisfaction" as their main test of a product. Ever seen PDAs evaluated on that? I thought not.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
They're nice, much as the wave of Pocket PCs they're replacing were. But they still cost $600. $600 is what a lot of companies pay for their desktop systems these days. They have their place, and they'll sell all right.. but nobody has yet come out with a usable $150-$300 Pocket PC, and that's what most Palms sell for, even color ones now.
Palms do a lot less. They store less. They can't play MP3s without extra hardware, can't run a WinFrame client decently, and so on. They're also cheap enough to be an impulse purchase or a cheap corporate gift to employees. Some companies give senior managers Pocket PCs. But other companies give low-end Palms to pretty much anyone on a yearly salary.
The $450 high-end Palms don't compete well on features with the fancy Pocket PCs, though they are markedly simpler and quicker to use for the core organizer functions. But Palm's bread and butter nowadays is the low-to-midrange, as it is for Handspring too. And the Pocket PC devices just don't compete there at all.
Palm does need to boost its specs and give the OS a facelift soon, and they seem to be working on that with their announced move to RISC processors and the Be acquisition. But you can bet they'll stick to $200 mass-market PDAs and leave the $600 devices to whoever wants them. And all the talk about Compaq's iPaq beating Palm in sales numbers is based on dollars--on a low-margin, high-cost product. And with the Palm III/m100 series making up the bulk of Palm sales during that period, that still meant Palm was beating them by at least 3:1 in unit sales.
It's a neat toy. I had a great time playing with it, setting it up, etc. Then I got down to actually using it, and it's not worth the trouble. Very few of the applications are worth using, web browsing is a hassle with a tiny screen (even a nice color one.) The only apps left that I was interested in were mail and typical filofax-type-stuff. All of which were handled by my Palm (which rarely loses information and has a longer battery life.)
And for all the gadgetry, I still can't mount an external drive via the network connection. What a useful feature that'd be... Too bad.
I hate that this is so. Maybe someday they'll get it right, but they haven't yet. Go ahead and spend your money if you want a cool gadget, but gadgets get boring after a while unless they're useful.
The first PDA powered by solar power wins. It might have a battery for backlighting during the night but as soon as you don't have to worry about batteries i want one. In this regard Palm/Handspring have a shot since they don't require much power as it is.
IMHO...
I happen to develop PalmOS software, amongst other things. Palm simply does not force you to buy anything, you have to agree not to rip them off to download the SDK, but this takes all of 5 seconds. Don't believe me, go to http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/tools/sdk40.html
While it is true that I use Metroworks Codewarrior for Palm, which is somewhat costly, I could have instead choosen the Lite version (free), GNU's PRC-Tools, or any number of other FREE compilers and tools. Furthermore, I would assert that most developers that really matter (as in those that develop software that is useful or widely used) are not even going to be turned off by the pricetag on Metroworks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you need to already own VC++ or something to use MS' PocketPC SDK? They don't have a free alternative, right?
While I have not yet developed Windows CE applications, I must say that most of Palm's documentation is simply excellent, which is a stark contrast to my other development experiences with MS. In short, I have few complaints about Palm.
The question is, why buy more than I need when it costs significantly more, shorterns my battery significantly, and is generally bulkier and more fragile. Also, I can buy color if I need it (You get what you pay for). You can get wireless internet for Palm too. Why in God's name would you want mp3 on your PDA? It's not enough to listen to for any prolonged period and you can't use it for for exercise... A dedicated mp3 player is a much more appropriate solution.
You say Palm missed the boat. I say Palm has already filled the boat--several of them. Their current problem owes largely to the fact that people they've already filled such a large part of the market and most people don't NEED fancy new PDAs every year, be it Windows or Palm. These PocketPCs haven't proven themselves to be anything more than a NICHE market for a handful of techies and trend setters.
The long and short of it is that I would not at all be suprised to see the PocketPC's prove to be a money loosing operation, while Palm turns around nicely [especially since PocketPC's level of technology will be more appropriate later on], at least once the economy picks up.
If you have a Pocket PC, check it out. It's kinda useless, but it's still fun...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Efficiency. A PocketPC device needs all 206 MHz just to overcome Microsoft's over-elaborate, "all things to all people" code base. Everything about the PocketPC screams "inefficiency", from the fancy multi-colored title bars to the screen layout to the single processor hardware.
Constrast this with a Sony Clie N710C*. It has a 320x320 screen instead of 160x160. That's 4x as many pixels to push. Yet the screen is just as snappy as a low-res monochrome Palm, and faster than a 320x240 PocketPC screen. Their secret? Hardware acceleration. A first for Palm devices, AFAIK.
Audio Player and gMovie use the headphone audio output. And when you're not using those apps, the audio output powers down. That's how Sony beats PocketPC on overall battery life. I just checked Microsoft's PocketPC hardware page, and the HP Jornada claimed 14 hours of battery life. Everyone else was 10 hours or less. Maybe if they throttled that 206 MHz....
In short, Microsoft is giving hardware manufacturers an "easy" way out, dictating a fast, power-hungry CPU and letting the software do the rest. Sony gave their engineers something to do besides design a case, and their good work shows in the fact that they can match PocketPC feature-for-feature using an "inferior" 33MHz Dragonball processor.
*: I picked the N710C because a) it is closest in feature set to PocketPC devices, and b) I have one sitting here on my desk.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Audio functionality together, visual functionality together (Like my TRGpro and Kodak Palmpix), Audio/Visual functionality apart. Then communicate with something like Bluetooth.