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Pocket PC vs. Palm Showdown
Espectr0 writes "TuxTops has a small review comparing the Pocket PC handhelds against the Palm ones (no pun intended), with advantages and disadvantages of each. The conclusion? If you are after gaming, multimedia, good WiFi+Bluetooth support, a lot of accessories and versatility, go with Pocket PC.
If you are after small and stylish devices with good battery life, simple interface and simple PIM apps, go with PalmOS."
If you are after small and stylish devices with good battery life, simple interface and simple PIM apps, go with PalmOS.
If you're still undecided between a Pocket PC and a Palm, consider that PalmOS isn't made by Microsoft.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
While I realize you are joking, the most biggest problem with laptop's is that it takes too long turning them off and on (even with hibernate). I've been looking into a PDA again lately (my last one was a Zaurus -- my mistake was wanting something to tweak instead of getting something that Just Works (TM)). Laptop's don't have writting recogniztion built-in. Zaurus had it, but It Sucked Badly (TM), especially with my nasty handwritting (but IPAQ seemed to recognize most of my stuff). Laptop's can't be woken up for Alarms to alert you to goto place X or whatnot.
"Do or do not. There is no try." -- Master Yoda (Half man, half muppet)
I've used palm for over 6 years, and I've been very happy. At first, I used a palm IIIc, and I just upgraded to a treo 650. They are great devices, very fast, and it does everything I need. Sure, it doesn't play 3D games, but there are a host of products out there, both games and productivity based... and contrary to what the article says, the palm is very stable.
Although they don't have OS level memory protection, I had my palm IIIc (excepting one program) crash twice in four years, and once I got my treo setup, it crashes very rarely (once a month, at most). I've NEVER had the palm crash in Palm's own applications. If a program has a serious flaw, it WILL restart the palm.
Honestly, the OS restarting on an application crash isn't that big of a deal, anyway. All programs save their state when you switch out of them, so even after a reboot, you don't lose your work in the programs. And the reboot takes only about 10 seconds--so it's really not bad at all... when it happens.
And, the palm can play videos... very well. With TCMCP , you can even play PC-sized divx encoded video on the palm. The Treo 650's 312 MHZ Xscale is FAST.
The palm does have downsides... The sync software is terrible (mentioned in the article), their customer service SUCKS, and devices previous to the Treo 650 are NOT flash based--you lose your battery and backup battery, and you lose your information. They needed to upgrade to flash memory a LONG time ago.
Basically, a palm is like a Mac with a good application base. It's intuitive, stylish, and it "just works". It doesn't always have bleeding edge stuff, but it does everything it's designed for, and there are programs to do almost anything you need. Every PocketPC I used crashed repeatedly and had severe stability issues.
-=Lothsahn=-
For the technically minded: the Linux/QTopia-based Zaurus: The keyboard rocks, you can develop applications for it, and thousands of developers have already done so, so there are a lot of useful, free apps out there.
Even better, if you already own an iPaq, install Familiar and enjoy the stability and openness of Linux just like on the Zaurus.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
As far as I've heard, there is one known proof of concept virus for the Pocket PC, and none seen in the wild. It's not something I worry about at the moment, although I'd guess it'll become a problem on Pocket PC before it's a problem on Palm.
Oh no... it's the future.
Get push e-mail and background SSL without being confined to MS Exchange or a Blackberry, by using ChatterEmail on a Treo. With its support for 2 GB memory cards, bundled RealPlayer, and high-speed EDGE, the Treo 650 is like a super cell phone/e-mail/contact manager/scheduler/web browser/iPod. (Hook'em up to a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones for incredible sound and long battery life for transcontinental flights).
Unlike "PocketPCs", a Treo actually fits in a pocket.
I think that he's talking about hardware vs. software. But I agree, crappy review. I think that he already has a bias towards PPC. Note how he comes to the rescue with workarounds for several of the PPC's disadvantages but doesn't do it for Palms.
I'm not convinced the reviewer has used a Palm in the last few years as he seems to have a lot of gaps in his knowledge.
When I turn my T3 on, it has open whatever I was last working on, so it's trivial to have it switch on at the PalmOS 'Today' equivalent. If you turn it on by pressing the calendar button, then it'll bring it up straight away.
The vast majority of Palm apps I use will take advantage of the 480*320 resolution of the T3. Pretty much all the rest use 320*320 single pixel. It's only the really old stuff that goes double-pixel.
I've got a decent 3D game called Space Combat on my Palm. There are others available.
I run quite a few apps from a 512 MB SD card.
Plenty of SD support though, which is just fine for cameras, wifi, gps, etc.
I stopped using my Palm within six months of buying it. I've been using my Pocket PC for two years. Why did I stick with the Pocket PC? I use Outlook exclusively for scheduling, task tracking and contact gathering, and the Pocket PC works really well with it.
And the fact that I can write programs for it without having to learn another programming language is a very nice bonus.
So, if you are insuating that the Pocket PC is NOT useful for organizing, you are misinformed.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The 160x160 (72 DPI) thing is not accurate. Most PalmOS 5 devices are 320x320 (144DPI) or 320x480. Almost all apps that are still being developed use the full 320x320 resolution, and many use 320x480/480x320. Moreover, even legacy apps tend to at least display text in 320x320 (unless they install a custom font that requires 160x160) because PalmOS 5 does that automatically, and standard UI elements like buttons, checkboxes and menus also automatically get upgraded to high resolution. Of course if an app shows bitmaps that haven't been upgraded to 144 DPI, there is nothing the OS can do about that.
2. On fonts:
Agreed--the built-in ones aren't great. But again third-party stuff comes to the rescue. Lubak's Fonts4OS5 provides a bunch of beautiful bitmapped fonts (but not antialiased), while (to give a plug for my own commercial stuff) my own FontSmoother provides antialiased (admittedly, grayscale only) smooth fonts (converted from TTF/Type1 via two different GPL converters, though FontSmoother itself is shareware and closed source).
3. On installing apps in flash:
Actually, non-hackish applications can be installed directly on a flash card without any utilities, though any databases that they use will have to be in RAM unless the app is designed to use databases in flash or unless you use a third-party utility.
4. On the C API:
It may be archaic but it makes for very nice, compact applications and one can develop on basically any platform to which one can port gcc.
5. On OS crashes:
I don't know the PPC world at all, but under PalmOS most crashes aren't a big deal--the system just resets and ten to twenty seconds later you're back up and running. Of course a really bad bug can cause nastier things (reset loops, hard resets, etc.), but that I assume can happen on any platform.
6. On battery life:
Actually, a number of slightly older PalmOS 5 devices have rather poor battery life--three hours or so. But the latest palmOne devices with NVFS have very good battery life.
I think this review is biased towards PocketPC/Windows Mobile. The reason is that they didn't compare newer versions of PalmOS (5.x+). They listed as some of the advantages of PocketPC the higher resolution (320x240), which PalmOS has had for about 2 years or so now, ever since 5.x came out. Also, ClearType. PalmOS 5 supports Font smoothing. In fact, almost all of these so-called advantages are already present on newer devices like my PalmOne Treo 650 smartphone:
.NET available if C/C++ is not desired.
1. It has some form of protected memory and so when applications crash the OS stays alive (well, most of the time).
This one goes to PocketPC. Palm OS still doesn't have protected memory.
2. It looks better, more modern, than PalmOS. Support for Clear Type.
This point is debateable. Any color PalmOS device with a 320x240 screen can look just as good or better than a PocketPC device. In fact, if you really wanted the freakin' Windows logo all over everything, you could skin it with Zlauncher to look just like a PocketPC or a Mac even.
3. It has good support for the Exchange server that most businesses care about.
Point to the PocketPC here. Although you can get third-party mail apps for Palm that support push technology like Blackberry, which makes it more useful IMO as an instant email device.
4. Internet Explorer and Outlook are more robust than WebPro, Mail and Blazer.
Debateable. I like the fact that apps open instantly on the Palm and browsing on a modern Palm is fast and compatible with most websites.
5. More input options than PalmOS (e.g. transcriber, speech addon from MS).
Hello, transcriber? Palm has had Graffiti since inception. What do you call graffit but an instant transcriber. The speech addon may be available for Palm but I'm not sure.
6. "Today" default screen more relevant than "Applications" (because of the very nature of PDAs in the business world).
Palm has had a Today screen ever since version 5.0, which shows all appointments, tasks that are due that day, as well as all unread email.
7. WMA/WMV and ASF built-in support.
Point for PocketPC here. Although Palm has several media players that can play most formats, including Divx.
8. Automatic support for USB host connector, when available.
Point PocketPC.
9. Runs on faster XScale hardware than PalmOS usually.
False. Almost all newer Palm devices use Xscale processors. My Treo has an Xscale processor in it, just like a PocketPC.
10. DirectX/3D support, more multimedia capable.
Point for the PocketPC.
11. Apps use the full 320x240 resolution (instead of the 160x160 that most PalmOS apps use and double-pixel at 320x320).
Absolutely false. Palm has had real 320x240 for about 2 years now, and almost all apps use it.
12. Able to run more complex games, some 3D games too.
Point for the PocketPC. I have a PSP for games, an iPod for Music. I want my smartphone to be good for email and office applications, not games.
11. Better office format compliancy, MS Office is usually bundled with the PDA.
My Treo came bundled with Datavis Documents to Go, which let's me edit or create Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents. That seems pretty bundled to me.
12. ActiveSync rocks, it allows for direct internet connection and can mount the PDA to your desktop (PalmOS' drive mode is a hack, and only available to recent models)
Point for the PocketPC here.
13. Programming APIs similar to Win32, porting is easy, development too.
If you develop Windows apps, I guess this is a plus.
14. Basic and
Again, if you develop Windows apps, this is nice. It sounds like this article was written by a Windows developer trying to plug PocketPC over PalmOS.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
It has a nice ATI graphic chip in it, which has been put to good use in:
* A version of MAME,
* A combo SNES/Gensis/Turbo Graphix/Gameboy emulator. The SNES emu is flawless, and I'm enjoying playing a lot of games that I'd half forgotten about.
* An accelerated version of the TCPMP player
* A mess of Zodiac enabled games. I'd say that the 3D quality is somewhere between a PS1 and a PS2.
* Hexen, Doom and Quake ports by the same developer that did Little John Z.
Plus, the Zodiac 2 has Bluetooth, two SD slots (one SDIO), great widescreen display, aluminum case, and it is small. It ships with a decent mail client and a so-so web browser. It gets pretty nice battery life, too. It supports most SD wifi cards, another plus.
It has turned out to be the best entertainment and "road warrior" PDA that I've ever owned, bar none.
jh
I'm going to give my ametuer review (or really, my gripes and some niceties) about my new PalmOne LifeDrive.
:)
When deciding whether to stay Palm when ready to dump my old Palm IIIx, I looked at the money and policy invested in Palm software for my business -- contact management software, mileage tracking, and this really damn neat Planetarium program. Then I looked up a few things that I knew I would need: SSH, Terminal Services, and a PPTP VPN client. I found all of them, so I stuck with Palm.
Originally I purchased a T5. It was very slim and sleek, and with a 1GB SD card, this was a perfect mate to go with my latop and desktop systems. However, it did not have built in WiFi, and the only WiFi card I could find is by PalmOne and doesn't support WPA, which is in use at 95% of my 802.11 installations.
As an aside, I called SanDisk who makes an SD WiFi card for the Zire which DOES support WPA. They told me that Palm has refused to respond to their request for documentation on the WiFi API for PalmOS Garnet 5.4.x, so they will not support this OS. Shame. When I called Palm, they told me I should drop an extra clam on the LifeDrive.
I looked at it. It's pretty cool with a 4GB CF microdrive. It's slower than its RAM-based compatriots in openning applications and loading associate databases, but it's not so much to be a big problem. One thing I notice about the LifeDrive is that PalmOne touts it as a mobile manager perfect for business, but none of the quick buttons are business: by default you have Homes, Files, Media, and Favorites. Now, the favorites menu is pretty cool, and I could easily put my business apps on the first screen on the favorites. However, I'm a bit old-fashioned and like my ability to call up my contacts and calendar with a single button press. I redefined the buttons and so now I am there again.
A GREAT feature is the ability to give access to the 4GB hard drive to a connected computer via USB Drive Mode. I can copy music, documents, or anything I want or need to the 4GB hard drive with the USB cable. However, I don't find this confusing or cumbersome as the article says. It seems pretty straight-forward to me.
Oh, and I am fine with the UI and fonts. And if you don't like either, there are plenty of launch-replacements and skins for download. Personally, I haven't tried them because I was more interested in gaining basic stability
Poor tech support certainly is a problem. This is my third unit, the previosus suffering some kind of software problem which put it into a reboot-cycle. I asked Palm if there was some way to glean useful information from the unit, like a memory dump, or if I could just send them a dump of my profile so they could determine the problem. No such utilities or abilities exist for the LifeDrive, and I find it a little irritating that they would release something without having good diagnostic tools available. How do they expect to fix things based on user reports if they can't get usable technical information?
I finally got this unit working, then found that my headphone jack was broken. A quick trip to Staples and that was replaced (again.) (A BIG thumbs-up to Staples: I had my T5 for a week and based on Palm's treatment of the situation, they traded me up to the LifeDrive, then replaced several LifeDrives for me while we troubleshot the problems I was having.)
I have purchased MMPlayer to watch DivX, Xvid, and some other formats, Kinoma Player and Kinoma Producter to port my DVDs (requires additional DVD ripping software) to MP4 format perfect for viewing on the LD. It's not a nice distraction from work. RealPlayer is available for Palm, but it does not support video (BOOO!)
For my work I use pSSH (free,) Mergic VPN, and Remote Plus (RDP/TS client.) These also all work great, and I suspect that pSSH will be much more fun once I get my Bluetooth keyboard.
Conceptually, this unit is fantastic. However, it has numerous issues which I find quite annoy
Probably the main reason why I quit using my Pocket PC device, and went back to using a Palm (bought a new one for that purpose) is Outlook. I use Outlook at work, but prefer not to be forced to install a personal copy on my machine at home. The Palm Desktop has all the 'Outlook' features I need personally, and is a stand-alone application, not a gargantuan octopus reaching into all areas of my machine.
That said, I (obviously) don't use my Palm for work-related info, just my personal contacts, calendar, etc.
And for the record, you CAN sync your Palm to Outlook instead of the 'Palm Desktop' if you choose. The key is that it's a choice for you to make.
It isn't called "seattop" it is called laptop. I use a 17" Powerbook G4, and it is quite useable on bus or plane even with people next to me. I use it frequently on airplanes, even in coach with the tighter seating arrangements. A little toasty on the lap sometimes, but it works. Why on earth do you find it impossible to use without 2 seats? Are the busses just smaller outside of the U.S.A. ?
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
I can code for it using any .NET compliant programming language. You could also use older variants of VB.
.NET/VB. No need to learn another language or IDE.
You know you can code for Palm computers with the same tools don't you? http://www.appforge.com/ has their Crossfire compiler which integrates with
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."