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."

Comments

I've used palm and I've been very happy...

[Lothsahn]

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.

Re:I've used palm and I've been very happy...

[_ph1ux_]

You havent used the treos very long then if you think these devices crash "rarely". My IT Staff supports over 50 ermployees on a mix of 600's and 650's, and these things are peices of crap.

I can predictably crash the treo 600 any time I like, the 650s crash and lockup and go offline just about as much as the 600s but they look a lilttlel better doing it.

I am on my 5th treo in less than a year. Our Ceo is on number 14. We were RMA-ing about 2 per week for some time, we have had AT&T (Now Cingular) in our offices on at least four occasions to complain about the number of failures we have had on these devices.

Our Singapore office uses blackberry instead of treo, and while they dont crash as much they still have their issues.

Any company who builds a device as heavy as the treo with features and what not, while not including wi-fi is lshort-sighted at best, despicable at worst. I am sure that the cellular companies are the ones preventing wi--fi from being a feature on the treos, but lthis whole topic just makes me boil. We spend over 30K per month on cell charges, and a great deal of time is spent on fixing/replacing problems with these horrid devices.

Missing option

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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.

Poorly researched

[JonathanBoyd]

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.

6. "Today" default screen more relevant than "Applications" (because of the very nature of PDAs in the business world).

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.

11. Apps use the full 320x240 resolution (instead of the 160x160 that most PalmOS apps use and double-pixel at 320x320).

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.

12. Able to run more complex games, some 3D games too.

I've got a decent 3D game called Space Combat on my Palm. There are others available.

15. Able to install/run apps from flash addon cards and built-in storage.

I run quite a few apps from a 512 MB SD card.

8. No compact flash to be found on most Palm devices. This means, considerably less accessory support (e.g. cameras, radios, ethernet, modem, wifi, gps etc).

Plenty of SD support though, which is just fine for cameras, wifi, gps, etc.

Re:Alternate conclusion

[MyLongNickName]

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.

palm stuff not quite accurate

[pruss]

1. On resolution:

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.

Outdated and Biased review

[illumin8]

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:

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 .NET available if C/C++ is not desired.

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.