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

Alternate conclusion

[Mwongozi]

If you are after gaming, multimedia, good WiFi+Bluetooth support, a lot of accessories and versatility, go with a Sony PSP, surely.

I prefer my organisers to be good at organising, which is why mine runs PalmOS.

Re:Alternate conclusion

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I bought a Tapwave a few weeks ago, which is PalmOS based. For me, it is primarily an organizer, but the multimedia capabilities, and dual SD card slots are a very nice added bonus. The audio playback needs serious help, there is no indicator of how far into a track the player is, no easy way to "scrub" to a particular time index. It has / can play some games too. The solitaire game showed me that a stylus can be a useful game control method.

I would consider the PSP to be a game machine that happens to do multimedia. In my opinion, the UMD drive is useless for personal multimedia as there is no way to make our own discs making the drive dead weight for multimedia other than officially licenced and too-expensive movie discs. The MS Duo cards are needlessly expensive too.

All I want is Web

[ryantate]

I've been happy so far with my very simple, pretty cheap Palm Zire 31. The one thing I'd really like is to replace the Palm Desktop software with a Web-based application suite.

I don't mind having to download/install the sync software on my local PCs. But I'd love if all my off-Palm data were automatically in sync, so I could access from work/home/office/friend's laptop without a weird four-way sync setup. Every time I synced, it would be to the Web, so I only have two datasets (Palm, Web). Also, if I leave my Palm at home I can make an emergency data check (e.g. calendar) at an Internet cafe.

Besides, the Palm Desktop is so incredibly basic it could be implemented in XHTML/CSS/JavaScript/AJAX without breaking a sweat.

PS I know there is Internet sync software available from third parties but it is hacky and tends to sync poorly.

Re:Security?

[anthony_dipierro]

It's completely equivalent. If you install bad software, your PDA will do bad things. If you don't, it won't.

Battery life

[geneing]

I've been a palm user for many years. I use it as an organizer and for reading e-books. I don't understand why people insist on watching postage size movies or editing big word documents on their palm pilots.

The problem I have with the current crop of palms is battery life. They now use lithium batteries which die after only 100-200 recharges and can be replaced only by the manufacturer. That means I have send my palm out once a year or so.

Palm should be going "Uh-oh"

[sonamchauhan]

"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."

Anyone else see a remarkable similarity to how the Apple and PC story played out in the last couple of decades? Except in this case, Microsoft even has the better multi-media support.

Re:Poorly researched

[nxtw]

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 same applies for a Pocket PC. But, the Pocket PC's Today screen (the main screen) shows an overview of the to-do list, calendar events, etc., and there is a multitude of plugins available for it.

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

Pocket PC wins here; Palsm are just recently getting capability that Pocket PCs have had for awhile. Therefore, there's a lot more advanced games for Pocket PC.

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

I remember when I used a Palm, this was extremely quirky. Does Palm OS execute programs directly from their location on the SD card yet?

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

Not really. A lot of the SD hardware out there is designed for Pocket PC and only has drivers for it.

Showdown?

[smart.id]

Doesn't showdown imply some sort of battle? All this guy did was list the "advantages" and "disadvantages" of each one. Besides the fact that these are his own opinion, and that many of them are outdated or simply incorrect as stated by posters below, this is not a showdown of any kind. He didn't actually compare ease-of-use or compatability or anything like that between two models, just listed things from his memory. A useless article, in my opinion, and it didn't really state anything that most PDA users knew already.

Re:Summary/Translation

[jhoger]

You imply that less is never more. Sometimes it is, especially when the more you're getting is a more usable interface and longer battery life.

Personally, I use a Palm IIIxe. It was the last Palm that used standard AAA batteries, easily replaceable in the field. It has less RAM/flash than a modern Palm, and a monochrome screen, but it works great as a PIM, and has a standard serial port. Wireless internet access, games and movies on my PIM are just distractions so there is no real trade-off for me.

Re:Does the OS Matter?

[Locutus]

"is the average consumer not going to buy a Lexus because of conerns with the OS?"

THEY SHOULD IF THAT OS IS WINDOWS! But Toyota would not be so stupid as to use Windows in the first place. Other auto manufacturers have not been so smart.

When the OS is known to stop/crash on a regular basis, would YOU purchase a car fully controlled by an OS from Microsoft? Didn't BMW try this and then had so many problems they publicly stated that they intended to put iDrive on GNU/Linux? And, it was going into ALL the other models of Beamers iDrive was planned for with one exception. The exception was the one they have a contract with Microsoft for( the 7xx series ) and is likely to have accepted payment FROM Microsoft for using this system. Otherwise, this vehicle would not be the exception. IMO.

SBC and other US communications companies are planning on using Microsoft OS's in end-to-end IPTV installations. You can count on that either failing or people will learn the Contrast-Volume-Power button sequence like they know the Ctl-Alt-Delete one now...

If technology was the driving force behind ALL OS development, then the public would not really care too much about what's under the hood. But since MARKETING is the driving force behind Microsoft and its OS design, people will always see an indicator that the Microsoft OS is there and people should see this as something to stay away from. I was thinking the indicators would be system crashes but there is a side effect of Microsoft being a Marketing company. They plaster their OS logo on everything. Come to think of it, I didn't see a GNU/Linux sticker on our Tivo, HomePod, Zaurus, etc.... But on every Microsoft Windows based device I've seen, there is either a Microsoft Windows sticker on it and/or it ends up showing the Microsoft name over and over on the boot screens.

So, chances are, if you DON'T see any indication of what OS is under the hood, it's likely to be safe to operate IMO, Lexus included. BTW, the Lexus Hybrid is drive-by-wire and brake-by-wire like the Prius hybrids...

BTW, our Prius has a hand full of mission critical computer systems onboard and I've not seen a single indication of the OS used. Really, the only ones I've seen advertising the OS have been ones I would not trust my life with. But what scares the hell out of me is when I see that companies like the CTX Railway company, the LAX airport, etc, use Windows in mission critical systems AND still do after having had life threatening issues occur because of this...

LoB

Re:Outdated and Biased review

[nxtw]

This point is debateable. Any color PalmOS device with a 320x240 screen can look just as good or better than a PocketPC device.

I think ClearType is noticably better.

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.

I find NetFront for Pocket PC to be comaptible with every website I go to. Pocket PCs support Flash, so I can watch Homestar when I'm bored.

False. Almost all newer Palm devices use Xscale processors. My Treo has an Xscale processor in it, just like a PocketPC.

Not false. Pocket PCs have been using XScale (and recently, Samsung) CPUs for a few years. 312MHz XScale processors are the low-end CPUs on Pocket PCs; the high-end goes all the way up to 624MHz.

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.

This is a definite advantage. With .NET support, you can program in a multitude of languages with one consistent API. And from what I've heard, the Pocket PC is easier to develop for than Palm (excluding .NET).

PalmOS can do this just fine. All you need is a third-party launcher like LauncherX or Zlauncher.

So, in other words, PalmOS itself can't do it. Definitely not impressive. My Pocket PC executes .exe files right off the memory card.

Enterprise connectivity

[end3rtm]

I've had various Palms and PocketPC devices...enough that I lost count. And through out it all...I realized one thing. I'm just a very disorganized person. These things don't save time nor help me organize nor help me manage all the information I have...because I'M NOT. And if I were a that type of person organized and anal enough to use it, it wouldn't matter to me WHAT I used...I could use a spiral bound notebook and I bet I'd be just as organized.

But now, I use Motorola MPx220 and I support few people in our company that use their Treo650 connecting to our Exchange server. There is no comparison. If your company use MS infrastructure, you gotta go PocketPC. It allows you the sync Contacts, Calendar, Emails over wireless (wifi, cellular, etc). Palm Treo does this...but they use a crutch product called Versa Mail which really sucks. And it ONLY syncs emails . It does sync calendar items, but very unreliably. It doesn't sync contacts at all. You have to hotsync with your computer for that. I think if Treo650's next version synced with Exchange server completely, then I'd consider it again.

Non-English Language Support

[loyukfai]

I'm probably bias that I prefer Palm over PPC. However, one thing kept me from even *considering* getting a new Palm is that the Palm OS's lack of non-English language support.

Right now, to view Chinese on most Palm devices involving installing special programs whose workings date back to DOS-age.

OTOH, PPC support Unicode internally.

I know some consider supporting Unicode on mobile devices is a waste of valuable storage space, but I suppose using UTF-8 encoding is quite efficient and storage is not really that scarce, like when PDA only has 2MB RAM years ago.

If PalmSource gets to support Unicode for text in PalmLinux (they don't have to bundle a complete set of Unicode fonts, that could be optional, but the OS should use Unicode internally...), that would be great, IMO.