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Pocket PC vs. Palm Showdown

Posted by timothy on from the but-but-but-zaurus dept.

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."

6 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Alternate conclusion by Mwongozi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Alternate conclusion by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  2. All I want is Web by ryantate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Security? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  4. Showdown? by smart.id · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    blog & fiction: jd87
  5. Enterprise connectivity by end3rtm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.