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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 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.
I had a very nice $600 pocket pc - the Cassiopeia. It was (and still is) a great device. Why do I now own a palm device? I got tired of Microsoft and its obsession with digital rights management schemes - for ebooks, for music, for video - you name it.
And what if you care about security? What's the state of virus/anti-virus (and worms, trojans, etc) on both platforms?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In my opinion, people should just get bigger pockets and buy a laptop...
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
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
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=-
Microsoft is (already?) dominating this market. Their next target is the cellular, TV, cables, satelites...
We are going to buy a few PDAs, in the company I'm working at. Someone came and said that he doesn't care which PDA we're going to buy, as long as it will run MS Windows.
You can't get there from here.
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
In fact, they need a Linux device as well.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
In a world: simplicity. I can get to pretty much anything on my Palm in a tap or two. It is extremely elegant, as it was designed for palmtop devices. WinCE feels like Win95 smashed into a small device. I never thought the Windows UI was that elegantly designed in the first place, and that problem is only magnified on a palmtop. I also can't say I've ever wanted to play a video on my palmtop, and I have an iPod for my music (20GB beats a couple hundred MB any day).
I'm not sure if this is possible with the Palm devices, but I've got Linux running on my iPaq.
Pretty good organizer/phone with the added benefit of not getting into religious bullshit.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
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.
2. It looks better, more modern, than PalmOS. Support for Clear Type.
PalmOS:
11. Palm devices are usually more stylish than PocketPCs.
So which really matters? Modern vs. Stylish? WTF?
Also the reviewer seems to be biased towards PocketPCs since he ignores the fact that PalmOS supports MS Office better than the PocketPC (a la Documents toGo)
Also notice the link to PocketPC freeware at the bottom of the page, but no similar link to PalmOS freeware (which there is more of!).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
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.
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.
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.
"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.
[Shameless plug]
:-)
If you're into (or even slightly interested in) gaming on the Pocket PC, http://www.pocketgamer.org/ is a great place to start, featuring the latest gaming news, reviews, free games to be won, extensive listings... and plenty more besides.
[/Shameless plug]
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
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've used both PocketPC (or WinCE as it was) and Palm. Both have their problems. just a few of them pointed out by the article. What I really want is a brand new Newton from Apple. The original Newtons were lightyears ahead of their time and can still hold their own today. I think the problem with the Newton was everyone concentrated on the handwriting recognition, easy to understand it was the only machine of it's type available and the handwriting interface was the primary method for inputting information. But if you look at how people use PDA's these days it's mainly for brief notetaking and looking up info, not writing esays on. Another problem with the original Newton's was the size of the thing, now they'd be able to make a smaller model with a higher resolution screen and more compact battery more easily (not saying that I wouldn't be up for a sub-notebook sized Newton that doesn't fit in my pocket for reading off as well or instead of the pocket sized one - hell make both!).
:-( I used a friends Newton for a short time and loved it. If anyone has the ROM...... you know what to do. testrobotSPAMSPAMSPAM@gmail.com
Apple could easily steal the entire PDA market from Palm and the PocketPC folks by bringing out a decent colour version of the NewtonOS on modern hardware that plays videos, works with a digital camera and works like an iPod. Just use the same principles as OS X design.... shiney, easy to use, comes with InkWell already and a Darwin/BSD/Unix/whatever core underneath (hey aren't Palm working on a Linux underneath PalmOS machine???). Especailly with them getting into bed with Intel recently, it could use the XScale.
I've downloaded the Einstein Newton emulator but sadly can't use it as I'm missing the NewtonOS ROM, I don't have a Newton to copy it from
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
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
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.
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
"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
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Interestingly enough, I like the HP a lot more than the equivalently price Palm. The hardware speed has finally caught up to the software, and all those "cool features" like handwriting recognition finally actually work well enough to be useful. Palms have gotten larger, and PocketPCs have gotten smaller, so size is no longer an issue for me. For the first time, I've found that I can be as productive with my iPAQ as I can with a similar Palm device.
I picked the iPAQ because the competitors in the Palm arena have gotten just too expensive for the features when compared to PocketPCs. And until the situation improves for Palm, I'm sticking with what I've got.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
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
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.
You can play music and do other things at the same time. I like doing that. You can also get on AIM or IRC while surfing the Web. Or (my favorite) play Bejeweled or surf the Web while you should be doing something else, and easily switch between them.
Cleartype is kind of secondary, since Palm doesn't even support vector fonts. But when your screen is only big for maybe 20 words of text, bitmap fonts are perfectly fine.
If you're reading webpages or actually looking at the screen for more than a few seconds at a time, this becomes very useful. It makes a pretty big difference.
Fast processors are not desirable for PDAs. They drain the battery, and all they're really good for is heavy-duty gaming.
Wrong. Fast CPUs are needed to render complex webpages, to render JPEGs, etc. If all you need is basic organizer functionality, slow CPUs are fine. But these fast CPUs do not necessarily drain the battery (they scale back to slower speeds, like modern laptop CPUs, and many new CPUs are more powerful while using less power than their predecessors.)
Given the size of a PDA screen, there's not a lot you can do with that extra resolution.
320x240 is a significant increase over 160x160. The difference between resolutions may not *seem* like that much, but after actually using the larger one, you'll wonder how you ever survived with a smaller resolution.
Mine is "a simple API that's well documented and well suited to the job at hand." Good PDA apps are not shrunken desktop apps!
I don't see much of an argument there. From what I've heard, the PalmOS API is fairly archaic.
As for .NET -- if you consider that a must-have for developement, there's not a lot I can say!
I guess you've never used .NET, or have such a closed mind that you'll say bad things about Microsoft products no matter what. Also, are any of those alternative development environments you talk about fully-featured e.g. can you write a full-featured application in them? do you get access to most (if not all) of the host APIs?
Again, I prefer a separate device. Digital voice recorders are not expensive.
That's a weak argument. PalmOS _does not_ have this capability in many devices. I find it extremely useful that I can just start recording on my Pocket PC or on my cellphone. Then, I can easily copy that to my PC (on the PPC) or email it to myself (on the cellphone).
And Palm hardware prices go down too.
A Pocket PC will do more for the money.
For some stupid reason, a hard reset doesn't accomplish this: you have to open up the system and disconnect the battery.
I'm glad my Pocket PC has an easily-removable, user replacable battery.
Still, I probably won't switch to PPC systems -- as bad as Palm has gotten, anything from Microsoft has to be 10 times more buggy.
You can be closed-minded like that if you like, but I've found that my Pocket PCs are overall less buggy. I like the choice of input methods, too.
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.