1. Lacking power to evoke interest through overuse or repetition; hackneyed.
2. [Archaic] Frayed or worn out by use.
I don't really think that entire sentences written in Latin are all that common in advertisments. Furthermore, I have heard "All your base are belong to us" so many times it has ceased to be funny, meaningful, or entertaining.
Frankly, I find this approach rather refreshing. Marketing departments should take a hint and stop dumbing things down for their audience. All your base was somewhat amusing, but it was stupid and sophomoric at the same time. If you challenge your audience intellectually, they will spend more time thinking about your product, they may even do a little research which will improve product awareness while contributing to better-informed consumers.
I hate to piss on the proverbial parade, but this insight is as old as the mini itself... If you haven't either read about this or made the rather shallow comparison yourself, then you are living under a rock.
They are thinking about their wallets and image. Repeat sex offenders can't cause billions of dollars worth of damage and are therefore of little concern. Repeat sex offenders can't tarnish their inflated image either, thosands of people losing personal information because the accounting department refused to shell out an extra five grand for security equipment can. Make hysteria over hackers and hide the true crimes.
It's a dupe, but oh well. I wrote an e-mail to the author of the article telling him how I thought the article was full of obvious bias and some misinformation but I haven't gotten a response yet. Oh well, I guess it's back to writing letters to politicians under my bare bulb in the basement.
I wouldn't call this unfortunate, I would call it a victory for Blu-Ray which is a technically superior format. HD-DVD is supported by the MPAA because it allows them to add another step to the hardware progression. Instead of simply going straight to a Blu-Ray, they will use HD-DVD for a few years, make you buy your entire DVD collection over again, then switch to Blu-Ray causing you to buy them all once more, getting you to buy some movies up to four times. Seems silly to me, I say let's not feed their tactic.
I'm all for the ethical treatment of everyone, but let's not get all sentimental about animals. They eat eachother, some animals even eat their own kind. There isn't anything unnatural about eating a healthy proportion of meat in one's diet and it's far healthier to get that meat from unprocessed foods like those one would get from hunting.
On the flip side, eat your goddamn vegetables! You'll feel and look better for it and you'll probably live longer too. Beyond that, vegetables are quite delicious themselves.
Since it seems to be the theme of the week, I'll post my own link to the ultimate ergonomic mousing solution, I never have to leave my keyboard so long as I have this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rxvt
Best of all, it doesn't cost 350, or even 150 dollars! Seriously though, all you need is a 30 dollar Microsoft trackball (one of their few good products) and a 10 dollar memorex keyboard, and you're good to go. If you're having ergonomic issues with those, then you're doing something wrong.
Apple is a business like any other, and though they may have released some open source software, and though they may even somewhat embrace the neo-*nix culture, they are still a business out to do the same as any other company. Though I'm a little disappointed that Apple elected to throw some legal weight on this, I understand why they did it. For a company like Apple they need to get all of the buzz they can from product releases (unlike Microsoft, they can't simply demand you use their software/hardware).
For now Apple is our ally, but remember that a significant jump in market share could change that at any time. Their computers and OS are sleek and sexy and I'd sure love a mini, but I will never part my slackware-running ominous grey box. Like a good dog, I know that will never turn on me;)
We're sorry Mr. Gates about all those lawsuits you lost here in Europe. And we won't even get started about that software patent rejection, we know it will greatly hinder your empire within ours. Fret not however! We have a come up with a lovely consolation prize that will surely coddle your ego and keep your delightful money in our country! How would you like to be a real live knight! Never mind that knighthood used to be reserved for only the most honorable of men (and that your business practices have always been anything but that)! We make exceptions for money...err...people we really like!
While I understand and appreciate your argument, my feelings extend a little deeper than the spoofing itself. I think that users should use a little common sense pertaining to such issues. If you recieve an e-mail from a site such as paypal or e-bay that asks for such information, you should always take some steps to validate that it came from where it claims to. While the issue of international character support was probably not the best example, I think it is still valid in this light.
This bothers me, it always bothers me when something that is not a vulnerability gets pegged as one..RAR is not a vulnerability, and it's not a means for spreading viruses any more than any other format is. The vulnerability lies in short-sighted software development that failed to take into account that perhaps.RAR files might be used in addition to.ZIP. It's similar to the claims that international support in mozilla was a vulnerability. It isn't. the USER is the vulnerabitlity, educate the user and the vast majority of these problems will go away.
Why didn't we have problems like this in the past? Why did virus writers have to be so much more clever? It was because the only people using computers had at least something of an idea of what they were doing. Viruses are, for the most part, easily avoided. It's only when users are clueless and trusting that they are allowed to flourish.
This is mildly unrelated, but I am irritated as to how much the word "beta" is thrown around. It is not so much an issue with professional developers, but an issue with individuals that mis-classify an alpha, or even just a concept demo as "beta." Admittedly, this mistake is most often made outside the realm of software development and more in the area of 3rd party maps for FPS games, and in flash portals (such as Newgrounds). The term "beta" is often used in these realms as an excuse for laziness.
My point is ultimately that the misuse of the term "beta" to describe anything other than a software project that is ready for public testing in order to repair bugs and refine operation actually devalues the term. (at least in the world of software anyway) It does NOT mean that you were lazy and didn't feel like finishing something, and it does not excuse: -Poor animation. -BSP errors. -Infinitely repeating textures. -100% saturation lighting. -Excessive use of colored lighting. -Using your pre-pubescent voice for your animation recorded via your OEM computer mic. -Hard P's into a microphone, and while we are at it, hard S's as well. -General sucktitude. -Bad level concept. -Being anywhere between the ages of 11-17. (I don't care if you are "only 12" if your movie sucked, it sucked, and unless you stop sucking you should stop acting as though you don't) -Completely lacking skill.
I could go on forever as to what the term "beta" does not describe, but that would mean no breakfast and that would be the real tragedy around here.
Because of the illusion that there is no useful software for other platforms, that other platforms are hard to use, and that other platforms "suck"
Microsoft got a lot of free publicity back in the 'old days' when Mac was a pretty limited platform in terms of readily available software and was plagued by inferior technology.
People hear the word Unix and think one of three things:
-Why would I want some eunuchs? Slavery is illegal these days! -That's ancient technology, it's only useful for mainframes and servers -The learning curve is too high, Windows is just easier
Furthermore, I feel that it's important to note that we, the faithful readers of slashdot, represent a very tiny segment of the population that is even aware that there is anything other than Windows available. They may have heard of Mac but they've probably not used one, and don't see any reason to buy a prohibitavely-priced machine when their 300 dollar Dell "Does the same thing, it's fine for me"
Lastly, people are allowed to believe that the problem is caused by the computer "wearing out" or "getting old" They don't understand that the computer is not like a car and that the computer itself doesn't get "slower" as time goes on, the only way it can slow down is increased workload, or parts of the software breaking down because of careless code. Install OS/2 on your 486 in 2005 and it's just as zippy as it was in 1993. It's big money to sell people unneeded upgrades and to charge them from things they should have never had to pay for in the first place. And so long as the common man is unaware of this, they will sit back and take it.
The best thing that we can do as people educated on such matters is to in a non-preaching fashion explain to normals about the problems that exist in windows without scaring them with technical explanations. Resolve any myths that they may have heard about Mac and Linux and let them decide on their own.
(P.S. To all you gamers out there, if gamers execute a mass exodus to other platforms, the games will follow. Developers aren't dedicated to windows, they are dedicated to the money in our hot little hands and will do what it takes to get it it.)
Well, I guess I can sypmathize a little bit, though I'm not terribly impressed. I'm 20, still in school, and work full-time. I've had written over a million lines of code long before I ever even went into a professional career. (I had written a couple of 100,000+ lines programs in QBASIC by the time I was 14) My skillset includes a whole host of things I enjoy and don't enjoy including VB, C, C++, Java, various web formats, to things like PLC ladder logic. I have been head development on a total of three custom software solutions for the company I worked for previously all of which I wrote the majority, if not all of the code and were all designed and proposed on my own volition. After three years of hell at that corporation, I've moved to a low-stress IT manager position at the local orchestra. Frankly, though I enjoy not coming home and wanting to die from all the stress of that sort of position, I really miss the challenge of that sort of fast-paced high-stress environment where there are a few million dollars riding on the projects you are working on. Personally family is the furthest thing from my mind at this point so I can't really sympathize with that.
If you want my opinion (judging from the previous paragraph, you probably don't anymore) I would say the smartest thing to do would be to try to work for yourself. If you can develop some software on your own that you can own the rights to and sell, you could make yourself a nice bit of money especially if you cater to a niche market. There is a desperate need for well-written industrial quality management software out there, options like SQC Pack simply don't cut it in the real world and never will. If you can write a light-yet-feature-filled application to apply to some specific niche and then successfully sell licensing to even a few locations, you could bring in enough money to allow yourself to get a less life-consuming occupation and spend time with your soon to be wife and children.
Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on seats for applications that are written by (poorly) self-taught authors whose only saving grace is that they were exposed to a field long enough to know the ins and outs of it well enough to write a program that at least sort of fufills a niche related to their primary occupation. These people are not hackers or even skilled programmers and their software leaves a lot to be desired. If you are patient enough to read some lengthy (and boring) books on the niche you intend to fill, and if you are a skilled enough programmer to write a better program than a company is currently using, you can and will go far with it. Companies, especially industry, hate to have to deal with tech-support and hate to have to pay for extremely expensive service agreements that mostly just make their lives more difficult than anything else. If you can write applications that work well enough that they will not suffer from the down-time generally associated with such applications you will gain a fair bit of word-of-mouth advertising and potentially even see yourself as a company-wide distro. Furthermore, if you can avoid the temptation to get greedy and cheat your customers on their licenses and updates and such, you will gain even greater respect.
In closing, I feel it's possible to program into your retirement, however I think that the employer you should be looking for is yourself. For that matter, find a needy enough niche and sell yourself well enough, and you'll probably be looking at retirement a lot earlier than you had hoped. Though I've not been 'on the block' long, I've already figured out that innovation, not blue-collar-esque pluggery is the key to succeeding.
Yes, in fact I have used some of the Dell PDAs and I was not impressed. They couple powerful hardware with a crippled OS. They seek, essentially, to be to the Windows CE world, what the Cliè was to the palm world.
Another note, the Clie operates in a very file oriented fashion as well, providing a file browser that works similarly to windows explorer.
As far as Windows CE devices go, the Dell models are superior to most, but Windows CE is still consistently unreliable. Give your Axim a few more years of use and you'll find out what I mean. I used to swear by Windows CE, right up until I switched to Palm.
There is one problem with this suggestion. Windows CE is about the least stable and least compatable form of Windows ever created. I've owned a number of Windows CE PDAs (in both major form-factors, palm-top and HPC) and though there are a lot of nice things about Windows CE, it is simply too buggy and too unstable. Case in point, I have a Jornada 680E. The Jornada 680E is an HPC with a touch-typeable keyboard, a wide screen (1024x360 I believe), a PCMCIA slot, micro serial port, and a CF slot. In other words, it's not cheap, and it's not meant to mess around. It had a desktop-scale processor and enough RAM to be an adequate substitute for a laptop (at least in its day)
The problem is, though the hardware itself is magnificent, the software used to run it is awful Case in point, windows CE is notoriously bad with stylus operation. So much so that it's nearly impossible to get it accurately calibrated. Secondly, it's quite frequent that windows CE will simply give up and the machine will lock with no useful error messages of any kind. This can't be blamed on third party software, because it happens when using the Microsoft bundled applications just as much as any others. To further bolster this claim, I have installed an SH3 version of Linux on the device and it has never locked up in this fashion.
Furthermore, Windows CE is horrendously incompatable with itself. So much so that there is little to no backward or forward compatability between applications. Applications that ran fine on my Uniden PC100 failed miserably on my Jornada as well as on the Toshiba that by ex roomate used and frequently lamented.
Windows CE can also be quite the battery hog as well, I've never heard of a Windows CE device lasting as long as a Palm device under normal operation.
I will admit that the task switching of Windows CE is a lot easier to fanangle than that of Palm, especially if one is not used to Palm devices. However, I feel that that single benefit outweighs the overall poor performance and reliability of Windows CE in general. There is a reason Windows CE is often abbreviated as WinCE.
Palm has its down sides (directory structure anyone?) but it's vastly superior to Windows CE in enough ways that it's far worth the trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
Hrm:
Trite
adj. triter, tritest
1. Lacking power to evoke interest through overuse or repetition; hackneyed.
2. [Archaic] Frayed or worn out by use.
I don't really think that entire sentences written in Latin are all that common in advertisments. Furthermore, I have heard "All your base are belong to us" so many times it has ceased to be funny, meaningful, or entertaining.
Frankly, I find this approach rather refreshing. Marketing departments should take a hint and stop dumbing things down for their audience. All your base was somewhat amusing, but it was stupid and sophomoric at the same time. If you challenge your audience intellectually, they will spend more time thinking about your product, they may even do a little research which will improve product awareness while contributing to better-informed consumers.
I hate to piss on the proverbial parade, but this insight is as old as the mini itself... If you haven't either read about this or made the rather shallow comparison yourself, then you are living under a rock.
Why would I engage in something so probabilistically against me as gambling?
You TOO can be a programmer and, like me, make only pennies a day!
They are thinking about their wallets and image. Repeat sex offenders can't cause billions of dollars worth of damage and are therefore of little concern. Repeat sex offenders can't tarnish their inflated image either, thosands of people losing personal information because the accounting department refused to shell out an extra five grand for security equipment can. Make hysteria over hackers and hide the true crimes.
It's a dupe, but oh well. I wrote an e-mail to the author of the article telling him how I thought the article was full of obvious bias and some misinformation but I haven't gotten a response yet. Oh well, I guess it's back to writing letters to politicians under my bare bulb in the basement.
I wouldn't call this unfortunate, I would call it a victory for Blu-Ray which is a technically superior format. HD-DVD is supported by the MPAA because it allows them to add another step to the hardware progression. Instead of simply going straight to a Blu-Ray, they will use HD-DVD for a few years, make you buy your entire DVD collection over again, then switch to Blu-Ray causing you to buy them all once more, getting you to buy some movies up to four times. Seems silly to me, I say let's not feed their tactic.
Guilty of being delicious, that is.
I'm all for the ethical treatment of everyone, but let's not get all sentimental about animals. They eat eachother, some animals even eat their own kind. There isn't anything unnatural about eating a healthy proportion of meat in one's diet and it's far healthier to get that meat from unprocessed foods like those one would get from hunting.
On the flip side, eat your goddamn vegetables! You'll feel and look better for it and you'll probably live longer too. Beyond that, vegetables are quite delicious themselves.
Doesn't this seem to have "Episode 1" written all over it to you guys?
Hopefully the meta-moderator is aware of why this post was keenly ON topic.
Correction! They fixed it. And to people who didn't see it, the entirity of the review was on the front page.
That was a bit excessive, I think we as the Slashdot community need to see to collectively ask that there be no more of these.
Is to aim for the head... In this case, the head of the user would probably be a better target.
And I thought they had released a new version of lawn gnomes. They've been riding version 2 since the 70s :(
Hurrah for Xfce!
Best of all, it doesn't cost 350, or even 150 dollars! Seriously though, all you need is a 30 dollar Microsoft trackball (one of their few good products) and a 10 dollar memorex keyboard, and you're good to go. If you're having ergonomic issues with those, then you're doing something wrong.
Sorry, that is just one of those imaginary words that drives me up the wall.
Apple is a business like any other, and though they may have released some open source software, and though they may even somewhat embrace the neo-*nix culture, they are still a business out to do the same as any other company. Though I'm a little disappointed that Apple elected to throw some legal weight on this, I understand why they did it. For a company like Apple they need to get all of the buzz they can from product releases (unlike Microsoft, they can't simply demand you use their software/hardware). For now Apple is our ally, but remember that a significant jump in market share could change that at any time. Their computers and OS are sleek and sexy and I'd sure love a mini, but I will never part my slackware-running ominous grey box. Like a good dog, I know that will never turn on me ;)
We're sorry Mr. Gates about all those lawsuits you lost here in Europe. And we won't even get started about that software patent rejection, we know it will greatly hinder your empire within ours. Fret not however! We have a come up with a lovely consolation prize that will surely coddle your ego and keep your delightful money in our country! How would you like to be a real live knight! Never mind that knighthood used to be reserved for only the most honorable of men (and that your business practices have always been anything but that)! We make exceptions for money...err...people we really like!
While I understand and appreciate your argument, my feelings extend a little deeper than the spoofing itself. I think that users should use a little common sense pertaining to such issues. If you recieve an e-mail from a site such as paypal or e-bay that asks for such information, you should always take some steps to validate that it came from where it claims to. While the issue of international character support was probably not the best example, I think it is still valid in this light.
This bothers me, it always bothers me when something that is not a vulnerability gets pegged as one. .RAR is not a vulnerability, and it's not a means for spreading viruses any more than any other format is. The vulnerability lies in short-sighted software development that failed to take into account that perhaps .RAR files might be used in addition to .ZIP. It's similar to the claims that international support in mozilla was a vulnerability. It isn't. the USER is the vulnerabitlity, educate the user and the vast majority of these problems will go away.
Why didn't we have problems like this in the past? Why did virus writers have to be so much more clever? It was because the only people using computers had at least something of an idea of what they were doing. Viruses are, for the most part, easily avoided. It's only when users are clueless and trusting that they are allowed to flourish.
This is mildly unrelated, but I am irritated as to how much the word "beta" is thrown around. It is not so much an issue with professional developers, but an issue with individuals that mis-classify an alpha, or even just a concept demo as "beta." Admittedly, this mistake is most often made outside the realm of software development and more in the area of 3rd party maps for FPS games, and in flash portals (such as Newgrounds). The term "beta" is often used in these realms as an excuse for laziness.
My point is ultimately that the misuse of the term "beta" to describe anything other than a software project that is ready for public testing in order to repair bugs and refine operation actually devalues the term. (at least in the world of software anyway) It does NOT mean that you were lazy and didn't feel like finishing something, and it does not excuse:
-Poor animation.
-BSP errors.
-Infinitely repeating textures.
-100% saturation lighting.
-Excessive use of colored lighting.
-Using your pre-pubescent voice for your animation recorded via your OEM computer mic.
-Hard P's into a microphone, and while we are at it, hard S's as well.
-General sucktitude.
-Bad level concept.
-Being anywhere between the ages of 11-17. (I don't care if you are "only 12" if your movie sucked, it sucked, and unless you stop sucking you should stop acting as though you don't)
-Completely lacking skill.
I could go on forever as to what the term "beta" does not describe, but that would mean no breakfast and that would be the real tragedy around here.
Because of the illusion that there is no useful software for other platforms, that other platforms are hard to use, and that other platforms "suck"
Microsoft got a lot of free publicity back in the 'old days' when Mac was a pretty limited platform in terms of readily available software and was plagued by inferior technology.
People hear the word Unix and think one of three things:
-Why would I want some eunuchs? Slavery is illegal these days!
-That's ancient technology, it's only useful for mainframes and servers
-The learning curve is too high, Windows is just easier
Furthermore, I feel that it's important to note that we, the faithful readers of slashdot, represent a very tiny segment of the population that is even aware that there is anything other than Windows available. They may have heard of Mac but they've probably not used one, and don't see any reason to buy a prohibitavely-priced machine when their 300 dollar Dell "Does the same thing, it's fine for me"
Lastly, people are allowed to believe that the problem is caused by the computer "wearing out" or "getting old" They don't understand that the computer is not like a car and that the computer itself doesn't get "slower" as time goes on, the only way it can slow down is increased workload, or parts of the software breaking down because of careless code. Install OS/2 on your 486 in 2005 and it's just as zippy as it was in 1993. It's big money to sell people unneeded upgrades and to charge them from things they should have never had to pay for in the first place. And so long as the common man is unaware of this, they will sit back and take it.
The best thing that we can do as people educated on such matters is to in a non-preaching fashion explain to normals about the problems that exist in windows without scaring them with technical explanations. Resolve any myths that they may have heard about Mac and Linux and let them decide on their own.
(P.S. To all you gamers out there, if gamers execute a mass exodus to other platforms, the games will follow. Developers aren't dedicated to windows, they are dedicated to the money in our hot little hands and will do what it takes to get it it.)
Well, I guess I can sypmathize a little bit, though I'm not terribly impressed. I'm 20, still in school, and work full-time. I've had written over a million lines of code long before I ever even went into a professional career. (I had written a couple of 100,000+ lines programs in QBASIC by the time I was 14) My skillset includes a whole host of things I enjoy and don't enjoy including VB, C, C++, Java, various web formats, to things like PLC ladder logic. I have been head development on a total of three custom software solutions for the company I worked for previously all of which I wrote the majority, if not all of the code and were all designed and proposed on my own volition. After three years of hell at that corporation, I've moved to a low-stress IT manager position at the local orchestra. Frankly, though I enjoy not coming home and wanting to die from all the stress of that sort of position, I really miss the challenge of that sort of fast-paced high-stress environment where there are a few million dollars riding on the projects you are working on. Personally family is the furthest thing from my mind at this point so I can't really sympathize with that.
If you want my opinion (judging from the previous paragraph, you probably don't anymore) I would say the smartest thing to do would be to try to work for yourself. If you can develop some software on your own that you can own the rights to and sell, you could make yourself a nice bit of money especially if you cater to a niche market. There is a desperate need for well-written industrial quality management software out there, options like SQC Pack simply don't cut it in the real world and never will. If you can write a light-yet-feature-filled application to apply to some specific niche and then successfully sell licensing to even a few locations, you could bring in enough money to allow yourself to get a less life-consuming occupation and spend time with your soon to be wife and children.
Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on seats for applications that are written by (poorly) self-taught authors whose only saving grace is that they were exposed to a field long enough to know the ins and outs of it well enough to write a program that at least sort of fufills a niche related to their primary occupation. These people are not hackers or even skilled programmers and their software leaves a lot to be desired. If you are patient enough to read some lengthy (and boring) books on the niche you intend to fill, and if you are a skilled enough programmer to write a better program than a company is currently using, you can and will go far with it. Companies, especially industry, hate to have to deal with tech-support and hate to have to pay for extremely expensive service agreements that mostly just make their lives more difficult than anything else. If you can write applications that work well enough that they will not suffer from the down-time generally associated with such applications you will gain a fair bit of word-of-mouth advertising and potentially even see yourself as a company-wide distro. Furthermore, if you can avoid the temptation to get greedy and cheat your customers on their licenses and updates and such, you will gain even greater respect.
In closing, I feel it's possible to program into your retirement, however I think that the employer you should be looking for is yourself. For that matter, find a needy enough niche and sell yourself well enough, and you'll probably be looking at retirement a lot earlier than you had hoped. Though I've not been 'on the block' long, I've already figured out that innovation, not blue-collar-esque pluggery is the key to succeeding.
Yes, in fact I have used some of the Dell PDAs and I was not impressed. They couple powerful hardware with a crippled OS. They seek, essentially, to be to the Windows CE world, what the Cliè was to the palm world.
Another note, the Clie operates in a very file oriented fashion as well, providing a file browser that works similarly to windows explorer.
As far as Windows CE devices go, the Dell models are superior to most, but Windows CE is still consistently unreliable. Give your Axim a few more years of use and you'll find out what I mean. I used to swear by Windows CE, right up until I switched to Palm.
There is one problem with this suggestion. Windows CE is about the least stable and least compatable form of Windows ever created. I've owned a number of Windows CE PDAs (in both major form-factors, palm-top and HPC) and though there are a lot of nice things about Windows CE, it is simply too buggy and too unstable. Case in point, I have a Jornada 680E. The Jornada 680E is an HPC with a touch-typeable keyboard, a wide screen (1024x360 I believe), a PCMCIA slot, micro serial port, and a CF slot. In other words, it's not cheap, and it's not meant to mess around. It had a desktop-scale processor and enough RAM to be an adequate substitute for a laptop (at least in its day) The problem is, though the hardware itself is magnificent, the software used to run it is awful Case in point, windows CE is notoriously bad with stylus operation. So much so that it's nearly impossible to get it accurately calibrated. Secondly, it's quite frequent that windows CE will simply give up and the machine will lock with no useful error messages of any kind. This can't be blamed on third party software, because it happens when using the Microsoft bundled applications just as much as any others. To further bolster this claim, I have installed an SH3 version of Linux on the device and it has never locked up in this fashion. Furthermore, Windows CE is horrendously incompatable with itself. So much so that there is little to no backward or forward compatability between applications. Applications that ran fine on my Uniden PC100 failed miserably on my Jornada as well as on the Toshiba that by ex roomate used and frequently lamented. Windows CE can also be quite the battery hog as well, I've never heard of a Windows CE device lasting as long as a Palm device under normal operation. I will admit that the task switching of Windows CE is a lot easier to fanangle than that of Palm, especially if one is not used to Palm devices. However, I feel that that single benefit outweighs the overall poor performance and reliability of Windows CE in general. There is a reason Windows CE is often abbreviated as WinCE. Palm has its down sides (directory structure anyone?) but it's vastly superior to Windows CE in enough ways that it's far worth the trouble.