A Palm PDA vs. Pocket PC PDA

Can’t believe so many people like the outdated Palm platform PDAs!

Hey Hobart, why don’t you give us some examples of what you mean by “outdated”? What do you use and why do you think it is not “outdated”?

I could easily say the same thing about the POTS telephone system we have today, basically a 100-year-old technology handed down to us from Alexander Graham Bell, still in use in every country around the world.

I don’t imagine the Palm OS 5.0, which has just come out, is outdated already, is it??

Anyway, my Palm apps are so elegant, you could run them on DOS and they’d sing. :laughing: OK, maybe not…! but I still support Palm OS over Pocket PC any day, even absent the Microsoft tendrils.

Palm PDAs were outdated when Pocket PCs eclipsed them in terms of better specs:

  1. More memory,
  2. Better screens,
  3. More software availability,
  4. More accessories,
  5. Faster processor,
  6. Better expandability,
  7. Better compatibility and sybchronization with PCs

Here is a quote from an article I read recently:

"Palm serves a market and Pocket PC serves a market. The bottom line is today, in December of 2002, there is no Palm device that even comes close to touching the functionality and beautiful rich color screens of the Pocket PCs regardless of what prices they are listed at. And the Pocket PC is not needlessly complex. It is different. Easier to use in some areas, harder in other areas and equal in other areas.

When you get into more sophisticated operations like emailing documents, creating spreadsheets, playing music, storing data on your storage card, synchronizing files, connecting to your LAN, etc., it is clear which device is easier to use. The Pocket PC has all of that built in. No hacks needed, no additional software necessary. Even small things like having a light sensor integrated into the hardware so you don’t have to manually turn the back light on means it is one less thing you have to do. Isn’t that simple?"

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?id=5971

Hobart,

What you have said is all true … but we have a saying in the West:

“The proof is in the pudding.”

From a business point of view, Palm captured market share with the conecpt of KISS (keep it simple stupid). Palm succeeded where all the other “robust” machines of the time failed from corporate giants. Palm focused on the following:

  • “pocket”-sized form factor
  • light
  • sexy design
  • low memory programming requirements
  • to accomodate slower and cheaper processors
  • and thus very long battery life
  • and thus a range of affordable products
  • and customer service that beat Microsoft

My point was that people don’t need or want or know what to do with all those features in Pocket PC … yet. And when they do, I’m sure there will be competitiors that can do it with the same spirit of the orginal Palm Pilot … KISS.

Palm actually did some marketing and found out that most people didn’t want their PDA to be an extension of their laptop. People wanted to only carry a PDA for two reasons:

  1. sex appeal and status
  2. to help them keep track of dates, contacts and notes, etc.

They didn’t want to use their PDA for everything like a tricorder in Star Trek. People wanted to live life and the PDA was like a secretary or a “personal digital assistant”. You tell it to do something or remember something for you, and it does it with the least amount of interference or “where do you want to go today?”

I thought Palm was having some serious business sales issues and Pocket PCs were outselling Palms buy a wide margin.

Palm as a company is having serious sales issues. They have for a long time. They are dealing with their hardware and software division split and they are trying to beat Microsoft at enterprise sales, something that Microsoft has a near-monopoly in.

Pocket PC machines have grown from about 16% market share in October 2001 to 28% in October 2002. Palm currently holds about 50%.

I like the competition. Microsoft is implementing more Palm-like features and Palm is adopting more Pocket PC-like features … for example, the introduction of Palm OS 5 and the new ARM-based processors to EVENTUALLY play music and video in some useful way.

I think Palm will have a hard time surviving if they don’t find a way to get machines on the market that can do audio and video at least.

These feature sets will become mainstream in a PDA soon, and when it does Palm will only be able to compete based on their KISS strategy.

My 74-year-old mother can use a Palm. I wouldn’t want her messing with a PocketPC. :laughing:

I don’t really see my PDA as a laptop, but as an extension of my computer, an organizer, and to keep me busy when I have nothing else to do.

I do all my difficult stuff on my computer which is more than capable for what I want to do. My PDA is relegated to the following roles

-Write emails
-Address book
-To do lists
-Write reports
-Chinese/English dictionary
-Low grade digital camera
-Reminder, I forget to do things easily and it has an alarm

I plan on using it later for the following

-Chinese flashcards
-maps
-improve Chinese typing skills

I’m currently dying to find a MP3 player for it, but the only one that I have seen is for $10,000NT and way out of my budget, no matter how hard they are to find. I’ve spent $15,000 for the following set up and love it

-Handspring Visor Prism PDA(color screen and heavy for a PDA)
-Collapsible key board(pays for itself trust me and I hate tiny keyboards)
-Low grade digital camera
-Oxford Chinese/English dictionary(good/useful for teaching and studying)
-128 MB of additonal memory(I haven’t had to use this as I keep my PDA clean and updated/hotsynced regularly)

I will be buying the following
-Doodlenotes
-CJKOS, I messed up my first one and can’t find a legit copy for sale anywhere
-Supermemo

My PDA saves me about 1-3 hours a week and I went from emailing my friends and family once in 6 months to emailing them once every 2 months. I hate to sit in front of a computer and type an email. I also use it for writing down my thoughts as I might see or learn something that could prove useful later.

I can’t even see the use of a pocket PC as the ones I have seen are to big. If I wanted a computer than I would invest in a laptop. A PDA is always there for you and the battery lasts on mine for 1-2 weeks without recharging. They are relatively light and no waiting for it to boot up. I honestly can’t see upgrading my PDA in the next 2 years unless they add video and audio for under $4-5000NT ($100-$150USD) or my current one breaks.

The big problem with PDA’s is that it is a relatively small highly fragmented market. Most of the cool features are just starting to come out at a high price. They haven’t developed economies of scale yet and pocket PC’s are getting smaller and cellphones are getting PDA features. In Taiwan, PDA’s can be expensive as you have a small retail market and fancy electronic stores with extortionlike prices. I’m not lying when I say you could order PDA and accessories over the internet and pay less for it than if you bought it in Taiwan. Guanghua Shangchang is a life saver but they only have a few small stores specializing in it. I’ve been to Hong Kong and it’s slightly better there and you can buy used PDA’s at Golden Computer Shopping Arcade. If I was going to do it again, I would probably buy a Palm or a Sony as I believe these companies will be in business longer. Handspring Treo combines a cellphone, internet, and a PDA in one, but I wonder how the company is doing.(I’ll be checking out the stockmarket for that) I know Palm has been a consistent money loser and I wouldn’t insult anybody by giving them the stock as a gift. I have more hope in Sony as they have the deep pockets, distribution network, engineering and design staff to keep PDA’s around if they can make money in it.

CYA
Okami

The Tungsten T and the new Sony’s can do audio and video. I will soon have Simpson episodes availible to watch 24/7.

Pocket PCs are very feature-rich with Pocket Office built-in. However, the battery life is a little short and price is a bit too high for my purposes as a college student. I recently purchased a IBM c3 (Palm Vx clone) because I didn’t want to pay US $200+ for the Toshiba e310 (my theoretical PDA of choice)

Having used a NEC MobilePro 770 HPC previously (and a Leo e10 before that), I definitely miss PocketWord and Outlook Calendaring.

Gosh, my Handspring Visor (PalmOS) interfaces beautifully with both Word and Excel (“Wordsmith” and “TinySheet”) and also can be told to interact with Outlook (although I prefer not to). I don’t think these are exclusively Pocket PC features.

I still think you guys are a little too loyal to your first love, the Palm based PDA, however, with the features of this new model from Sony, I can see myself buying a Palm based PDA soon. One thing missing from the article is how much memory is built in??? Also seems to only have Sony Memory stick slots which only work with the most expensive cards cp to the same MBs CF card.

http://www.brighthand.com/article/Clie_NZ90

I admit that’s true for me, but, it still gets the job done. I would have bought a Sony if it wasn’t for the fact that the Tungsten has built in blue tooth. After giving it much thought, I came to the conclusion that Pocket PC’s are more then I need. All I really do with it is simple orginazational stuff and games. I got the over priced Tungsten so I could do mobile web, movies and music.

While we’re on the subject, and moderators if you feel it should have it’s own thread, by all means move it.

What brand of PDA would you recommend? What are the advantages and disadvantages of some brands. Thanks!

I’d recommend reading some reviews from places like www.cnet.com, http://www.pdabuzz.com or run the magic google search.

THIS ARTICLE sums things up nicely.

My recommendation is palm, but weigh out all of your variables and choose the right one for you. I think the best all around one right now for the money would be one of those older clie’s. I could be wrong though.

Really depends on what your looking for. I saw an older model palm at 3C for 3,000NT, they have Pocket PC handhelds for under 10,000NT.