Who has a pocket PC or Palm?

Here is a list of the things I am wondering about pocket pcs and palms:

• Is battery life long enough
• Is the screen size comfortable enough to work with email and browsing
• Is a wi-fi or bluetooth must-have
  
• Is it useful for scheduling, appointments and contact lists

Feel free to ask and/or answer your own questions.

I have a Pocket PC and I would answer your questions so:

Battery life will run all day and then some in most scenarios.  The main drains being WiFi or BT.

Screen size- I have a Toshiba e800 and if you intend to do web browsing I would strongly recommend a VGA screen.

WiFi for me.  BT if you have BT accessories.

The Pocket PC has full PIM functions and I augment them with Pocket Informant which is PIM on steroids.

Check out our site     www.pocketpctools.com

Being a palm owner myself I can tell you - They suck! Don't buy one!! Seriously, I am not very happy. If given the choose today I would buy a Windows CE or Linux based device. At least then you can write REAL software for them, not lame scripts.

The palm battery life is super but that is its only positive attribute. My one doesn't even support handwriting recognition!

PS The fact that the C9 team has just deleted posts is highly hypocritical. You are contradicting each others positions on freedom of speech. GET IT TOGETHER!

jkendrick wrote:

I have a Pocket PC and I would answer your questions so:

Battery life will run all day and then some in most scenarios.  The main drains being WiFi or BT.

Screen size- I have a Toshiba e800 and if you intend to do web browsing I would strongly recommend a VGA screen.

WiFi for me.  BT if you have BT accessories.

The Pocket PC has full PIM functions and I augment them with Pocket Informant which is PIM on steroids.

Check out our site     www.pocketpctools.com

Can you also give a comparison with Palm, from your own personal perspective.

Something I worry a lot is the battery life. Is one day enough for you or do you feel you need more.

By the way, I saw the Toshiba e800, they are awesome, I guess one of the best out there. Though it is a little bit heavy.

• Is battery life long enough

      For what?  It usually lasts long enough for me.  It charges every time it synchs.  Using a lot of WiFi I'd keep my AC adaptor handy though.

• Is the screen size comfortable enough to work with email and browsing

      More comfortable than carrying around a laptop.  Somewhat difficult to navigate some sites.  Easy to navigate my own personal website.  I recently bought a foldable keyboard since that was more of a limitation than screensize for me.

• Is a wi-fi or bluetooth must-have

      If WiFi is available, I think so.  I haven't seen any "bluetooth access points" in public places, so I probably wouldn't go that route - but my friend has a bluetooth phone and bought a used Pocket PC with bluetooth for $80.  He says it's "awesome".

• Is it useful for scheduling, appointments and contact lists

      It is useful for all of that.  Mostly contact lists.  I don't use reminders because in Pocket PC 2003 they interrupt recordings.  Instead I use an MSN Direct watch to serve the reminder function.  Every night when I synch my Pocket PC, the appointments are uploaded to my watch.

I actually use my Ipaq 2215 as more of an entertainment device than for scheduling, synching ,etc. I have a 512MB SD card for it and have watched C9 clips, listened to .NET Rocks, and read e-books on it. Adobe Acrobat for PPC automatically converts PDF's to be readable on the PPC screen. It's a great portable device and is, IMO, a lot more bang for your buck than an MP3 player. The only downside is I'm a bit more cautious on breaking it and don't drag it everywhere like I would a CD player.

To answer your questions:

- Yes, battery life is great.
- The screen is large enough to read e-books, watch movies, browse the web, and read e-mail.
- I haven't used WiFi.
- I don't use scheduling.

We have a number of users that have Axims. One of the most irritating issues is the need to educate users to let it live on the cradle. They tend to throw it in a purse or console and then expect it to work a week later. And constantly changing the backup battery is a pain, cause they all get upset with the "low backup battery" error message.

Other than that, a great tool for certain users.

Can you also give a comparison with Palm, from your own personal perspective.

   The Palm devices don't hold as much PIM data.  With a Pocket PC, all of your Outlook Contact fields go with you.  Aside from that, I'm just dissapointed with Palm's rate of adding features. 

The last Palm device I saw was almost identical to the Palm Pilot personal I used regularly in 1996.  Sony has advanced the platform considerably and nearly matched the capabilities and features Palm-sized PC's had when they arrived in 1998.

I was turned off by Palm's marketing turkeys.  When Pocket PC's had 16 shades of gray instead of 4, Palm said that nobody needed/wanted that.  Ditto when color screens became popular. 

Palm pointed out that battery life on color screens was terrible (which MS and friends solved with batteries that recharged on every synch).  Of course, when Palm devices started arriving with color screens, they used some creative math to make it seem like battery life was the same as the old devices - but it was in fact about the same as on Pocket PC devices.

Also, for the longest time Palm OS devices couldn't multitask.  That's handy if you want to run an IM client in the background, browse the web, check email, and listen to WMA or MP3 files.  I'm not sure if they've overcome that hurdle yet - but even if they haven't Palm zealots will tell you it's not a hurdle at all.


Something I worry a lot is the battery life. Is one day enough for you or do you feel you need more.

   With normal, non-WiFi use, I get several days out of it.  If you get a PDA without a backup battery, be sure to backup the config in case the juice runs low and the PDA *forgets* it's settings.  Since I charge it every night, I almost never run out of battery.


By the way, I saw the Toshiba e800, they are awesome, I guess one of the best out there. Though it is a little bit heavy.

   I don't think I've seen an e800.  I have an e750 myself.  I wouldn't say it was heavy in the slightest.  My old Casios were both kind of blocky, and the Philips Nino before that was a little more rounded.  Compared to all previous PDA's I've owned, the Toshiba e750 is a slim feather.

Here is my two cents...


I have an upgraded HP 5455 (with the Pocket PC 2003 OS).


Battery Life is swell for me.. I keep it charged routinely, but when I need it on the go, it lasts long enough for me.. Lasted a vacation with intermittent use (~ 1 week). Guess I"m lucky.

Screen Size is good with me. No problems at all.

I have integrated Bluetooth and WiFi. I use Wifi sporatically and Bluetooth never.

I routinely use it for scheduling / contacts / etc. However, I notice that if you sync your Inbox and delete it on the Pocket PC, the emails are deleted on your PC, *and not able to be pulled out of the deleted items* ! I wouldn't use the inbox syncing.

Additional features:

I occasionally use the Nevo feature, if I'm in a restaurant with a TV (I love being able to have a Universal Remote on my Pocket!).

I primarily use the Thumbprint scanner for logon purposes. However, I notice that if you put in the wrong fingerprint a number of times, You are given a dialog box offering to hard boot your pocket pc!!!

I also occasionally put tunes on it and listen to it with a headjack.

Hope that's enough.

I've got a Treo-90 that I'm very happy with. It has an SD slot which gives me room to take Word docs with me to meetings w/o having to drag a laptop along. It's got a thumbboard on it which works well with my big monkey thumbs. I can put Plucker on it so I can take RSS feeds with me and MobiPocket and Adobe Reader so I can take eBooks with me. I've never had the battery go below 40% since I've had it. It has a color display, not hi-res and it's small and light. It has a transparent cover that flips down and protects the screen and thumbboard. I sync it with the Palm Desktop at home and Outlook at work with no problems. For a while I was even syncing it with my Yahoo (calendar, notes, ToDo, and Contacts) account.

This is my replacement unit, I WASHED the first one and after it dried out the screen still worked. The only problem was the power switch didn't work. I could turn it on, but not off. It had to time out.

My opinion is that WiFi is more of a must have than BlueTooth unless you have a Powerbook. There are not SD WiFI cards with drivers for Palm OS 4.0 so I'm stuck unless I get a BlueTooth adapter for my router and Treo.

You can write real applications for the Palm, thousands of free and commercial applications exist for the Palm. Your choice of langauges is limited to C/C++ or Java. There is one Basic compiler for the Palm platform but I didn't like it when I looked at it.

I installed Agendus to augment the default Datebook, ToDo, and Contact lists. I love it. I'd recommend it for any Palm users.

thousands of free and commercial applications exist for the Palm

How many "applications" exist for the Palm when you exclude HanDBase "applications"?

Since HanDBase also has a Pocket PC version, then "thousands" of "applications" exist for the Pocket PC too...

Just look at some of the amazing applications developed by Vincent Collura!  His goal (last time we spoke) was to write one new Pocket PC application per day.

mnoble wrote:

thousands of free and commercial applications exist for the Palm

How many "applications" exist for the Palm when you exclude HanDBase "applications"?

Since HanDBase also has a Pocket PC version, then "thousands" of "applications" exist for the Pocket PC too...

J

That's like saying "How many applications exist if you exclude the ones written in C?".

I'm just going by what I see at Handango.com which also has thousands of applications for the PocketPC and Symbian platforms. Whatever API/Framework they are based on, they exist.

I hadn't ever heard of HanDBase before you mentioned it in your reply. That's cool and saves me having to install SuperWaba or the deal with MDIP. Although the "DBase" gives me the shivers. brrrrrrr

I have a Palm , dont go the Palm way !
Just save your money and buy a tablet pc or even go for the pocket pc.

Does anyone have a Dell Axim, what do you think of them, they seem cheaper than every other maker of Windows PDA's, is there a reason behind that (shoddy builds)?  How do they compare to Ipaq's?

Funnily enough I'm writting a Mobile Development Strategy Document for my Enterprise at this version moment in time.

We have approximately 4000 people on the road so mobile devices are going to play a major part in this operation, yes currently this work force doesn't have PDAs !!

The DELL device is good, but it's build quality is, in a word, shocking! The HP devices are far more robust and they have a whole new range of devices just about to come out, so don't go buying that HP PDA right now!

Being an old Palm user, I really hated coding for the devices, nearly everthing was device specific and the languages weren't at all modern.

The .NET compact framework means that I can use c# in Visual Studio to develop to these devices, and just right for the platform and operating system means it will work on any other device, (unless they have different features which is easy to test for), this for me is just totally cool! And being written in C# means thats I can abstract my application from my device specific, OO is a wonderful thing!

The second killing thing about Pocket PC's is SQL Server CE! How easy is it to use, make the possibility of 'Occasionally Connected' architecture a reality.

J2ME is a nightmare right now, the different factions such as Nokia & Vodafone are clearly not behind standardisation, this is ripping J2ME apart and clearly needs some action before it all goes abit Unix.

As for Linux, it's good but not a mature, so watch it, but don't commit to it just yet, let someone else trail-blaze. What do you like spending your weekends infront of a computer screen or in the pub?

Anyway ... if you really want to be impressed ... check out a company called Dexterra http://www.dexterra.com/ and what they have done.


-Sabot

Sabot wrote:

Funnily enough I'm writting a Mobile Development Strategy Document for my Enterprise at this version moment in time.

We have approximately 4000 people on the road so mobile devices are going to play a major part in this operation, yes currently this work force doesn't have PDAs !!

The DELL device is good, but it's build quality is, in a word, shocking! The HP devices are far more robust and they have a whole new range of devices just about to come out, so don't go buying that HP PDA right now!

Being an old Palm user, I really hated coding for the devices, nearly everthing was device specific and the languages weren't at all modern.

The .NET compact framework means that I can use c# in Visual Studio to develop to these devices, and just right for the platform and operating system means it will work on any other device, (unless they have different features which is easy to test for), this for me is just totally cool! And being written in C# means thats I can abstract my application from my device specific, OO is a wonderful thing!

The second killing thing about Pocket PC's is SQL Server CE! How easy is it to use, make the possibility of 'Occasionally Connected' architecture a reality.

J2ME is a nightmare right now, the different factions such as Nokia & Vodafone are clearly not behind standardisation, this is ripping J2ME apart and clearly needs some action before it all goes abit Unix.

As for Linux, it's good but not a mature, so watch it, but don't commit to it just yet, let someone else trail-blaze. What do you like spending your weekends infront of a computer screen or in the pub?

Anyway ... if you really want to be impressed ... check out a company called Dexterra http://www.dexterra.com/ and what they have done.


-Sabot

Thanks Sabot, excellent feedback from programming point of view.

One thing that seems to be annoying in both pocket pcs and palms is writing on them. Does anybody have anything to say about that? How hard it is to write on them, should we use them mostly for viewing or do you think writing on them is also ok and bearable.

I don't know much about Axim and HP devices, but from what I have seen HP's devices rock. They seem to be the best.

LazyCoder wrote:

I hadn't ever heard of HanDBase before you mentioned it in your reply. That's cool and saves me having to install SuperWaba or the deal with MDIP. Although the "DBase" gives me the shivers. brrrrrrr

As I said before, one of my main beefs with Palm is that their marketing group has always stretched the truth and taken a sour grapes approach to any new PDA technology until their own version is ready.

The "Palm supports thousands of applications" argument is just another example of this.

The reality is that even without HanDBase, both devices have been around long enough to see considerable support, so the point is really moot.

Though I suppose if you're looking for a way to write an app that will work on both Palm and Pocket PC without any modification, I suppose HanDBase is a way to achieve this without writing two versions of everything.

Keskos wrote:

One thing that seems to be annoying in both pocket pcs and palms is writing on them. Does anybody have anything to say about that? How hard it is to write on them, should we use them mostly for viewing or do you think writing on them is also ok and bearable.

At times, I've been quite handy with a variety of PDA input schemes.  I mastered Graffiti early on, and was able to carry that over to Jot and other technologies when I got my Pocket PC, though most of the time I used the on-screen keyboard (you can do something similar with sticker overlays for the input area on a Palm).

MS scored a home run when they decided to implement their input area in software as it allowed for much greater input and content display possibilities.

The "suggestions" box that appears while you are typing takes a while to get used to - but after a bit, it is possible to type on the Pocket PC with a stylus almost as fast as one can type on a desktop PC.

For long periods of time - or lots of data, I reccomend a foldable keyboard.  The Belkin one I have has hotkeys for various apps and even features like "Num Lock" that take extra practice or don't exist with the onscreen keyboard.  The "Windows Key" on the Belkin keyboard is a really nice touch.

My only beef with that is that I'd like to find a hotkey or shortcut for minimizing the on-screen keyboard while using the foldable one since it pops-up any time I reach a data entry field.  It would be there anyway I suppose, so for me it's not a show stopper.