On Sunday, Harry wrote:
> What are the pros & cons of both OS?
Well - I have some experience here. I stared out my PDA life with a
Palm Pro which ended up dropped and so replaced with a IIIx. I used
that for around two years I think, and then replaced it with a Sony
Clie.
Then I got a new job and instead of a laptop (which I knew I would
not use), they gave me an iPAQ (3650 I think - old, slow and far
too big to want to carry around). Left that job, took up my Clie for
a while and was then tempted by the Bluetooth in the iPAQ's, so sold
the Clie, bought an iPAQ 1940 and used that for almost a year.
Now I've sold the iPAQ and my mobile and have replaced them both
with a Treo600 that I got on Ebay.
What I like about PocketPC is the sync software. I know that there's
a lt of people who have trouble with it, but I honestly never had a
single problem that was caused by it. Why I like it is the background
sync of everything - if an appointment is changed on the dekstop then
it is changed on the handheld at the same time - there's no need to
remember to do a sync before leaving the desk. I have on a couple of
occasions forgotten to sync the Palm and have therefore left the
desk without the latest info.
I like the fact that pocket PC uses a "real" file system.
I think that there's more professional software out there for the
PocketPC. This is just my expereience, but although there may be a
lot fewer applcations for PocketPC, those that are seem to be more
finished and "polished" than a lot of Palm stuff. People say that
there are 10,000 or more applications for Palm. I would guess that
8,000 of those are done by bedroom programmers and are not really
finished. Just my opinion, is all.
What I like about Palm....everything really. I honestly have not a
single problem with the current Palm range.
What I don't like about PocketPC.....there's a lot of off things
happening with the file system. Although it looks like a normal
windows system, it's not easy to build a directory structure as
the built-in apps only like to see files stored in "My Documents"
and won't look elsewhere.
The software is expensive, but as I said before, seems to be of
better quality.
They DO need resetting every couple of hours. I guess it's not a
major problem but there's ALWAYS the risk that the next reset may
be the one that loses data.
The Word and Excel facilities are trumpetted about, but you have
to really ask yourself whether you WILL want to work on documents
like these with a handheld? I NEVER did and wouldn't even have
noticed if Pocket Word and Excel had not been installed.
Some people have said that PocketPC's tend to get put into the
desktop cradle and rarely, leave whereas Palm's tend to get used
as PDAs. I think this could work with both operating systems to
be honest - I found that my Clie and my iPAQ were both left at
home in the cradle for the simple fact that I got fed up with
carrying around two devices - mobile phone and PDA. The only way
I solved that was by getting a combined unit. I then looked at
the options and at the moment, simply due to device size and the
way the phone and PDA are integrated, the Treo beat all of the
PocketPC phone/PDA devices hands-down.
As they stand, both PocketPC and PalmOS do good jobs as PDA's,
but both do fairly awful jobs at taking your documents out with
you. Both are great for diary, contacts, mobile email, games,
mp3's, lists, etc and anything you get now will certainly still
be useful long after the case is battered and the screen is
scratched and you need a new unit.
But - I am not sure, myself, about the future of PalmOS devices
simply due to the lack of innovation in the OS and ths standard
apps. My Treo has, apart from the phone apps, basically the
same software as my orginal Palm Pro. The lack of development
in the standard apps has led me to purchase Agendus as a diary
replacement and other software to replace the build in memopad
and so on. In fact, apart from the phone app, there's no Palm
software that I use really - it's all third-party.
Microsoft have the funds to throw at developing applications
and they WILL take over the PDA market unless Palm does some-
thing soon, of that I am sure.
Sorry about the length of this....I got carried away!
--
Bryan Anderson <usenet@bryananderson.co.uk>
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