Comments on: Palm Doesn't View Windows CE 4.0 as a Threat

What I did find to the iPaq's benefit is that it no longer has that performance lag when doing tasks compared to a Palm-based device. I did find the Windows Explorer-based interface a bit cumbersome, though.

It doesn't matter is my PDA Palm or PocketPC it matters that there are right programs on my PDA.

Today my PDA is palm but I am seriously thinking to buy PocketPC because of the color screen! But I have to wait until PocketPC has all apps that I need and maybe then there are good colorscreen palm then...how knows

Putting a blind eyes on competitor doesn't make it disappear. The future is wireless internet on PDA for application as heavy as streaming video. PIM is an old trick, heck a $20 Royal can do that too. GO to Walmart and you would be surprise what this $20 bucks disposable Royal can do in basic PIM area.

it's more of Audio and Video API to provide capability anywhere from video conferences and business presentation all the way to rich gaming environment.

And no, "why would anybody want that" is not the answer.

[Actually, I'm a die-hard Palm user who put this up to piss off all the hyper-sensitive idiots who continually whine about "trolls" everytime someone dares to mention a Pocket PC on these message boards, let alone admit that Pocket PC has some compelling features of it's own. I don't use a Pocket PC, but I can see why someone might, and I think it's a pathetic argument to complain about how "difficult" the UI is. It's not that hard; it's simply different--there are actually some very useful things about it. As I say, I prefer Palm, but I refuse to turn it into some stupid flame war. Perhaps some of you should make the same refusal.]

Could you tell me where you got these figures? The latest I've seen have Palm outselling Compaq in Europe, if by a narrow margin:
www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=2155

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News Editor

Sony? We still only have the PEG S300.
Handspring? Never seen one in a shop. Available through mail order, though.
HandEra? Never seen one. Perhaps available through mail order, I don't know. Not on www.pdashop.nl

Basically, the only Palm powered machines that are widely available are Palm machines, and they are expensive. Make that very expensive.

This leaves the door wide open for pcc's. No wonder iPaqs are selling like crazy over here. The m505 hasn't changed that. To be honest: I have never seen one outside of a shop window.

The #1 thing I've always disliked about PPCs, (and I don't particularly dislike them) is that I have to work awfully hard to turn off the running applications.

I can't imagine a world without green or red apples. We want both, right? They both are goods eats, but they're a little different. One is sweeter, one is more tangy....
One plays good vids and music, and great MS Office,
one has 11,480 software titles currently available for download.

I'm not out to flame a soul, 'cause let's face it, what purpose does it serve? I think that we'll keep our Palms and our PPCs, our XBoxes and our Playstations, our Nissans and our Fords. I think there's room for everyone. Why would they vanish? I mean really? Think about it. Why not both.

PocketPC makers have consistently shown they have no interest in matching the prices of Palm OS devices. The PocketPC makers are primarily all big desktop PC makers, where just like desktop PCs, they see the market as adding more hardware features to their devices and keeping them priced at $350-$600 as the way to go. They would prefer not to instead try to beat the $200 price point below which the general population would find these devices appealing. Palm and Handspring have been successfully doing that for years now while keeping $300-$500 models as high-end.

I have more problems with my PPC active sync software in a month, then I've had with my Palm's hotsync software in 3 years. Then when I installed M$ update to their active sync software 3.5 it just about killed my iPaq.

Also, my iPaq WAS killed when I tried to flash the ROM with Compaq's update.

When I went to all the PPC sites to get help, the board was full of others having problems.

My Palm just works, problem free.

So which PDA is more "powerful"???

LOL! If all your doing is playing with your PocketPC and visiting Palm message boards spreading FUD, then it doesn't sound like you have much of a life!

Can your palm do that? (not that It will help me spell correctly in any language)

[eye rolling time]

Really? Let's take a quick look at Handango for an objective assessment...

Under "Business Applications", there are 1748 applications for Palm OS, versus 497 for PPC.

Under "Personal Productivity", there are 2084 applications for Palm OS, versus 462 for PPC.

Under "Education and Reference", there are 2697 applications for Palm OS versus 299 for PPC.

Under "Software Tools", there are 1432 applications for Palm OS versus 242 for PPC.

Under "Entertainment", there are 2449 applications listed for Palm OS versus 576 for PPC.

Under "Travel", there are 1197 applications listed for Palm OS versus 330 for PPC.

That's a total of 11,607 applications for Palm OS (not even counting the 905 Palm VII-specific programs listed) versus 2,406 for PocketPC, almost five times as many.

PocketPC is clearly lagging dramatically behind Palm OS in developer interest and support. The disparity is even greater when you consider that Palm OS application don't have the kind of CPU and form-factor-specific incompatibilities that PPC applications have to contend with.

Face it: Microsoft finds themself in the position, with respect to developers, that Apple's been mired in for years and years. Developers go where the market share is. The preponderence of application and developer support ensures continued high market share. A tough cycle to break, as Apple surely knows.

Couple that situation with Microsoft's well-known penchant for co-opting its developers' efforts and driving them out of business, and its fairly clear that Microsoft is not a company that developers are necessarily dying to partner with. In the handheld space, they don't have their monoply to lean on--there's more than one game in town.

Entertaining to see Bill and friends on the receiving end of that transaction for a change.

Even if you assume Sturgeon's law, and say that 94% of all handheld applications are crap, there would still be five times as many "great" apps for Palm OS. That kind of reasoning cuts both ways, in the absence of any particular information to the contrary.

The facts are the facts. I can imagine it's personally upsetting to the PPC zealots out there, but there it is. Deveopers would demonstrably rather put their efforts into a Palm OS app than a PPC app.

HOw about an app that will let me sync wirelessly while looking up something with browser.

copy paste Word with picture?

seeing HTML file? you know soemthing descent with fonts and pictures on....

Consider software for medial applications. 473 titles for Palm OS versus 40, count 'em, 40, for Pocket PC.

Need an app for tracking your patients? Better hope you have a Palm. Medical reference on infection diseases? Ditto. Anatomy reference? DSM IV? Ditto, ditto. Notes on surgical knots, stitches and sutures (with pictures)? Dosage calculator? Pediatric dosage calculator? Cardiac surgery risk calculator? ICU protocols? EMS protocols? Ditto, ditto, ditto.

Not to mention that the very first three entries in the PPC listings are the same program compiled for three different "flavors" of PocketPC--SH3, MIPS and ARM. Nor that one of the applications listed under "Medical" for PocketPC is a golf scorekeeping program.

I'm happy that you can listen to Jimi while writing that novel. Hope it's a short album and a short novel or you're gonna need an extension cord.

And as far as Word compatibility is concerned, Dataviz's Documents-to-Go offers equal if not better compatibility with desktop Word than does Pocket Word. And Handspring's Blazer browser is very nice as well.

Being useful--can you PocketPC do that?

anatomy referance
It's FREEE, and in COLOR...(imagine that)
https://www.medifor.com/DistWebPage/anatomyinfo.htm

DSM IV
at least 2 companies sells this handbook, can Palm even do anything else after putting this manual in memory? This thing is 4mB
http://www.collectivemed.com/p_dsmiv.html

surgery.
http://www.medicalpocketpc.com/software/surgery.shtml

just note and picture? can you do it in color and HTML? *laughing*

med calculators...
ehrrr...they are a dime a dozen. got more buttons, more equations, more computational power and precission.

etc...

bottom line, I hope you are not running out of space and your Palm becoming tempramental choking on all those big programs, while your patient drop dead cause you can't access your database from the memory card.

and for gawd sake, how about in color and bigger resolution eh? you might be able to records your medical observation, and compile your own personal internet database within too.

Headline : "Patient drop dead, while doctor try to juggle database on his Palm handheld accessing the right database and waiting for a calculation to finish"

You've completely missed the point. Handango is a good statistical representation of the universe of handheld software. It makes no particular preference toward Palm versus PowerPC, developers post their own wares, and so, it seems reasonable to expect that it reflects the current state of affairs in the real world. The point was not that there exists no medical software for PPC, but that there's clearly much more in that category, and in every single other category, for Palm.

Remember how Microsoft harped on Apple for having so few applications for Mac OS, relatively speaking? Shoe's on the other foot now. And Microsoft, with their demonstrated developer-hostile approach to life, is not winning converts to any great degree.

can you carry 100Meg medical application and open 20 of them all at once?

No, and neither can you, unless you own some hitherto-unknown 2 gigabyte handheld. Don't be a dolt.

I think a previous anonymous troll (or the same one? who can tell?) hit it on the nose: if your most important requirement is to wirelessly sync your handheld while simultaneously listening to Jimi Hendrix, browsing the Web and writing the great American novel, I guess PowerPC is the thing for you.

As long as you don't mind the 45 minute battery life (which is the actual operational life of a Compaq iPaq with an 802.11b card)...

BTW, I am currently evaluating PDAs for this exact purpose, using them in actual practice. I was fortunate to be given this opportunity due to my programming background. I am given a Palm m505, iPaq, Clie710, and HP Jordana for evaluation. I could care less which one is selected, I just want the best solution to be used.

YOU-SAID>infectious disease (try to do THAT in your palm)
http://www.hopkins-abxguide.org./

Do you even realize that is an antibiotics guide? No medical professional needs to keep than on him/her all the time. Oh, and I did download it to all 4 of the PDAs. They all work well on them.

YOU-SAID>anatomy referance
It's FREEE, and in COLOR...(imagine that)
https://www.medifor.com/DistWebPage/anatomyinfo.htm

If you need to carry that in your PDA to reference it, then you shouldn't be practicing medicine in the first place.

YOU-SAID>DSM IV
at least 2 companies sells this handbook, can Palm even do anything else after putting this manual in memory? This thing is 4mB
http://www.collectivemed.com/p_dsmiv.html

In Palm's defense, I already have it in the Clie as well as the m505. I wonder, have you tried it? In fact, have you tried looking at some of the pictures with your PPC? It is annoying trying to pan the damn thing. I gave minus points for all 4 PDAs on this one.

YOU-SAID>surgery.
http://www.medicalpocketpc.com/software/surgery.shtml

Again, if you need to have this in your PDA, you are in the wrong profession. For any other profession, it would only be for show, so what's the *real* use of it?

YOU-SAID>just note and picture? can you do it in color and HTML? *laughing*

I am perplexed. I am currently viewing medical PDA software in *COLOR* on all 4 PDAs. Your point?

YOU-SAID>med calculators...
ehrrr...they are a dime a dozen. got more buttons, more equations, more computational power and precission.

Half agree with you. Most programmers don't understand what doctors need in terms of calculators. That's why there are so many useless ones out there. The built in calculator is sufficient for 50% of the doctors out here.

YOU-SAID>bottom line, I hope you are not running out of space and your Palm becoming tempramental choking on all those big programs, while your patient drop dead cause you can't access your database from the memory card.

On the contrary. Surprisingly, The iPaq was the first one to run out of memory. The size of the databases are different for each architecture (PalmOS vs PPC) and PPC's databases are larger in size. Also, they use more space to store other *equivalent* programs and data than their PalmOS counterparts, so I wasn't too surprised that the iPaq was the first to run out of memory and required the assistance of the Flash card. (note, we eventually used expansion cards for all 4 PDAs).

YOU-SAID>and for gawd sake, how about in color and bigger resolution eh? you might be able to records your medical observation, and compile your own personal internet database within too.

As for creating a database, that's nonsense unless you have a server class machine with a heavy duty database engine like DB2 or Oracle. For the Palm side, I found a very useful program called HanDbase which is very small and efficient for its purpose. I coudn't find an equivalent for the PPCs.

As for color and resolution, we all like the Clie (Palm OS) better than the other 3 PDAs.

YOU-SAID>Headline : "Patient drop dead, while doctor try to juggle database on his Palm handheld accessing the right database and waiting for a calculation to finish"

In real practice, that should not happen. In fact, you shouldn't even be bringing a PDA into any type of operating procedure.

Unlike what most software developers think, we doctors need more of a schedule and patient management utility rather than some bulky reference manual in our PDAs. We always have access to *real* computers for that kind of database lookup. Those little references are more suited for students than professionals. I wish I had them when I was a student.

All in all, we are leaning toward the Clie and m505 rather than the iPaq or Jordana (too clunky for our white shirt pockets).

Our point of view....

infectious disease (try to do THAT in your palm)...

Er, on close inspection of the actual site, not only can you "do THAT" on your Palm, but the site makes a point of mentioning that while this very product runs on "all Palms", if your PocketPC doesn't happen to be an iPaq, you're just plain out of luck.

Also interesting is the little fact that this product takes up a whopping 4.9 megabytes on the iPaq versus 860K on the Palm....

Now, what were you saying?

oh my, i guess only palm has the software that fit to serve medicine.

No, Palm just has a lot more of it. But that's not simply the case with medical software: survey suggests that it's all software.

Palm was once 128 US$ and now trades around 4 US$
that is not agood answer - at least not for Palm.

I thought PDA Buzz said there will be a new version of the PPC out at the end of this year?

www.palminfocenter.com/register.asp

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News Editor

-Andrew

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3. As I told the reporter, I am very confused by the relationship between Talisker, Merlin, ARM, SH-3, MIPS, Stinger, and several other acronyms and code names. It's not at all clear to me which of them will work with one-another and which ones won't. I'm sure we'll get clarity on that real soon, though.
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so you ARE confuse about all these? Despite the press release and reports around the net.

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4. In the meantime, in the real world of what people are buying, I just received a sales report showing that the Clie is starting to outsell the iPaq. It seems to me that's a nice validation of the Palm platform's momentum and strength.
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Can you explain this phenomenon beyond "that platform whatever momentum" corp talk?

ie. does this mean customer respond to good color screen and mp3 capability? Price? Sony's image?

and why can't Palm Inc. itself capture this "platform momentum"? (the number of 'outselling iPAQ' I take would be at the rate of 400k units/quarter. which is about what Palm Inc is selling in term of revenue)

care to elaborate exactly what that mean? Is that 4.0/4.5?