Comments on: OS 5 Handhelds to Need Half the Power of PPC Equivalents

The original poster may have something wrong with his M515 if it drains in one day. He must be referring to making it through the day without a significant change in battery level. Standby time should be a couple of months. The e310 has a claimed maximum battery life of 10 hours, or 20 days at 30 minutes per day. The M515 will do between 24 and 28 days, which is better than Palm advertised (7 days, or 3.5 hours continous). The most I've gotten is 31 days before the first low battery warning, but that included a lunchtime demo session with the sidelight on max for quite a while.

The battery life is improving on the PPC side thanks to improved power management, but I think most people still will have an issue with the OS even if the battery life were identical. Being powerful is not an advantage when combined with being cumbersome. Typing this post on my wife's laptop is a reminder of that... because I have to make constant corrections due to stiff keys from lack of use. I also have to reboot it a couple times a month to keep Windows running properly, even though it sits there idle most of the time. The laptop is several times more powerful than any Palm in many respects, but it just sits there since she got her M505.

Oh, yeah? Well my handheld can beat up your handheld.... =)

OS 3.5 does already. Just get a HandEra 330, or a Trgpro.

http://www.handera.com/accessories/ibmstorage.asp

Do you even bother to type the website in before you spout such nonsense. Here let me lead you by the hand to their website, which is up and running just fine. (And before you ask, no I do not use one, but they are a fine company)

http://www.handera.com

Sheesh! The ignorance. Do you work hard to be such a misinformed troglodyte?

Stop putting out bad information and leading folks away from what may be a good option for their needs.

"Pocket PC with Xscale processor with [sic] be":

- "twice as quick"
No, they will have CPUs that go as high as 400 MHz, but that doesn't mean PPC at 400 MHz will be twice as fast as Palm at 200 MHz. Since a 33 MHz Palm is as quick as a 200+ MHz PPC, we pretty much know that wont be the case for the ARM-based apps. Emulated apps may run more slowly, but no one knows yet. Also, MHz rating between different CPUs aren't the same and not all PPCs will run at 400 MHz.

- "consume less power"
This news item directly contradicts that. If you're claiming it's false, please cite your source.

- "there will be software for it, unlike what Palm has planned."
Almost all PalmOS4 software will run under OS5. PPC didn't offer such a path when they moved to the StrongARM... however, it appears there won't be the same problem during their StrongARM > X-scale switch. Also, since there's not much software for PPC (which especially lacks freeware), you're point is doubly-moot.

Go away you lying, ignorant, troll.

(1) The PPC is bloated and slow now on high speed processors. Switching to slightly faster processors isn't going to make it any better.

(2) This article, which you probably didn't bother to read, says that OS 5 handhelds will use half the power of PPC ones with the same chip.

(3) This one really shows that you have no clue what you talking about. OS 5 will be able to run at least 80% of the 13,000 Palm OS apps. Compare that to the couple dozen PPC apps out there.

Have you been reading up on Pocket PC? There are a whole lot of Jornada owners who are extremely pissed right now and many owners of Pocket PC's other licencees are also wondering how much longer there handhelds will be supported. MS et al have put a lot of money into these products and have made no money back.

Microsot has already said that their .net technology is what they will focus on next. Do you really think they will continue trying to support the failing PPC and Xbox?

The only good Palms out there are when Sony and TRG add things that the Pocket PC has built in, one off hacks are all that Palm can hope for. It'll be too little and too late by the time Palm gets to the party. It's too bad.

When PalmSource was benchmarking PACE apps, they found that they usually ran 3-4 times faster on a 75MHz ARM device versus a 33Mhz 68K device. On an app that had lots of computation and few OS calls, the 75MHz ARM emulating the 33Mhz 68K was running at about 60% of the real speed. In some graphics intensive apps that make lots of OS calls, the app running in PACE was over 30 times faster.

--
CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com

It can and it will. You obviously have no fathomable clue about the way Palm0S is written as compared to PocketPC. PalmOS runs smoothly on a 33mhz processor while PocketPC standard now is 200+mhz. Haven't you ever wondered why PalmOS uses over 6 times less clock cycles to power it?

"To regular user, it means will it play webpage with Flash smoother, display 500k .jpeg picture in a blink, or play some graphic rich game from external card without a hick up."

This part made me crack up. If you seriously think that Flash content (which implies wireless web access, as well), 500k jpg files and transfer speeds from solid state memory that rival transfer speeds directly from RAM will be reality by next year you're an extremely optimistic dope.

"The fact that it might run ababall 60% faster probably is an insignificant point, if it keeps choking on large spreadsheet or opening big bitmap pictures."

PalmOS can open large spreadsheets now with TinySheet. It can look at large pictures without choking through Fireviewer. All that on my 33mhz m505 and OS5 with a 200+mhz ARM running a very optimized emulator will just be that much faster.

With the megahertz gap removed, the only real differences will be in applications and user interface and the Palm OS has always dominated both of those, which is why it also dominates retail and direct sales.

Plus, as this article says, Palm will do it using less power. A handheld is only useful as long as it has power, which means Palms will be about twice as useful as PPCs. But hasn't that always been the case? ;-)

PPC is so doomed..

It is a shame that the PPC user who started this had not been a little less pragmatic.

Proud user of an Audiovox PPC.

Heh. PocketPC already has Flash 5, wireless web with several solutions, PC quality games (Argentum for PocketPC, using 1024x1024 landscapes) and speedy access already. You must be an extremely ignorant ass.

Nothing here but typical Palm FUD. Move along.

PalmOS & PalmOS apps also run more efficiently, are smaller (load less) and requires very little battery in standby mode (unlike PPC because of PPC 'unique' half storage/half RAM mode).

I think what finally affects the battery life is what the CPU is doing in the background. PalmOS 5 won't multitask (except clock, alarm systems etc) yet 9from what i read), so the CPU is only doing work for the current app unlike PPC which has so many things going on in the background that the whole unit slows down.

I see so many posters here daily who post their comments without reading the article you linked to to begin with.

The last time I posted information on another website (buzz or something....) all the lacky users there complained that the "didn't have the time to go looking for the information elsewere" - Egad! Talk about sheer laziness!

So, I was trying to make it "easier" for these "none-linked one-clicker's"....

Again, I apologize.....

Okay, as an English major in college, I think I can help here. It's *never* okay to quote an entire document, whether it's a book, web post or otherwise. It's okay to quote parts of a text, so long as you cite the source. Generally, you should never quote more than a paragraph at a time.

Also, with regards to web pages, you should generally post the URL instead because 1) if the site generates ad revenue, quoting it somewhere else means they don't get the ad hits, and 2) it just means more bandwidth is being used by the site where the text was copied to, probably costing them extra money.

PS you talk too much

We'll be driving the Ferrari (ARM based) using High-Octane fuel (Palm OS 5) while your wife will be using POSE to run her favorite Palm OS 4 program - ALL WITHOUT SLOWING down the Ferrari (ok, ok ... we MIGHT slow down to take a peek at your wife sitting next to us so we don't crash.) )

It's easy to say Palm is stable and simple now, something like mobile home being easy to maintain. But palm is trying to add feature of condominium to that mobile home beginning. And it won't be pretty.

No, we don't have mpeg players. BUT we can convert our mpegs to gMovie format and play them! In other words, there are limits. Just like the PPC has limits. Palm devices are behind on video. That is very true. BUT video isn't a MAJOR THING for PalmOS users, or PDA users in general. Really, it simply isn't that important. Although, I'd like to be able to watch streaming video and Flash content from my PDA, I think the only PDA with a proper screen for such silliness is Sony's NR70. Half-VGA is yummy.

Linux is still more than I think is necessary for a PDA OS.

Epson had a booth at the Palm show to demonstrate the various generations of their companion chips designed to add functionality to the PDA platform without adding too much overhead to power consumption.

Most recently, Epson has announced the S1D13A05 which combines an LCD graphics controller with USB and 246KB of SRAM display buffer. The new chip enables high (for a PDA) resolution displays of 320 x 320 and 65K color depths.

Epson's current wins include the Palm m505 and m515 (S1D13706), the Sony i503 NTT DoCoMo phone (S1D13706), the Samsung SPH-300 (S1D13705), the HP Jornada 420 and 540 (S1D13505), and the Jornada 720 (S1D13506).

From what I gather, you are much in favor of using your PDA as a "convergence" device. Everything in one unit, thus making it a shrunken laptop. I'm glad you're happy with it, really, I am.

On the other hand, my PalmOS based device does everything *I* need it to do. I have a computer for the rest. This works for me, and I couldn't afford a PocketPC anyway :P. I don't want to play Quake or watch movies on such a small screen (my eyes are not that good). I don't want to play MP3s and drain my battery life. You can get mp3 players for that, and quite cheaply too. I need my PDA battery life, every ounce. I don't even use a color PDA yet (though the m515 in the store tempted me). I don't even USE my PDA as much as many people, and this makes the battery life important to me, as I don't want it suddenly dead when I need it. Although, I do like reading eBooks, and occasionally write long things into my PDA, and have found that color can be very good to me, I can do with just the down to business PDA. Give me DateBk5, WordSmith, TinySheet, Docs-To-Go, and other simple, apps, plus a few games, and I am one happy Palm OS user.

In a couple years, we'll have inexpensive PalmOS 5 (6?) devices, and hopefully display technology and battery life have improved. This discussion will be meaningless. PocketPC and PalmOS will be on very similar hardware. PocketPC and PalmOS might even look and act completely different from what we have now.
PocketPC-dot-NET vs. PalmOS 6? Now THAT will be a flame war!

and i guess you must be one of the very few that claims Palm crashes more than PPC. Glad that's true for you... too bad it isn't true for most everyone, even the very ppc-focused websites.

... failure to imagine is the problem here, not everybody is 9to5 office worker who needs nothing beyond electronic organizer.