> one. So for us the Palm fills the bill; compared CE devices are too
>> big, too expensive, not daylight readable, and lets face it, a
>> MicroSloth product :(. Just my 2 cents.
>
>All valid points. But I'd like to point out that the palm originally
>had a much higher price and less resources. But developers and users
>demanded more. More RAM; more speed; more capabilities. And users
>want things like sound, larger screen, and color. Prices and size
>always come down.
>
>Users want this and users will get this. Anyone who thinks the world
>will stay with a small b/w unit, when they can get the same
>footprint, with color, larger screen and sound, is burying thier head
>in the sand.
>
>Right now the Pocket PC is about the same size as a palm (slightly
>larger). It is a competitor to the Palm IIIc which costs about the
>same. Eventually, all b/w devices will go away. How many laptops do
>you see in b/w now? NONE! Because users will demand color. I doubt
>that the PocketPC will ever have a b/w unit.
>
>I like the palm myself, am a developer, user and very long time
>proponent of hand held computing devices and I am now seriously
>looking at the PocketPC as another option. I'm not giving up on the
>palm, I'm just expanding to the new PocketPC devices.
>
It's a good rationalization, and yes, those Cassiopeia's are pretty
nice exec toys...but there is still a great deal of overhead involved
with CE devices. I know in my branch of the industry(POS), color is
completely pointless. Speed, simplicity, and battery life are the
three deciding factors of a winning solution. I figure, if you want
to play movies, listen to MP3's, and play computer games, get a Sony
VAIO laptop. They're small enough, and you can easily copy all your
current desktop apps over to it, without having to modify the source
code, etc. The real deciding factor in all of this is cost, including
software cost. No one really (unless they have money to burn) wants
to run out and buy new software for their handheld, when they could
just reuse the software they purchased for their desktop on a laptop.
Color is a sales point, and one that Microsoft doesn't really have
cornered anymore.
Personally, I see absolutely no point in having a PocketPC, aside from
showing it off to friends and using it as a status symbol. Comparing
laptops, which people play games and multimedia on, to a
PDA is a meaningless comparison. The core purpose of a PDA is as an
efficiency/organization/communication tool. Games/movies/MP3's make
employees inefficient, take up space that could be devoted to storing
personal information and efficiency apps, etc. Microsoft has decided
that it would like to shrink the laptop down to the size of a Palm.
Good for them. Microsoft can do whatever it wants to, including make
mistakes.
//* Rus Daniel Nesse
//* Application Development
//* Avnet Convergent Technologies
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