I've been watching this thread too, at first wondering why it did not die
quickly. But now it has gone in some good directions, so it's kept my
interest. Here's my two sense$:
> >Business vs Consumer
> >.....
> >Palm has tried to penetrate the business market for years, with
> >very limited success. They are very popular among consumers
> >but business applications are scarce. It's true that business users
> >might not care as much about color as consumers, but what they
> >definitely need is more screen real-estate. You can't display any
> >non-trivial business applications on 160x160 pixels (I'd love to see
> >counter examples with good usability). .....
>
> Having determined not to get involved in this thread, I find
> myself dragged in by this horribly erroneous statement.
>
> At Marietta Systems, we only do serious business applications.
> Order entry, Route Delivery, Inventory etc.. Usually with databases
> with tens of thousands of records.
>
> While we'd like higher res screens, the limit on how much stuff you
> can put on one screen is mainly restricted by the physical size of the
> screen, ambient lighting and the vision of the operator. Consequently
> we avoid the 'stdFont' and primarily use 'boldFont', 'largeFont', and
> when we can fit it, our personal favorite 'largeBoldFont'
>
> We used to write applications (and sometimes still do) on Symbol's
> DOS handheld computers with 4x20 and 8x20 screens (rows x col)
> and somtimes on 16x21 screens. Se we are very spoilt even on the
> current Palm OS screen.
>
> Roger Stringer
> Marietta Systems, Inc.
I agree that the screen real-estate is small, but so is the unit. Years
ago, we too dealt with smaller screens much like Roger. I have to side with
Roger completely, who can read (at least at my age) any smaller print than
stdFont. I have found the Visor Prism with it's backlite TFT to be the
easiest to read, but the units with the more typical gray on green
background in poor ambient light is beyond my eyes. I have to assume that
my customers agree.
If you need more data than will easily fit on one screen, use a pop-up list
to select well organized groups of data to be presented on the screen at a
time. We currently have 13 screens of medical data per patient in our app.
The users have never objected to this method of presentation.
Previously in this thread:
As to standardization of hardware, It would be real nice if the cradle
connectors on Palm units did not change so that add-on hardware would be
more compatible. Again, I like the Visor line in that it has the
springboard port that has stayed the same providing a common interface for
add-on hardware. Units like the Palm IIIc that won't take a Palm III
hardware add-on (it is 1/2" taller) is very frustrating to end users who
read advertising like "Works with Palm III".
As to IDEs, we are in Windows and using CW7. It's pretty good, all in all.
Some good comments have been posted in the last few days for improvements,
and I generally agree with these postings.
What I would really like to see is a good, proven development system that
provides for the development of software products that would (with little or
no extra work) run on the many platforms (Palm OS, Palm OS with hardware
variants (larger screens, more colors, etc), PPC, iPAQ, Jornada, etc). I
have heard of some of these, but I'm not seeing (but I am not saying I am
right - as many times I'm wrong) any IDE that comes from a known company,
financially stable, has lots of customers, etc.
Enuf ranting for me tonight.
Gary Gorsline
Easy Business Software
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