Clinton Fitch on the State of Today's Microsoft Mobile Office Applications

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.clintonfitch.com/editorials/102005/msofficego.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.clintonfitch.com/editori.../msofficego.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"When Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs first hit the market in the mid to late 90s, the typical user knew and expected there to be limitations to what could be done... this was also an era in time when laptop computers were rare and extremely costly, cellular phones were still the size of bricks and the Internet was far from encompassing. Fast forward to today. I'm writing this editorial on a laptop that cost me less than $1,000... My cellular coverage with my Audiovox SMT5600 Smartphone is national and I spend less than $100 per month for it, my wife and daughter’s cell phones – combined!... Yet on my Dell x50v, I still have essentially what I had in 1998 when it comes to Office applications."</i><br /><br />We've all griped about it at one time or another. The Microsoft Office applications on the Pocket PC are simply poor equivalents of their PC-based counterparts. Clinton suggests that instead of improving or upgrading the Office applications, Microsoft should completely strip them out and rebuild the entire suite from the ground up to make a full-powered Office suite for mobile users. It's an intriguing point, though I personally see some logistical issues involved. <br /><!><br />First, while Clinton correctly points out that most of us possess massive external storage space to carry a true Office solution, such a solution would no longer be "out-of-the-box" as it would require the external card plus an install CD just for Office. Second, the effort involved would be nearly equivalent to the PC counterparts... the difference is that Microsoft Office for the PC comes with a major pricetag to help justify the effort. Could such an effort for Windows Mobile devices be a cost-effective solution for Microsoft? Finally, there's the question of required horsepower from today's Windows Mobile devices. Would there be enough for this kind of solution? <br /><br />Don't get me wrong. I'm all for a better Microsoft Mobile Office suite, I'm just not sold on rebuilding it into a multi-hundred megabyte suite that rivals what we have on our PC (though I may have a different opinion regarding rebuilding Pocket IE). How about all you folks? Give us your thoughts.

[lapchinj]

I think that you mention the key problem with rebuilding the office apps for the PPC and that's its size. Just because we have affordable multi-gig storage cards does not mean we should now fill them up with office installations. Besides who wants to start carrying and swapping cards just to edit a document.

There is also a limit to what can be done on the PPC using an office suite. I could not see myself putting together a business proposal using pocket word or editing some complicated spreadsheet with pocket excel. For these I would be much better off using either a PC or laptop. My x50v (at least for me) is only supposed to be an extention of my of my desktop and let work in the field and not that it should replace my desktop which I guess a rebuild is meant to do. We have apps such as PI and AF with a bunch of great Today Plugins which take care of all my needs quite nicely.

Jeff-

[Paragon]

Ekkie,

I agree there are some logistical problems associated with including full Office apps on a PPC. Most people don't need or want much more than what is available now, so the price in money as well as memory is quite high just to please the minority.

I've often thought that MS should develop a full featured Office suite for Mobile Devices which is sold seperately. Perhaps if it was bundled with the desktop version of Office. Add a couple of bucks to the cost and put that money into the Mobile Device sales. It could be a nice boost in revenue. Plus imagine the added exposure that Window Mobile would get if there was a picture of a mobile device on every Office box, with a slogan something like "Take your Office documents with you anywhere."

[CTSLICK]

I'd be happy if they spent their time and energies perfecting my "round-trip" experience. I can't count the number of Word docs that I have really messed up (formatting-wise) by trying to proof on my handheld and then send back to my desktop later.

As far as power and capabilities of the apps I think TextMaker hits the mark in terms of a MS Word mobile "partner software". Anything beyond that stretches what I want to try and accomplish on my pda.

[Horus]

The Office apps in WM5, while still short of TextMaker/PlanMaker and the desktop suite, are much improved - including the roundtripping, new features like Charts in Excel, and a pretty powerful Powerpoint viewer.
I've seen a lot fewer issues with roundtripping too.

[wkspear]

Oh boy, is this one of my hot button issues.

Okay, I both understand and agree that a full-blown office app on my Pocket PC may not be practical. But here's the issue as I see it. The pocket office concept undermines the notion of a pda as an extension of my laptop/desktop. Here's why: when I move a document back and forth, ActiveSync tosses out essential data and in effect creates a new type of file, not merely a simplified version. It's another creature once you cross the laptop/pda divide. E.g., my Word documents become psw files and lose pretty much everything except basic text formatting (bold, italic, underlining). If I want to make simple textual changes to a document, I can't simply access the doc file on my pda in a simplied format and then send it back, intact, to my desktop when I'm back in the office. I have to come up with another plan, like keeping track of my modifications and cutting and pasting them into the doc file.

So maybe it's not practical to support every desktop function on the pda, but could the data somehow survive the trip intact? Surely someone is clever enough at Microsoft to do this. It's goofy to me that your pda would force you to throw out your data. Imagine if pocket contacts didn't support zip codes, &amp; you had to re-enter them on your desktop side after every sync. It's not right people.

[Paragon]

Oh boy, is this one of my hot button issues.

Okay, I both understand and agree that a full-blown office app on my Pocket PC may not be practical. But here's the issue as I see it. The pocket office concept undermines the notion of a pda as an extension of my laptop/desktop. Here's why: when I move a document back and forth, ActiveSync tosses out essential data and in effect creates a new type of file, not merely a simplified version. It's another creature once you cross the laptop/pda divide. E.g., my Word documents become psw files and lose pretty much everything except basic text formatting (bold, italic, underlining). If I want to make simple textual changes to a document, I can't simply access the doc file on my pda in a simplied format and then send it back, intact, to my desktop when I'm back in the office. I have to come up with another plan, like keeping track of my modifications and cutting and pasting them into the doc file.

So maybe it's not practical to support every desktop function on the pda, but could the data somehow survive the trip intact? Surely someone is clever enough at Microsoft to do this. It's goofy to me that your pda would force you to throw out your data. Imagine if pocket contacts didn't support zip codes, &amp; you had to re-enter them on your desktop side after every sync. It's not right people.

wkspear,

Most of your concerns have been addressed in WM5.0. Roundtripping is now much better. There is no conversion to pocket formats. .psw is gone. Word documents in WM5.0 devices are now word .doc, the same as on a desktop. To my knowledge nothing is lost when moving from desktop to mobile device, and back again. Their are things that can't be viewed, or may be viewed differently on a mobile device, but no data is stripped in Word. This almost the same in Excel. Excel files stay as .xls. Viewing may change, and there are function that are not possible on a mobile device. For the most part there is no data stripped in Excel. BUT I believe there are some circumstances in Excel where data can be stripped, but you are warned before hand. Hopefully someone will verify that bit for me.

The functionality of both has been expanded on both as well. In Excel you can now do charts. Word now supports tables, and several other features.

Dave

[pocketpcadmirer]

Oh boy, is this one of my hot button issues.

Okay, I both understand and agree that a full-blown office app on my Pocket PC may not be practical. But here's the issue as I see it. The pocket office concept undermines the notion of a pda as an extension of my laptop/desktop. Here's why: when I move a document back and forth, ActiveSync tosses out essential data and in effect creates a new type of file, not merely a simplified version. It's another creature once you cross the laptop/pda divide. E.g., my Word documents become psw files and lose pretty much everything except basic text formatting (bold, italic, underlining). If I want to make simple textual changes to a document, I can't simply access the doc file on my pda in a simplied format and then send it back, intact, to my desktop when I'm back in the office. I have to come up with another plan, like keeping track of my modifications and cutting and pasting them into the doc file.

So maybe it's not practical to support every desktop function on the pda, but could the data somehow survive the trip intact? Surely someone is clever enough at Microsoft to do this. It's goofy to me that your pda would force you to throw out your data. Imagine if pocket contacts didn't support zip codes, &amp; you had to re-enter them on your desktop side after every sync. It's not right people.

What I think that if the core apps cant provide the same functionality as their desktop brothers they DONT HAVE ANY RIGHT TO BLOW EM AWAY !! I mean if I receive an email from my college teacher containg a word document containg several images then the stupid(i hv to use this wrd) pocket word just wont display them. I know third party apps do rectify my problem but I want the functionality from builtin apps which are desgined by M$ itself :!:

Sunny

[Perry Reed]

According to the office 12 team, the latest version of Word has something like 1500 functions, most of which the average user, in my opinon, will never need. So I'd be happy if, for the Mobile version, we had maybe the top 25% of the features of the full desktop version and perfect round-trip file compatibility. That would satisfy most mobile users and still let Microsoft command a price premium for the desktop version.

[pocketpcadmirer]

Oh boy, is this one of my hot button issues.

Okay, I both understand and agree that a full-blown office app on my Pocket PC may not be practical. But here's the issue as I see it. The pocket office concept undermines the notion of a pda as an extension of my laptop/desktop. Here's why: when I move a document back and forth, ActiveSync tosses out essential data and in effect creates a new type of file, not merely a simplified version. It's another creature once you cross the laptop/pda divide. E.g., my Word documents become psw files and lose pretty much everything except basic text formatting (bold, italic, underlining). If I want to make simple textual changes to a document, I can't simply access the doc file on my pda in a simplied format and then send it back, intact, to my desktop when I'm back in the office. I have to come up with another plan, like keeping track of my modifications and cutting and pasting them into the doc file.

So maybe it's not practical to support every desktop function on the pda, but could the data somehow survive the trip intact? Surely someone is clever enough at Microsoft to do this. It's goofy to me that your pda would force you to throw out your data. Imagine if pocket contacts didn't support zip codes, &amp; you had to re-enter them on your desktop side after every sync. It's not right people.

wkspear,

Most of your concerns have been addressed in WM5.0. Roundtripping is now much better. There is no conversion to pocket formats. .psw is gone. Word documents in WM5.0 devices are now word .doc, the same as on a desktop. To my knowledge nothing is lost when moving from desktop to mobile device, and back again. Their are things that can't be viewed, or may be viewed differently on a mobile device, but no data is stripped in Word. This almost the same in Excel. Excel files stay as .xls. Viewing may change, and there are function that are not possible on a mobile device. For the most part there is no data stripped in Excel. BUT I believe there are some circumstances in Excel where data can be stripped, but you are warned before hand. Hopefully someone will verify that bit for me.

The functionality of both has been expanded on both as well. In Excel you can now do charts. Word now supports tables, and several other features.

Dave

Ok Dave I agree that MS has provided a solution to our problems. According to me they should release a fix so that we the win mobile SE owners get the functionality we ppl deserve. At least this is what I expected when moving from win 2003 to win 2003 SE device(ipaq 2215 to xda o2 mini). I gave like $600 on it just to have lame functionality. Big NO NO !! THEY HAVE HORNSWOGGLED ME !!

[lapchinj]

...Most of your concerns have been addressed in WM5.0. Roundtripping is now much better. There is no conversion to pocket formats. .psw is gone. Word documents in WM5.0 devices are now word .doc, the same as on a desktop. To my knowledge nothing is lost when moving from desktop to mobile device, and back again. Their are things that can't be viewed, or may be viewed differently on a mobile device, but no data is stripped in Word. This almost the same in Excel. Excel files stay as .xls. Viewing may change, and there are function that are not possible on a mobile device. ...
This is very welcome news. I've used Textmaker for a couple of years because of this roundtrip problem.

Jeff-

[Paragon]

I want the functionality from builtin apps which are desgined by M$ itself :!:

Sunny

Hey no problem Sunny......well maybe just one.... MS Office 2003 Standard Edition is 209MB. I'm pretty darn sure that won't fit on any existing ROM chips in use today. I guess they could upgrade the ROM so it would fit, and add the cost of a ROM chip that size plus the cost of Office 2003 Standard Edition. That should about double the cost of a device.....or they could strip functionality to where there is a balance between cost, size and functionality. I think in WM5.0 they have come a long way in that endevour.

Even if they were to build apps similar to Softmaker they would be equal or bigger than the entire OS is now.

[lapchinj]

...I guess they could upgrade the ROM so it would fit, and add the cost of a ROM chip that size plus the cost of Office 2003 Standard Edition. That should about double the cost of a device.....
Probably would look like a laptop by the time all those changes were made :wink: .

Jeff-

[pocketpcadmirer]

I want the functionality from builtin apps which are desgined by M$ itself :!:

Sunny

Hey no problem Sunny......well maybe just one.... MS Office 2003 Standard Edition is 209MB. I'm pretty darn sure that won't fit on any existing ROM chips in use today. I guess they could upgrade the ROM so it would fit, and add the cost of a ROM chip that size plus the cost of Office 2003 Standard Edition. That should about double the cost of a device.....or they could strip functionality to where there is a balance between cost, size and functionality. I think in WM5.0 they have come a long way in that endevour.

Even if they were to build apps similar to Softmaker they would be equal or bigger than the entire OS is now.

Look I dont want desktop kinda functionality because its aint possible on a small screen but they can atleast add the 'little more basic than bold italics' features. that is exactly wat i meant to say dear..
I dont need 250 mb installations on my ppc !! A 10 mb wouls suffice !!
sunny

[Paragon]

A 10 mb wouls suffice !!


10Mb is still far too big for a single app to be included as part of the WM ROM package. I'm not sure the majority of users want to pay more for a device with the needed extra memory or development costs associated with building those 10Mb sized apps, so the few who want it, can.

Just my personal feeling, but I think the functionality in the Office apps in WM5.0 is getting pretty close to what is needed weighed against, cost and memory. If you need more, there is Softmaker......Or like I suggested at the begining, have MS develop full featured applications as add ons for those who need them, and want to bear the extra cost.

Dave

[wkspear]

I think maybe there's more to say on the topics of "most people don't want full Office support" and "10 mb is too much for a ROM installation."

Actually, if we're going to make assumptions about what most people want, my guess would be an iPod or a smart phone, not a pocket pc. I wish the theory that we didn't want fuller Office support had been tested with actual device options along the way.

How many hardware devices are we expected to buy as this software puzzle is pieced together upgrade by upgrade? As it happens, I'm not a billionaire.

[thenikjones2]

For the most part there is no data stripped in Excel. BUT I believe there are some circumstances in Excel where data can be stripped, but you are warned before hand. Hopefully someone will verify that bit for me.

Dave

You permanently lose Comments in cells. I currently get round this by using a column for comments, but will go back to Planmaker once it works on WM5 (I find it doesn't contrary to Softmaker's assertions. Textmaker works fine, though)

[Peseta]

I can't comment on the newest Mobile Office apps because I don't own a WM5 device, as most "normal" consumers, because there is hardly any device or upgrade available yet.

However already for a few years Softmaker has made the perfect solution for a fair price. First with Textmaker and later with Planmaker.
Therefore I don't see any need for MS to put much effort in improving their lackluster Mobile Office. Leave that to the already very successfull Softmaker people (an application for Powerpoint files would be nice).

:bad-words: (start rant)
Microsoft better use its resources to improve functions we can't live without for basic PDA usability and for instance at last develop:
- a good syncing solution (keeping wifi, no double appointments after restore, keeping partnership after hard reset, etc.)
- more intuitive multiple wireless connections (had to read multiple forums before knowing how to connect to internet with both wifi and GPRS and still have to change setting when using wifi after having used GPRS)
- ability to use bluetooth an wifi simultanuously
- reliable power up with alarms
- standard taskswitcher with option to exit besides minimize (also options available in the market, however in my view basic function of OS)
- push email (promises, promises ...)
- etc.
(end rant) :deadhorse:

[Paragon]

You permanently lose Comments in cells. I currently get round this by using a column for comments,

Thanks, I wasn't sure.

[Paragon]

:bad-words: (start rant)
Microsoft better use its resources to improve functions we can't live without for basic PDA usability and for instance at last develop:
- a good syncing solution (keeping wifi, no double appointments after restore, keeping partnership after hard reset, etc.)
- more intuitive multiple wireless connections (had to read multiple forums before knowing how to connect to internet with both wifi and GPRS and still have to change setting when using wifi after having used GPRS)
- ability to use bluetooth an wifi simultanuously
- reliable power up with alarms
- standard taskswitcher with option to exit besides minimize (also options available in the market, however in my view basic function of OS)
- push email (promises, promises ...)
- etc.
(end rant) :deadhorse:

This has usually been my rant as well. I was far from pleased when I learned they were going to include a Powerpoint app in WM5.0, when there were already several third party solutions. They could have fixed some of the issues you mention instead.....Then they announced that they were stripping WiFi out of Activesync because they didn't have the resources to fix the problem. How completely *%^$ing stupid. Now we here it will likley be months before the feature pack for WM5.0 will be available to enable push email....but hey.... At least now we have useless PPT viewer taking up ROM space. :devilboy:

Dave

[whydidnt]

I think Paragon has the right idea: Ship a somewhat limited version of the apps in ROM, as they do today. Then include a more full-featured version of the apps with the full version of Office. This lets M$ protect their cash cow, while enabling access to more features on the handheld. I just wonder if there is a big enough market for these apps to justify the additional expense, especially since Text Maker and Plan Maker already fit that niche.

I think WM5.0 has improved the sync function to reduce the amount of lost data, but ANY amount of lost data is unacceptable. They need to fix the current apps so that this never happens. If you can't display comments in Excel, great don't display them, but don't delete them!!

[Pony99CA]

Ok Dave I agree that MS has provided a solution to our problems. According to me they should release a fix so that we the win mobile SE owners get the functionality we ppl deserve. At least this is what I expected when moving from win 2003 to win 2003 SE device(ipaq 2215 to xda o2 mini). I gave like $600 on it just to have lame functionality. Big NO NO !! THEY HAVE HORNSWOGGLED ME !!
Did you see anything from Microsoft saying that Windows Mobile 2003 SE would have improved office functions? If not, how can you possibly claim you were hornswoggled?

WM 2003 SE contained landscape support and improved viewing in Pocket IE, both of which seem more useful to connected PDA users. I think an improved E-mail client would also be more useful to PDA users than improved Office.

As for the $600 price, you do realize that Pocket PC phones are more expensive than non-phone devices (even when the software is almost exactly the same), right?

Steve

[Pony99CA]

I think Paragon has the right idea: Ship a somewhat limited version of the apps in ROM, as they do today. Then include a more full-featured version of the apps with the full version of Office.
Be careful what you wish for, because you might end up with something more like what happens with other Microsoft applications. For example, Streets &amp; Trips gives you a much more limited Pocket Streets (no routing, map size limits, etc.) and Microsoft Money gives you a very limited Money.

I think WM5.0 has improved the sync function to reduce the amount of lost data, but ANY amount of lost data is unacceptable. They need to fix the current apps so that this never happens. If you can't display comments in Excel, great don't display them, but don't delete them!!
While it's true that any lost data is bad, I think improving the roundtripping is a good start. As long as you know what can cause problems and get warned that data could be lost, it's an acceptable compromise.

That said, you do have to wonder why Pocket Word and Pocket Excel can't just ignore unrecognized features (like Web browsers ignore unrecognized tags). I suppose one reason could be because it would be hard to know when to display data (data in tables in pre-WM 5 Word) and when to not display it (comments).

Steve

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I've often thought that MS should develop a full featured Office suite for Mobile Devices which is sold seperately. Perhaps if it was bundled with the desktop version of Office. Add a couple of bucks to the cost and put that money into the Mobile Device sales. It could be a nice boost in revenue.
I admit, I do like that idea better. They could rebrand the current Pocket Word and Pocket Excel to Pocket Word LE or Excel LE. The commercial package would come with an additional charge, thus providing more incentive for MS to create an enterprise-class solution; at the end of the day though, it would be two separate development efforts. I couldn't see any code being ported (though I'm sure some design aspects would be similar), and to the point made by whydidnt, would there be enough sales to justify the cost? It would be interesting to see.

Here's another thought. Going off my prior post last week (where I happily discovered that lots of folks would like to smack me upside the head ;)), if handheld PCs with instant-on capability become a reality within the next 2-3 years, would it make sense for MS to invest time into such an effort when their PC suite would theoretically run off of the handheld PC with no porting required?

[pocketpcadmirer]

Ok Dave I agree that MS has provided a solution to our problems. According to me they should release a fix so that we the win mobile SE owners get the functionality we ppl deserve. At least this is what I expected when moving from win 2003 to win 2003 SE device(ipaq 2215 to xda o2 mini). I gave like $600 on it just to have lame functionality. Big NO NO !! THEY HAVE HORNSWOGGLED ME !!
Did you see anything from Microsoft saying that Windows Mobile 2003 SE would have improved office functions? If not, how can you possibly claim you were hornswoggled?

WM 2003 SE contained landscape support and improved viewing in Pocket IE, both of which seem more useful to connected PDA users. I think an improved E-mail client would also be more useful to PDA users than improved Office.

As for the $600 price, you do realize that Pocket PC phones are more expensive than non-phone devices (even when the software is almost exactly the same), right?

Steve

Well yes Sir !! There were a lot of undocumented stuff about the win 2003 se enchancements(!) which I discovered. I thought that the microsoft would have improved office suite's functionality. but i was wrong. Poor o2 instead gave Westekk suite which just dont do justice. This shows that even big companies like HTC dont have commensurate faith on them ie da m$
Face it, truth is many-a-times bitter !!

Sunny

[whydidnt]

Here's another thought. ...if handheld PCs with instant-on capability become a reality within the next 2-3 years, would it make sense for MS to invest time into such an effort when their PC suite would theoretically run off of the handheld PC with no porting required?

I don't think instant on is the magic bullet. My OQO is in usuable state from standby within 3-4 seconds. That in itself isn't the issue. What is the issue is that most current software and hardware combinations don't provide "instant" launching of applications, are not designed to conserve battery life and have UI's designed for high resolution screens.

However, if all of the above could be overcome, then I agree completely, it wouldn't make much sense to invest in improving the WM suite of apps, since why would we buy a PPC if we could get a similar sized PC that ran all of the apps we have on the desktop.

Despite having a marginally higher resolution the OQO kicks A$$ on my VGA PPC when browsing the internet. Simply because it has a real browser. I can surf for hours on the OQO without getting frustrated by poorly rendered pages, or having to scroll side to side, or not being able to view certain websites, it just works. The same can't be said about browsing the internet on a PPC, not to mention how slow PIE is in rendering web sites. However, managing simple Word documents is much easier on the PPC, because the UI is designed for the lower resolution and the docs and program load instantly. If MS and Intel can figure out how to bring these two worlds together, then yeehah :mrgreen:

[Pony99CA]

Ok Dave I agree that MS has provided a solution to our problems. According to me they should release a fix so that we the win mobile SE owners get the functionality we ppl deserve. At least this is what I expected when moving from win 2003 to win 2003 SE device(ipaq 2215 to xda o2 mini). I gave like $600 on it just to have lame functionality. Big NO NO !! THEY HAVE HORNSWOGGLED ME !!
Did you see anything from Microsoft saying that Windows Mobile 2003 SE would have improved office functions? If not, how can you possibly claim you were hornswoggled?
Well yes Sir !! There were a lot of undocumented stuff about the win 2003 se enchancements(!) which I discovered. I thought that the microsoft would have improved office suite's functionality. but i was wrong. Poor o2 instead gave Westekk suite which just dont do justice. This shows that even big companies like HTC dont have commensurate faith on them ie da m$
Face it, truth is many-a-times bitter !!
That reply doesn't really answer the question. Where did you see this "undocumented stuff"? If it was on the forums, those are what we call "rumors".

Unless you saw an official Microsoft (or maybe O2) document saying there were Pocket Office improvements, you really don't have the right to feel cheated. If you did see such a document, please provide a link to it if you can.

I think most of us want Pocket Office to be better, and we even complain a lot about it. However, the people who should really feel cheated are those buying their first Pocket PCs thinking that Pocket Word and Pocket Excel are fairly close to their desktop cousins.

Steve

[desertrat_blog]

if handheld PCs with instant-on capability become a reality within the next 2-3 years


Huh? These have been available ever since Psion launched their classic Series 3 in 1991.


would it make sense for MS to invest time into such an effort when their PC suite would theoretically run off of the handheld PC with no porting required?

You can already run a full office suite on a handheld pc today. It's just that the OS the handheld pc runs is not from M$, and the office suite in question is not from M$.

With a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100 you could be running Openoffice. And this is not a cut-down version but rather the full version OOo 1.x as you would find for the "desktop". Which means:

- full featured wordprocessor
- full featured spreadsheet
- full featured presentation software
- full featured vector drawing software
- printing to a networked printer

If you think OOo is a bit OTT then try Abiword (for wordprocessing) and Gnumeric (for spreadsheet), both are much less demanding on resources and quicker to run than OOo.

OOo, Abiword &amp; Gnumeric offer much better compatibility with M$ Office documents than the PocketRubbish that comes with PocketOffice.

And of course you can run a real browser (Mozilla/Firefox) instead of the crippleware that M$ provides.

It's funny how a bunch of mostly unpaid volunteers can do what M$ with all it's $$$ can't do.

[Pony99CA]

You can already run a full office suite on a handheld pc today. It's just that the OS the handheld pc runs is not from M$, and the office suite in question is not from M$.

With a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100 you could be running Openoffice. And this is not a cut-down version but rather the full version OOo 1.x as you would find for the "desktop".

It's a nice looking device, but it doesn't have WiFi or Bluetooth (or cellular) built-in (as mentioned in Mobile Review (http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/sharp-c3100-en.shtml). (You can apparently add WiFi or Bluetooth using CF or SD cards.)

It's also not for sale in the U.S., but you can get one from Dynamism (http://www.dynamism.com/sl-c3000/pricing.shtml) -- if you want to spend $900 (not including any WiFi or Bluetooth add-ons). 8O

Steve

[desertrat_blog]

It's a nice looking device, but it doesn't have WiFi or Bluetooth (or cellular) built-in (as mentioned in Mobile Review (http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/sharp-c3100-en.shtml). (You can apparently add WiFi or Bluetooth using CF or SD cards.)


Well to "compensate", it does come with a 4GB microdrive builtin which frees up the CF slot for a WiFi card (they're not expensive about USD40 for an Ambicom). It also does USB-host which means you can a USB dongle for bluetooth (yes, it will make your machine look funny with a dongle dangling off the back of it!). Incidently the USB-host is of far greater use on the C3100 than that of the one on my A730W. The only thing which worked on the A730W was a mouse (very useful, NOT), whereas on the C3100 I've been able to connect card readers, webcam, mp3 player, digicam etc.

And then there's the keyboard. I had originally thought I could live without a keyboard when I bought the A730W, after all millions of Palm users can't be wrong (but they can be (re: eating habits of flies!)). The keyboard can be folded away and the machine used in portrait mode if you so wish.


It's also not for sale in the U.S., but you can get one from Dynamism (http://www.dynamism.com/sl-c3000/pricing.shtml) -- if you want to spend $900 (not including any WiFi or Bluetooth add-ons).

I got mine from www.pricejapan.com, cost me the equivalent of around USD520 (and don't worry about it being a Japanese language model, it is dead easy to convert to English).

All told I've spent around the same amount, USD600, on both the C3100 and the A730W. But at the end of the day I have a much more stable, powerful, flexible and hence useful system with the C3100.

I have access to a whole spectrum of "desktop-strength" applications without having to pay a penny. And aside from the money saved, because I'm using practically the same apps as on my desktop there are no icky problems with file conversion and other such nonsense. For my needs, the C3100 really has obseleted the necessity to carry a laptop even for longish trips.

And best of all is the community. Don't like the rom that Sharp provides? No worries, thanks to the power of the "GPL virus" there are plenty of choices:

http://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showforum=142

Note that the terrific support for the whole range of Zaurus machines[1]. Try getting a WM5 upgrade (http://vip.asus.com/forum/bbs_view.aspx?board_id=6&amp;model_name=MyPal+A730W&amp;message_id=20050724234957129&amp;filter=5&amp;page_size=10&amp;elite=0&amp;SLanguage=en-us&amp;topic_page=1&amp;page_cnt=5&amp;recc=48) for the A730W!

Once again a bunch of talented, motivated, unpaid volunteers can (given the chance, ie GPL virus) do what a faceless corporation refuses to do.

[1] This obviously does not include their ancient Zaurus range which did not use Linux.

[Sven Johannsen]

Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100

It's also not for sale in the U.S., but you can get one from Dynamism (http://www.dynamism.com/sl-c3000/pricing.shtml) -- if you want to spend $900 (not including any WiFi or Bluetooth add-ons). 8O

Steve

I wouldn't diss the price too much. The HTC Universal seems a reasonably similar device and is over $1000. Yea the Zaurus doesn't have the radios, but the Universal doesn't sport a hard drive and two Flash format slots, and USB host. Not to mention better MS and web compatibility on the Zaurus?

Anyone here tried DocumentsToGo on a Palm? How do they really stack up.