PocketPC will not be the price leader until they can sell a unit in the $99 - $149 bracket. Until then Palm will enjoy significant market share with folks not looking for a rhobust mobile platform.
Yes they will, but there is still now way of knowing how good the Tungsten will perform as a media device. For example, how do we know the volume level (through the headphone jack) is sufficient enough for music playback. Some early Pocket PCs, like the Jornada 540 series weren't very loud in that department. What about overall audio fidelity, bass, treble?
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Kent Pribbernow Elitist Snob, Contributing writer for Wired's Cult of Mac
I think the Tungsten is a beautiful device. I really like the slide-n-hide design. Palm has always (and will apparently continue to be) targetted the PIM user, not the add-on application user. Everything about the Tungsten is geared toward maximizing what a PIM can do, and that's not a bad thing, it just leaves one to wonder how many of these they will sell at $500 a pop. At about the same price, the Sony OSv5 devices (and not just the NX70) will offer more bang for the same buck.
As the baseline, what Palm HAS done here, that will be good for all of us, is that they've included Bluetooth, and a high-res screen as the base PDA. Sure, the Zire will be there for the low-budget market, but if you're Sony, you now have to beat the Tungsten, which means Bluetooth will be in the Sony devices soon. That means Bluetooth will need to be standard in the Pocket PC market soon, and that's a good thing for all of us.
It also means that the days of Palm enthusiasts comparing apples to oranges are finally coming to an end. It's been pointless to compare the price or battery life of the old Palms to the latest iPaqs, there is just no comparison hardware-wise. Well, now there is! I'm still a little awed that they are measuring battery life in terms of "typical use" - at the very least Pocket PC manufacturers should call their bluff on that (i.e. they should be saying "Battery life of two weeks of typical use (Total of 8-10 hrs. assuming 30 min/day)" ).
I'm also stunned that they don't include MP3 support. There will probably be a 3rd party app that does it (like Media Player for the Pocket PC) but they've really handed Sony a trump card in their own market with this one. Sony can put "MP3 Player" on the box and web sites and Palm simply can't.
Last point: I'm surprised that they didn't also make a model with the keyboard hidden like the Sharp Zaurus has. Does anyone know if Sharp has the patent on a slide-n-hide keyboard like that? They do have a keyboard model (Tungsten-W) coming out early in 2003 but the keyboard is between the screen and the HW buttons.
I've been playing with a Tungsten for about a day now as my e740 is still back at Toshiba as part of the recall. I have to say I'm more impressed than I thought I would be. The odd thing about the role reversal in Palm vs. PocketPC is that it works both ways. The Tungsten is faster than my e740 at almost everything I do, has a much nicer screen than any Pocket PC (yes I'd love a transreflective screen as well but the PPC feels claustrophobic after the Palm at 320x320, nevermind the Clie at 320x480), and supports integrated bluetooth at a reasonable cost which is still completely missing from the PPC camp. (The 3970 is not reasonable). Furthermore Wordsmith still easily trumps anything in the PPC world, altough TextMaker may eventually change this. I'm not getting rid of my e740 by any means but it is a little disappointing that in PPC's attempt to beat Palm at its own game it seems to have stopped any degree of innovation in what made PPC great in the first place. The article mentions that Palm has finally caught the iPAQ 36xx but PPC is still at that mark or lower in most specs. My iPAQ was faster than my e740 and had the same screen resolution. I bought a PPC originally over Palm based on increased CPU power, better screen resolution, better expandibility, and more powerful apps. Expandibility is still there although integrated bluetooth is huge but PPC's lead is largely diminished on the other points. I believe that Tungsten can be a bigger competitor than most people think. I'm not buying one but if Sony integrates Bluetooth any time soon I'd be very tempted. I think its great to see the PPC camp focused on creating affordable low-end devices but it would be nice to see some renewed innovation at the high-end as well. Stop trying to only fight Palm's strengths and go back to building on your own strengths.
What's worse, because the Tungsten has no built-in media software, it's high-end features can't be tested before making a purchase.
This is a good point. I've ranted about this before, and it's a big advantage for the PPCs. When you turn a PalmOS device on at a retail display case there is nothing interesting to see. The PIM apps are likely to be full of gibberish from someone entering random stokes in the Graffiti area. Even the Clies with their much-vaunted multimedia capabilities have a movie player loaded, but no sample video to see it in action!
In contrast, when you switch on the PocketPCs you get a Today screen with a colorful image in the background. Even if there is no sample data at least it says something like No Appointments today, etc. in the various slots. Anyone can look at that screen and see the value.
So moving back over to the Palm for comparison, let's press the To-Do button and see ...
Now, Palm has long bundled Documents to Go with their devices. And for the sake of argument let's assume that those apps are even better than PPC's Pocket Office apps. (And certainly we can stipulate that the Palm side with the choice of QuickOffice, iambic Office, WordSmith, TinySheet, etc. has better office productivity apps available.) But they are not loaded on the display devices. So clicking through the Start menu on the PocketPC shows the familiar Excel and Word applications. The Palm has nothing. Nothing but gibberish.
At this point in the consumer decision making process Palm does not have much going for it beyond its pricing advantages and name recognition.
Tungsten is going to get all the alledge infliction PPC has. heh
-incredibelly expensive for the hardware it comes with. This is pretty much unanimous across the net. (144mHz/ 8ROm/ 16Ram)
-It's pretty heavy, and thick. So now they can only say....we got the shortest PDA.(see how far that flies in the crowded market)
-It's crash left and right on older apps. Some ne apps interact badly with another new one etc. (email attachment, VFS related)
-PACE will run 80% of older software but the 20% will be your 80% most used software and 100% critical softwares. (magine your $100 bucks medical software can't run) at 97% of Clie 66Mhz.
-what multimedia? (so far only Beta Kinoma player)
-what web browser? (they still use that proxy client for this model, apparently Sony won't share their browser)
So it's Expensive, underpowered, crash prone, and has no compelling new softwares.
In contrast, when you switch on the PocketPCs you get a Today screen with a colorful image in the background. Even if there is no sample data at least it says something like No Appointments today, etc. in the various slots. Anyone can look at that screen and see the value.
So moving back over to the Palm for comparison, let's press the To-Do button and see ...
And when you do look in the Pocket PC you actually see real data. That is because no one can use Grafitti without training. I'd bet some of the more popular third party SIPs for the NX series will be regular character recognition programs like Character Recognizer or Jot.
PocketPC will not be the price leader until they can sell a unit in the $99 - $149 bracket. Until then Palm will enjoy significant market share with folks not looking for a rhobust mobile platform.
this is true, to a certain extent. however, when people will look at the different items on the shelf and see that for an extra $100 or $150, they can get a video player, audio player, transflective screen, and not worry about evil graffiti, i think that a lot of users will be drawn to the pocket pc.
Palm has always (and will apparently continue to be) targetted the PIM user, not the add-on application user. Everything about the Tungsten is geared toward maximizing what a PIM can do, and that's not a bad thing, it just leaves one to wonder how many of these they will sell at $500 a pop.
A major thing, though, is that so much criticism has gone to Palm because Pocket PC could and can do all the PIM functions that Palm can, as well as multimedia and more powerful functionalities. A lot of Palm users have replied "well with OS 5, we'll be able to do all that!"
So now the question is if Pocket PC can do all that Palm can and more, and it's cheaper, then why go with Palm?
...It's been pointless to compare the price or battery life of the old Palms to the latest iPaqs, there is just no comparison hardware-wise...I'm also stunned that they don't include MP3 support.
FWIW, I've always felt that statements like this are a bit contradictory. The spec differences between the two types of devices continue to make comparisons a bit meaningless. The very nicest Palm's specs still cannot hold a candle to the basest Pocket PC. I guess what I'm getting at is that everyone might THINK Palm and Pocket PC compete in the same market, but they each serve VERY different segments.
Re: NX70 does have voice recording...
Linear Mode
