02-06-2003, 04:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Round Tripping - Oh The Shame Of It All
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20030206.html
Walt Mossberg chose to discuss the dark ugly secret of the Pocket PC in his "Personal Technology" column today. No, not Connection Manager.  Support for Microsoft Office documents. While nearly 3 years ago the Pocket PC had the best support for Office Documents on any handheld, today, it is a distant second. Few improvements have been made to the miniature suite. Pocket Word now has a spell checker, but that is about all that is new since April of 2000. The bottom line is, Palm OS devices, through third party apps usually bundled with a new device, have the best Office support today, not the Pocket PC.
Oh the humanity!  ops:
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02-06-2003, 04:11 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 206
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Somebody, send this wallstreet guy a copy of Textmaker and SpreadCE already.
"Anyone seeking to view or edit Office documents on a PDA would do fine with a Palm-based model and Documents To Go -- better, in many respects, than somebody using a Pocket PC." <<--- this is a clueless statement from a techno columnist.
Jessh, Microsoft really has to buy this mossberg guy. If Handspring can sucker this guy, sure as hell Microsoft can do better.
PS. PPCT need to have picture attachment: anyway somebody email that mossberg dude this screenshot! (lol)
http://discussion.brighthand.com/sho...449#post456449
PPS. Say, whatever happen to that WashingtonPost dude guy anyway? Is he still running on his Clie?
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02-06-2003, 04:23 PM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 5,133
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by TawnerX
Somebody, send this wallstreet guy a copy of Textmaker and SpreadCE already.
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Yes, but I think the point is what you can do with the device out-of-box. Even though Palm's use 3rd party software for MS Office support, it's usually bundled with the device. Don't have to buy anything additional, and it's apparently much better than what comes with PPC PDAs (though I have not tried the Palm versions).
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02-06-2003, 04:25 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 300
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well....
I think that since TextMaker just recently came out of Beta, and into customer's hands, it might not be fair to blame every tech-journalist who hasn't heard about it.
For a lot of people, what they see in CompUSA is what is available - and WordSmith and Documents-to-Go are always on the rack, but I have yet to see TextMaker there.
So while now, FINALLY, with the advent of a large ("memory-hog" is how one review put it) PPC Word Processing app (TextMaker), the PPC seems to have superior word-processing capabilities, it's still a bit of a SHAME (for SHAME, Microsoft!!) that Pocket Word just sux so horribly badly.
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02-06-2003, 04:31 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 206
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by kati42
Quote:
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Originally Posted by TawnerX
Somebody, send this wallstreet guy a copy of Textmaker and SpreadCE already.
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Yes, but I think the point is what you can do with the device out-of-box. Even though Palm's use 3rd party software for MS Office support, it's usually bundled with the device. Don't have to buy anything additional, and it's apparently much better than what comes with PPC PDAs (though I have not tried the Palm versions). |
Yes I have to agree somehow on the textmaker part, It is big, expensive and require good deal of effort.
but not for SpreadCE. It's just a matter of downloading it. (as oppose to installing it from disc?) Okay so it's unlimited$20 shareware. I am sure it's not to expensive for Wallstreet to pay $20 shareware if not free just for the test.
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02-06-2003, 04:36 PM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 5,133
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by TawnerX
but not for SpreadCE. It's just a matter of downloading it. (as suppose to installing it from disc?) Okay so it's unlimited$20 shareware. I am sure it's not to expensive for Wallstreet to pay $20 shareware if not free just for the test.
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But shouldn't Microsoft provide better support for their own documents on their own platform? Should we really *need* 3rd party support to get us up to the level of what Palm users can achieve?
Keep in mind also that a lot of PDA users just use what came with the PDA and *don't* add anything to it. They're probably not here, but they do exist.
It's not just a question of should the Wallstreet guy pay the $20 shareware. But should the consumer have to pay the $20 shareware to get support for a document format that is claimed to be already supported (although I thought the native support for Excel is better than support for Word).
And those shopping for a new PDA that would want to use it with Word and Excel documents, if they did not research this, would logically think that PocketPC would be the way to go if they needed that support. Microsoft operating system, Microsoft implementation of the Pocket versions of Word and Excel... And they'd most likely be disappointed, at least on the Word front.
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02-06-2003, 04:37 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 1,185
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Is it just me or is Walt more anti-MSFT lately than days gone by?
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02-06-2003, 04:38 PM
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Editorial Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,411
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Not an excuse, but a historical perspective. It has been reported that the intended function of the Pocket Office products was to allow viewing Office attachments in emails downloaded to the PPC, possibly directly (not via AS). Doing something, editing, or even producing the docs on the PPC was a secondary concern for the PPC philosophy. That always made me wonder why a Pocket Powerpoint viewer wasn't included, as Powerpoint attachments may not be as common as Word and Excel, but they certainly aren't insignificant. There was already some level of code available with the Pocket Powerpoint for Handhelds and the AS conduit already existed.
In any case, yes, it is a shame that the out of the box experience is poor for viewing, and criminal that the round trip experience is abysmal. As a consumer I would reasonably expect that the MS support for MS products would be better than average, native or third party. Of course, try getting hotmail or MSN mail on your PPC (out of the box). I suppose it is now just a matter of which company (or companies) MS needs to buy to get decent Office support out of the box.
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02-06-2003, 04:40 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 1,639
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Ed is 100% correct and it's inexcusable that Microsoft have not produced a good version of Office for the PPC.
Docs to Go on the Palm is an excellent program and handles Word and Excel files very well. It's included on the CD with the Palm Tungsten T and with the higher end Sonys. (Palm has a better version though).
Obviously Palm had to bundle something from a third party since Palm OS does not provide any support for Office applications otherwise.
I've read the reviews on Textmaker and it seems to be a first class product, at least as good as the Word part of Docs2Go. Am I right in thinking it costs about $70.00 though?
Since the PPC Office programs are so weak, MS ought to think about taking them out and have the OEMs bundle third party solutions like Textmaker with their product offerings. (as if).
Sounds to me that DataViz could do very well with a PPC version of Docs2Go!!
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Cheers!
David
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02-06-2003, 04:40 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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I agree that SpreadCE and TextMaker are awesome apps, but they are a combined $70 and neither one are well known. Few outside of these enthusiast circles know about them. They aren't at Handango and the SpreadCE site unfortunately looks 5 years old with no Pocket PC screen shots.
And unless I am mistaken, TextMaker doesn't natively go into a Pocket Word replacement mode. It keeps its own formats and you have to manually tell it to save into Word. No thanks. Not for me.
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