Has PalmOS Lost the Edge?

[Jeff Kirvin]

<a href="http://writingonyourpalm.net/column020610.htm">http://writingonyourpalm.net/column020610.htm</a><br /><br />Bit by bit, Pocket PCs are chipping away at the traditional strengths of the PalmOS platform. Are PalmOS devices still a compelling choice?<br /><br />After careful consideration of my Toshiba e310 vs. Sony NR-70V decision, my final choice is... to wait. (Mike Cane, I feel your pain!) Why? I decided not to get the e310 because while it's a fine machine, the new XScale Pocket PCs are just around the corner, and I have to see them before buying another Pocket PC. Why didn't I go with the NR-70V? Because as stunning as the hardware is, I have severe doubts about the Palm platform itself.<br /><br />I should note here that I'm not a gamer or multimedia freak, so I could use PalmOS. I could live without Argentum and playing movies on my device. I have better uses for my time than games-- reading the hundreds of books I have on my CF card already-- and better uses for my finite storage memory than movies-- the aforementioned books. If I had to, I could live within the limitations of PalmOS. But why should I? Or, more to the point, why would any new PDA buyer choose a PalmOS device over a Pocket PC?

[normaldude]

But why should I? Or, more to the point, why would any new PDA buyer choose a PalmOS device over a Pocket PC?

Because the only PDAs that fits safely and comfortably in my front jeans Pocket are not PocketPCs.. they are PDAs like the Palm m500/515.

When someone makes a PocketPC that meets these requirements, then I'll have no need for Palm PDAs:
1 - has a flip cover
2 - is small enough (0.4" thick, 4.5" tall)

As it stands, the Toshiba e310 is close but:
1 - it has no flip cover
2 - still slightly bigger than I'd like (4.9" tall vs 4.5" tall)

[Jeff Kirvin]

Actually, my Jornada 565 fits quite comfortably in my front jeans pocket. And I don't even wear baggy jeans. I guess that comes down to personal preference. I've known guys that can't even bear to carry a wallet in their jeans pockets...

[Ben]

I quite often carry an iPaq plus PC-Card expanion jacket in the front pocket of my jeans and although to comfortably sit down I do I have to take the iPaq out of my pocket and put it on the table or whatever I don't really find it uncomfortable when walking.

On another note Jeff I've been going through almost the same dilema at the moment - iPaq H3870 or Clie NR70V? Basically I've come to virtually the same decision as you - wait and see what Xscale brings. I decided in the end that having been an iPaq user for 2 years now I'd miss too much my 2gb PC-Card datapack for movies/mp3s, accessing the net over my 802.11b network and a Bluetooth connection to my mobile phone - not to mention all the little things like games, a proper web browser and mail client and like you say a proper file system. Add to that the fact that I've never owned a Palm before (I've always used Psions or Win CE devices) so I'd have to get use to a completly new OS and really even the excellent hardware of the NR70V just is not enough to get me to switch to Palm.

[iPAUL]

Four months ago I was in the situation where I needed to replace my old Palm IIIx (which served me well for many years). I stopped to take a look at Palm's new lineup of devices to consider a replacement. What I found astonished me.

After several years of kicking out new devices, I was surprised (and disappointed) to see that Palm had not made ANY real innovations in their products. Devices still came with a skimpy 8 Mb of RAM, the Operating system was basically unchanged (except for a few VERY minor enhancements). About the only thing good that Palm has incorporated is the expansion SD slot, however the Palm processor is still too underpowered to utilize the SD card for any sort of Multimedia application.

So I took a look at Pocket PC. I couldn't believe my eyes. Today PPC is quite literally worlds ahead of Palm. I ended up purchasing a Compaq iPAQ 3850 to replace my old Palm IIIx and have never looked back.

Indeed, why WOULD anyone buy a Palm device today?

Cheers,

iPAUL

[normaldude]

Actually, my Jornada 565 fits quite comfortably in my front jeans pocket. And I don't even wear baggy jeans. I guess that comes down to personal preference. I've known guys that can't even bear to carry a wallet in their jeans pockets...

Sure it fits, but try a simple test. Put a Jornada 565 in your front jeans pocket and sit down. Then try it with a Palm m500/515. The difference is huge.

Now understand that "real estate" in my front jeans pocket is precious, and must be shared with other items.. I need to carry keys, a wallet, a pen, a mobile phone along with the PDA. Maybe even some coins and other objects too. Every little bit in size counts.

Plus, I hear the Jornada line (one of the few PocketPCs with flip covers) is being phased out, making flip cover options in PocketPCs even worse. Why are PocketPCs so allergic to flip covers? All the Palm/Sonys/Treos/Zaurus PDAs have flip covers.

[ojlittle]

To be honest, there are many reasons to buy a Palm (Let the flamming begin). I was in the same situation as Jeff. I bought both to try out & was going to return one. I ended up selling some electronic equipment so I could keep both. Now to the point...I am like Jeff. I don't need all the movies & 3D games. That is not what I use my PDA's for. Organization, E-Books, Music, & Work apps are what I use. I can do all of that with a Palm & a Pocket PC (out of the box). Even though I paid a PPC price for the NR70V, I could have bought a Sony N760 & done the same or the new T650, both cheaper than the PPC.

The Palm OS is still easier to use than PPC2002. It may not do multitasking & all the other junk, but it is easy. It is also very stable. I have yet to see any of my Palms lock up or give me a fatal error, even with all the hacks I run. My PPC needs to be reset atleast once a day. Synchronization is another issue. It is discussed on this site quite often. Jason has made many remarks about how terrible ActiveSync is. No sync problems with my Palm.

Reasons to buy a Palm:
Ease of use
No steep memory requirements (unless playing MP3's)
Stability
Easy to sync
Size (Toshiba is just right on thickness, length is another matter. NR70V is also long, but with reason. Keyboard, camera, beautiful screen)

Just to point out, I am a PPC enthusiast. I just wanted to point out some perks of the Palm platform. I would like to see both thrive & make our purchase decisions even harder.

[Scott R]

I, too, don't understand the complaints about PPC size/weight. I regularly carry my IBM Thinkpad on a gold chain around my neck. ;)

Scott

[bjornkeizers]

Well, having recently bought a new palm myself, I think i'm rather qualified to answer the why of things..

I picked up a Palm III C last month here in the Netherlands. Now, I have an Ipaq PPC so why on earth did I buy a palm? Let me tell you.

- The Palm III C was on sale. It cost only 130 euro's, the same as an M-100. Color and 8 mb ram for the price of an M-100... I'd be stupid not to pick one up.

- Software. Now, I like my Ipaq very much, but who can beat the incredible amount of simple yet effective software available for it? Example: Fliphack. I can rotate the screen using a simple 5 kb plugin. On the Ipaq, I'd need to buy, download and install NVD which is potentially very dangerous; it already caused one hard reset on my Ipaq..

- Battery life. I know I can get a bigger battery, but still; I can go a week without charging the Palm. And that's with backlight full blast; playing Bejewelled till I get cramps. The ipaq just can't beat that. I wish it could.

- Simplicity. If I need to jot down a number, doodle, write a memo etc. it's all very easy on the Palm. I love sophistication, but why would I need something like Photogenics when I want to make a simple sketch of an apartment i'm prospecting? I dont.

Now believe me when I say I'm totally converted to PPC after using every device out there, but I can still see the virtues in a Palm. If you can find one for cheap, and you value ease of use and a cheap carry around device, then Palm is a safe way to go.

[thadrool]

Actually, my Jornada 565 fits quite comfortably in my front jeans pocket. And I don't even wear baggy jeans. I guess that comes down to personal preference. I've known guys that can't even bear to carry a wallet in their jeans pockets...

Sure it fits, but try a simple test. Put a Jornada 565 in your front jeans pocket and sit down. Then try it with a Palm m500/515. The difference is huge.


I hear you on that one. I've had an m505, Clie T615, Jornada 568, and now a Toshiba e310.

But, then again, the difference you speak about is in weight and thickness; height really doesn't play into how it feels in your jean pockets. And with that said, the e310 feels just as thin and non-existant in my pocket as the m505 did. Plus, they are both roughly around the same weight. I guess if you're one of those who needs the absolute smallest form factor then maybe.

[newerjazz]

I don't actually agree with Jeff on battery life; I use a Hp 567 now mainly for organization, note-taking, etc (no multimedia at all) and it lasts about 3~4 hours under continous operation at 3/4 brightness but my 610 lasts for at least twice or thrice longer at about 1/3 brightness. The brightness is adjusted so I could see comfortably on both devices (this is the only way to compare apples to apples; turning the 610 to 3/4 brightness makes it glaringly uncomfortable. It's true that the 610's screen look a little milky but somehow it's sharper; maybe it's the pixel density)

Anyway, that said I still use the 567 as my main device mainly because its critical for me to not only take text notes but also sketch graphs or write symbols as graphics; sometimes a graph or a picture is worth a thousand words and in certain meetings or seminars, there are graphs that simply must to jotted down. I tried heroically to avoid the dark side by going with Psion, Palms, Sonys, etc with all sorts of add-on software to enable sketching but somehow it's difficult to "draw" on these devices.... Patience I have not, so I am now stuck with a 567.

The main weakness of Palm is still ease of use/synchronization with a Windows desktop/laptop PC; this is obvioulsy due to MS's monopoly of Windows, Office, Media Player, Outlook, etc. It's a lot easier to synchronize appointments, to-dos, Word, Excel, MP3's, etc between a PocketPC and a PC; and I haven't even mention networking. In my mind, the Rebels (Palm) do not even have a glimmer of hope; the Dark side can afford to fight an attrition war and win in the end....even I have gone over...

[normaldude]

One other thing: Word/Excel files can make a round trip between desktop and Palm PDA without getting mangled. PocketPC cannot do this. Almost all my Word documents have tables in them, and a round trip between desktop and PocketPC would mangle those docs.

[newerjazz]

I meant

"The main weakness of Palm is still DIFFICULTY of use/synchronization with a Windows desktop/laptop PC"

NewerJazz

[djl]

You know, everybody makes a good point about whether you should buy a Palm or a Pocket PC. For some, size is the issue. For others, power is the issue, or versatility. In my case, Palm is just plain tired and boring. I don't need all the whiz-bang stuff I can do on a PPC to be happy, but at least the PPC is fresh, exciting, innovative, with a future. Palm is stodgy and resting on its hardcore user base. The innovation left and went to Handspring. Sony is doing more for the Palm than the Palm is doing for itself. Palm is losing users. And it's sad: did it have to become this way for Palm? Why didn't Palm innovate more? Why not keep up with basic technology improvements (other than a crummy color display)? After reading Piloting Palm (which I recommend), I understand these questions better. Still . . .

[grogma]

The reason the Palm has the marketshare it does it precisely because it IS stodgy. Remember that the vast majority of these things are sold to people who are marginally technically inclined at best and that's how it should be. What they want is a device that will quickly, simply and reliably tell them which meeting to go to next and what Mary's admin's phone number is. To these people the words "all you have to do is perform a soft reset, delete the partnership, delete the contents of the email inbox and deleted items folders and then resync" is about enough to boot the offending device out the door and return to using a Franklin Planner. The Zen of Palm is that, out of the box, it just works. It syncs with Outlook. That's pretty much all that matters. Would people love to load up on all the wonderful Pocket PC features? You betcha, but Microsoft is at least a major revision away (and maybe farther than that with Active Sync) from the rock solid stability that will sell units to client service people. I have an iPaq. I love it. It is not a suitable toy for people who do not wish to get involved, sometimes deeply involved, with the hows and whys of what makes technology tick. Yet.

[[Cruzer]]

Normaldude,

Have you tried to stick an Audiovox/Toshiba e570 in your jean pocket?? Fits very nicely even when you sit down. Yes it doesn't have a flip cover but you can make one for very little cost.. check out brighthand's forums for it. You won't be disappointed..

[bbarker]

I should note here that I'm not a gamer or multimedia freak, so I could use PalmOS. I could live without Argentum and playing movies on my device. I have better uses for my time than games-- reading the hundreds of books I have on my CF card already-- and better uses for my finite storage memory than movies-- the aforementioned books. If I had to, I could live within the limitations of PalmOS. But why should I? Or, more to the point, why would any new PDA buyer choose a PalmOS device over a Pocket PC?I first made that comparison when the original Windows CE devices appeared. Of course, neither did much with multimedia, so that wasn't a consideration. And it didn't matter to me -- still doesn't. I don't play games or listen to music or watch movies on my PDA. After comparing the Palm Pilot of that day to the Cassiopeia A-11, I chose the latter, despite its larger size (it was a small clamshell model with a keyboard).

When the Cassiopeia E-10 came out I got one of those. Later, when the newer, color Palm-sized PC models came out, I compared the Palms to the WinCE models and chose a Cassiopeia E-105, hands-down. My employer bought that one for me. When I left the company and had to buy my own, I did a very careful comparison of Palms and CE models. This was in early 1999. I bought a Compaq Aero 1520. It was a thin monochrome model. But I left it on top of my car and drove away a couple of weeks later. It was in its case, which should have protected it, but when I went back 20 minutes later to look it was gone.

So I had to buy another. This time I chose another E-105. I loved the size of the Aero, but I really missed the greater RAM of the E-105 (32MB vs. 16MB) and its greater speed. And even though I don't play games and such, I found color did matter in productivity applications. Plus, I liked to show off pictures of my family. But a week after I bought this latest E-105 I heard rumors of Microsoft's Pocket PC announcement a couple of months away (in April). So I returned the E-105 and went back to my E-10, which I still owned, while I awaited the Pocket PCs. I got a Jornada 545 when they came out and then replaced it a couple of weeks later with a 548.

I've made the Palm-CE comparison repeatedly over the years. I actually wanted to choose a Palm. Their size was very appealing, and everyone had them so software was abundant. Plus, many had screen covers. That mattered, because I had shattered the E-10's screen twice. But every time I compared the two platform, Windows CE/Pocket PC won out. And again, I'm not a gamer or heavy multimedia user.

[normaldude]

]Normaldude,

Have you tried to stick an Audiovox/Toshiba e570 in your jean pocket?? Fits very nicely even when you sit down. Yes it doesn't have a flip cover but you can make one for very little cost.. check out brighthand's forums for it. You won't be disappointed..

Yes, I have. Keep in mind that I have to carry many things in my front jeans pockets (wallet, cellphone, pen, keys, PDA), so "real estate" is precious, and every cubic inch counts.

The Palm m500/m515: 4.5"L x 3.1"W x 0.4"D (5.58 cubic inches)
The Toshiba e310: 4.9"L x 3.1"W x 0.4"D (6.07 cubic inches)
The Toshiba e570: 4.9"L x 3.0"W x 0.7"D (10.29 cubic inches)

So the closest is actually the Toshiba e310. And I know there's a guy on Brighthand making flip covers for the e310. Once he starts shipping them, and if the reviews are good, that's the way I'll probably go. However, I think it's ridiculous that PocketPC users need to jury-rig their own home made flip covers when all non-PocketPC PDAs (Palm/Sony/Treo/Zaurus) all come with their own flip covers.

I'm sure more PocketPCs will be coming to market that are closer to the Palm m500/m515 size. I just hope they come with a flip cover, and we don't have to rely on jury-rigged home made ones.

[Timothy Rapson]

Funny how much of this has been about covers. I have had a couple of old OLD casios (organizers, not PDAs, less that $50), Wizards, Sharp SE, Atari Portfolio, Mako, Ipaq 3135, and now a Clie NR70V. All of them had cover or were clamshells...except the Ipaq. I never had any breakage with any of them.

I think Jeff should have gotten the Clie and all the more because there are so many new models coming out soon. That is why I got one. It is going to be the last, best model of the OS 4 generation. I expect the OS is solid, has maximum software availability, is a totally known commodity. It offers stuff that no other PDA does, QVGA, internal camera, flip screen/cover, Remote control IRDA, WordSmith non-paralelle.

But, it IS Jeff's money!

[Janak Parekh]

This one is hard to judge because it's so subjective. Having been a "power user" of both platforms, I believe it ultimately comes down to what paradigm you're most familiar with. Pocket PCs can be stunningly fast and easy to use, but most PalmOS users complain that Pocket PCs are cumbersome and obtuse. Why? Because they're trying to use the Pocket PC as if it were a PalmOS device.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jeff, for making that point. Most Palm'ers don't get it. I myself found the PPC interface awkward when I first got it, but I'm a computer power user so I let myself ride through using it. Now, the Palm feels awkward and the PPC feels like home; my finger even moves to the iTask button on my iPaq without thinking. :) (Biggest difference IMHO: the home for PPC is at the top where the Windows logo is, not in the silkscreen area.)

--bdj

[bbarker]

Funny how much of this has been about covers. I have had a couple of old OLD casios (organizers, not PDAs, less that $50), Wizards, Sharp SE, Atari Portfolio, Mako, Ipaq 3135, and now a Clie NR70V. All of them had cover or were clamshells...except the Ipaq. I never had any breakage with any of them.I shattered the screen twice on my old Cassiopeia E-10, which lacked a cover. So a cover is important to me. And it should be a built-in cover, not something I have to rig up.