Running desktop apps on your iPAQ?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=70&ncid=738&e=6&u=/cn/20020617/tc_cn/936665">http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=70&ncid=738&e=6&u=/cn/20020617/tc_cn/936665</a><br /><br />"Called MXI (Motion Experience Interface), the operating system will allow handheld devices to run any desktop program, said R. Chandrasekar and Sam Hon Kong Lum, the 22-year-old co-inventors. At a media conference last week, the duo showed off a Compaq Computer iPaq PDA running desktop versions of Microsoft's Word, Powerpoint and Internet Explorer applications. The same iPaq also ran a Pac-Man game for the Atari OS and a version of Sun Microsystems' open source-based StarOffice software suite."<br /><br />Behind the scenes is an MXI-based server, but it isn't like Terminal Server, which just gives you a window on your PDA that allows you to control what is happening on a PC or server. "According to its developers, when a program such as a word processor makes a call to a specific part of the Windows operating system (to save a file, for example), MXI intercepts the call and acts on it. It then lets the program know if the operation was carried out, just as Windows would. Because MXI saves interim data on the PDA, people can edit a document without being online. But when they hit "save," the handheld synchronizes with the server, and the changes are saved on the server copy of the document." Very interesting. At some point PDA's and PC's will simply be dumb terminals that we use to access our own server in the garage where all of our data will be hosted. This seems to be a unique step in that direction. I like the idea of being able to make changes while disconnected and that 28.8 connections are supported.

[Jason Dunn]

This is so ground-breaking, it almost sounds like a hoax. Very intriguing concept, but the real question is what the server back-end will cost, how many users it will support, etc. The question of how well a desktop app will scale to the screen is also up in the air - no screen shots anywhere, so I have to wonder how good Word looks on the tiny screen. Still, this signals a move towards something I always felt would happen - Pocket PCs will become portals to our data, allowing us to manipulate it, but not be the sole location of it. I don't feel Pocket PCs should ever become "dumb terminals" though either - they need to have rich applications that will allow manipulation and viewing of our data in a completely disconnected state.