PPC Users: Prepare Help For Angry Converts

[Matt Kitchen]

Well, the announcement of the T|5 was official today, and the Palm-ites are not happy campers - and why should they be! Palm officially announces there will be no WiFi on the device - a news flash that does not sit well with many Palm users. I have already seen numerous Palm users threaten to leave if the next major Palm device does not offer both wireless technologies, and I believe now they will carry this action out (seeing as you can find both wireless technologies in a PPC for under $300).

palmOne really shot themselves in the foot on this one - prepare the help! I predict an influx of Palm users to the PPC side - be kind, they've been through a lot in the past few days ;)

[joe_it]

Being a Tungsten T3 owner who is in the process of switching to a Dell X30, I can attest to these same thoughts. I am mad that they Palm has come out with a SD card type wifi card. What about my storage space??? I need to ditch it to surf the net?

What about Palm 6, AKA Cobalt that was released back in January? Why are we not seeing that incorporated into the T5? Yes, Palm is definately falling by the wayside. I am happy that I made the jump to my POcketPC.

Joe

[sstrasser86]

in repsonse to the second post you don not have to ditch your memory for internet. Palmone came out with a 256mb WiFi card, the downside is that it costs some $. Also the reson (well what they say the reason is) the T5 doesnt have cobalt is that they started to make the T5 before cobalt was finished and relased.

[ignar]

Also the reson (well what they say the reason is) the T5 doesnt have cobalt is that they started to make the T5 before cobalt was finished and relased.

Yeah, they started so early that they didn't even know PalmSource would be releasing Cobalt soon. But, they didn't start early enough to have time to develop a new design and ended up reusing the casing of lower end, T|E. :pukeface:

I smell T5 (aka T|E2) will not do well on the market, and T6 (aka real T|T5) will be out early next year.

[sstrasser86]

if the t6 does come out early next year they sure better fix there mistakes, i dont think they can afford to keep losing all their consumers

[Matt Kitchen]

Well, I think their Treo customers will keep them quite afloat for some time now - but if they want to be a real contender in the full market, then they need to get on the ball w/ their next PDA. If they could somehow make the the T|C with a bigger screen, that might make me take a look at Palm again. The T|C thumb pad is still the bust thumb pad out that I have ever put my thumbs on...

[Robrecht]

Pretty sure I'll be coming over to the dark side with an ASUS A730w or Dell Axim X50v.

Here's my questions:

1. What's the best MS Office suite software to use on the PocketPC platform and how much it will cost to rival what Dataviz Documents to Go v7 (pre-installed on T5) does (supports formatting and native office file formats, including PowerPoint).

Palm enthusiasts have long complained about the PocketPC operating system being more difficult to use than the PalmSource OS. Yet I know there are hacks that (completely?) address some of these issues:

2. Alarms. What are the fixes, remaining problems?

3. Applications minimizing instead of closing.

4-8. What else do I need to know (buy?) to make a successful transition to the PocketPC OS?

9. Is the PPC OS stable or should I expect lots of soft or hard resets?

10. Biggest draw for me is showing off VGA baby pictures in a relatively small form factor (not to mention WiFi). With this in mind, is there any software out there that will allow me to quickly transform multiple subdirectories of 4 MP pictures into downsized VGA pictures? I don't want to reformat each picture one at a time.

Thanks in advance for all your help!

[xoiph]

Pretty sure I'll be coming over to the dark side with an ASUS A730w or Dell Axim X50v.

Welcome onboard :twisted:


1. What's the best MS Office suite software to use on the PocketPC platform and how much it will cost to rival what Dataviz Documents to Go v7 (pre-installed on T5) does (supports formatting and native office file formats, including PowerPoint).
Textmaker (http://www.softmaker.de/tmpshots_en.htm) is the way to go, MS Pocket Word is a waste of ROM.


3. Applications minimizing instead of closing.
Wisbar (http://www.pelmarinc.com/html/pocket_pc.htm) fixes this problem and adds much more functionality to the menu bar, all in a tiny package.


10. Biggest draw for me is showing off VGA baby pictures in a relatively small form factor (not to mention WiFi). With this in mind, is there any software out there that will allow me to quickly transform multiple subdirectories of 4 MP pictures into downsized VGA pictures? I don't want to reformat each picture one at a time.

If you happen to have Photoshop, you can set up automated actions to resize all the pictures in a folder. Here (http://www.pcquest.com/content/multimedia/103101101.asp) is a good article on that.

[JvanEkris]

2. Alarms. What are the fixes, remaining problems?I know WM2003 stil has this problem, but i do not know about WM2003 Second edition.....

3. Applications minimizing instead of closing.This is in fact a feature introduced with PocketPC2000. Basic idea was that being able to multitask and having enough memory it makes starting applications faster (see it as a Last Recently Used buffer of applications). The OS is supposed to kill the oldest applications automatically when it starts to miss resources. But an anoying feature it is indeed......

4-8. What else do I need to know (buy?) to make a successful transition to the PocketPC OS?This depends on your usage, if you can tell us more about it we could help a lot better. One thing i would recomend in general is "XCPUScaler". It automatically sets the CPU-speed based on the CPU-load, resulting in less battery drain and better performance....

9. Is the PPC OS stable or should I expect lots of soft or hard resets?It is very stable, although some specific implementations do have their problems. Some applications make the OS unstable and sometimes these applications are delivered installed in ROM by the manufacturer. But otherwise, no problem there......

Jaap

[Robrecht]

This depends on your usage, if you can tell us more about it we could help a lot better. Hmm ... in addition to wp and spreadsheets, I have tons of long pdfs. Email. Webbrowsing. Baby pictures.

Thanks!

[Tacomahunter]

Well.....
I have to agree that Palm has missed the boat big time by not incorporating Wifi into the new T-5. I have been a FAITHFUL Palm user for the last 6 years (since the professional) and after my T-3 died for the 2nd time in 1 year, I am now the proud owner of a Ipaq 4155. WHAT I HAVE BEEN MISSING! Anyhow now that I have converted many to the Plam format and they are a little upset that I have gone to the Darkside...... :D HahahHa

[ipaq_wannabe]

same here...

had about 16 months on my clie and was really betting my hopes on the T5...

sorry... now that $$$ was "given" to someone (??) else - i am now a proud owner of a Loox 610 BT/WLAN (WM2003)