Trying to convince person to switch

[DerekAbney]

I'm trying to convince my girlfriend to switch from an old Palm to a Pocket PC. She says she won't do it unless she has the simplest, easiest one to use (but still nice of course). What do people reccommend I tell her?

[buss]

What is it that she needs to do, but can not get done because of the Palm? That is the arguement, unless she is completely happy with the Palm, then there is no arguement.

My first computer was a Commodore 64 that I used until 1993. The only reason why I moved to a WinTel was that my C-64 could not handle the size of documents that I was writing.

My Palm lasted me for a long time, until limited memory made it unpractical for me. Only then did I switch to the PPC.

If she is getting what she needs to get done completed, why spend the money and switch.

Sounds like a very practical girl you have there, good luck in the relationship. :wink:

[surur]

What does she use her palm for, and does she have any other gadget needs? Whats her profession?

I imagine her old palm is one of those monochrome affairs, with weeks long battery life. In that case if she only keeps her calender and to do list on it you will only be asking for trouble switching her to a unit which will hard reset if not charged every few days.

I further imagine that after a few years of using a palm she will find ANY new OS difficult and unintuitive.

The question is really: Is there any compelling reason for her to switch e.g does she need multimedia, would she appreciate the trade-off between a colour screen and battery life, and is she expressing any frustration with her device as it is? Would she benifit from being able to view PDF's and word docs on the go. Has she got an mp3 player, but not an ipod? Does she use a voice recorder? There is a number of reasons to switch if you are a power user, but if you are just using a PDA as a PDA it is much less compelling. Having said that, the combination of a good Today screen (with PocketBreeze) and Pocket Informant does make for a good argument.

Surur

[DerekAbney]

She has a Palm that I think is about 6 or 7 years old, not color, low memory. She just passed the bar exam almost a year ago and is working as a lawyer. She would actually use it a lot to transfer documents that she could work on as she traveled. I just think she would get a lot more out of a new PPC than her old Palm.

[surur]

I also agree that as a person in a demanding profession she would do better with a more up to date device. Let her look at the Imate Jam then.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/images/news/imateJAM.jpg

Its probably smaller than her current palm, its a phone, so it will decrease the total handbag load she has to carry. She will have plenty of space to keep all her contacts (which as a lawyer must exceed the 2Mb of her palm), and she should be able to run all the great pocketpc software. She will also be able to keep up on e-mail with her clients, which Im sure is quite an important part of practicing these days. Get her a small bluetooth keyboard and textmaker, and she will be all set.

Surur

[DerekAbney]

That's a great suggestion. I will look into that. Any other suggestions? The more the merrier.

[Ed Hansberry]

That's a great suggestion. I will look into that. Any other suggestions? The more the merrier.
Consider too the Imate PDA2K/MDA III. Larger that the Jam, but it has a built in thumbboard - pic at www.ehansberry.com

and as others have said, if she is happy with her old palm, don't try and force the issue. one device or OS doesn't fit all. :-)

[Matt Kitchen]

If she is going to primarily use it for PIM and editing documents on the go, then i would honestly recommend an update to a newer palmOne product. I know I might get razzed for this, but if she wants to edit detailed word and excel files on the go then Documents To Go (bundled with most newer Palms) is the best miniature rendering of Word and Excel currently out there. The ones in Pocket PC are rather pathetic when compared to Docs2Go, but that will change when Magneto comes out...

I am rather unbiased as far as OS's go and probably the biggest reason I use Pocket PC exclusively is because I think palmOne is on a slippery slope and do not want to be attached to a OS when it finally goes.

Once again, not everyone will agree, and for basic Word and Excel functions, Pocket PC is fine. But i still prefer Docs2Go.

I would also like to add that beyond the two afore mentioned uses I think Pocket PC excels over anything Palm (and PIM can go either way as Pocket PC can have more of a learning curve, but an interface that I still prefer).

Uhg, sorry I did not mean to go into warring opinions here...

[DerekAbney]

Thanks for the post, Matt. I'm not sure I'm going to convince her to go away from Palm, but I at least think she is going to upgrade, so your post at least made me feel a little bit better.

[TMann]

DerekAbney,

I think the really important question you need to ask is this: Does she WANT a new PDA? And does she WANT to carry documents on her PDA?

Many people really do use their PDA's only for PIM tasks. If that's all she want to do, than why bother getting a new fancy PDA? Storing documents on your PDA sounds great, but if you're going to be carrying a laptop anyways, why bother with the tiny 3.5" screen?

And to echo Matt Kitchen's comments, if she really is that familiar with the Palm OS, why don't you just get her another Palm device? The TE is pretty cheap right now. She'll get all of the benefits of a newer faster, brighter device without having to learn a new OS.

Just my 2 cents...

TMann

[DerekAbney]

I think you all are right in saying that she'd be more comfortable with a newer Palm. I think she will use a newer one a lot more for her work than she does the one she has now. She thinks she'd be able to get a lot of reading done outside of the office on it.

[Stephen Beesley]

I know I might get razzed for this, but if she wants to edit detailed word and excel files on the go then Documents To Go (bundled with most newer Palms) is the best miniature rendering of Word and Excel currently out there. The ones in Pocket PC are rather pathetic when compared to Docs2Go, but that will change when Magneto comes out...

Once again, not everyone will agree, and for basic Word and Excel functions, Pocket PC is fine. But i still prefer Docs2Go.

I would also like to add that beyond the two afore mentioned uses I think Pocket PC excels over anything Palm (and PIM can go either way as Pocket PC can have more of a learning curve, but an interface that I still prefer).

Far from warring with you I am afraid that I have to agree with you on the Word issue. If one of the main reasons you want a PDA is for editing Word documents and roundtripping them back to your PC then unfortunately the current state of play does seem to put the Palm Docs2Go combination in front of the PPC.

On the PPC side there is Textmaker, which does a pretty good job of this (speaking as somebody who has been using it since it first came out in beta) but it is still not perfect especially for round tripping complicated formatting like headers/footers or footnotes (which, again speaking from experience could be important in the legal world depending on the type of law practised).

I really hope that Magneto does give the PPC a proper pocket office suite of applications or that the next version of Textmaker (textmaker 2005, which I believe is due out sometime soonish...) will introduce improve on the existing situation.

On the plus side for the PPC it does just about everything else better than the palm :D...

[DerekAbney]

Thanks for all the info, everyone. It looks as if she is going to go with a new Palm. She just feels more comfortable with it, and I told her you all had said it had better Word functions, and she was sold. Thanks again....not sure which model she's going to buy.

[bugeyes]

well guess she couldn't do much better than the treo 650.......says the fella who's phone is due for upgrade and is torn betweewn the treo 650 and the spv m500 (jam) though i dont use my old treo 600 for word ....keyboard is excellent for typing even with my big fingers (in construction industry!) any opinions on this would be good!

[surur]

well guess she couldn't do much better than the treo 650.......says the fella who's phone is due for upgrade and is torn betweewn the treo 650 and the spv m500 (jam) though i dont use my old treo 600 for word ....keyboard is excellent for typing even with my big fingers (in construction industry!) any opinions on this would be good!

I suggest you read the Treo 650 forums. Apparently these devices are quite limited, buggy and unstable. You cant even see PDF's with pictures natively on most Palm's.

Surur

[bugeyes]

i do i'm a regular at Mytreo.net great freindly site.... :)
i think the thing thats really causing me indesision is the treo key board the 600's is so easy to use two thumbed if i go for the m500 no key board.. 8O

how well is anyone getting on with on screen script?

[100thMonkey]

Far from warring with you I am afraid that I have to agree with you on the Word issue. If one of the main reasons you want a PDA is for editing Word documents and roundtripping them back to your PC then unfortunately the current state of play does seem to put the Palm Docs2Go combination in front of the PPC.

....

I really hope that Magneto does give the PPC a proper pocket office suite of applications or that the next version of Textmaker (textmaker 2005, which I believe is due out sometime soonish...) will introduce improve on the existing situation.


I am personally waiting for the post-Magneto model. Fact is, I like the thumboard, and I need GSM 850. Granted, UMTS would be nice for traveling, but I spend most of my time on this side of the pond. And, Word is crucial, with a capital C, for...especially to retain formating and not get stripped to an .rtf.

Hopefully next year at this time, there'll be some enticing models...but for now, Treo 650 all the way.

[bugeyes]

Hi there 100-th monkey! nice too see you use the samw avatar here as MTDN! see you around!

[Possum Roadkill]

If you push her into getting a PPC and absolutely ANYTHING goes wrong, it will be your fault, even if it's perfectly likely that whatever went wrong could have just as easily gone wrong with a Palm.

I suggest you take her to a computer store and let her sample what's out there and let her decide.

I've been using Palms for a few years now, but just switched. There were some things that did frustrate me a bit at first, but when I began to discover how much better recognition worked, how many more options (without paying more money) there were for recognition, and also how contextual menus worked, I was impressed with how much quicker it was to get some things done.

I don't understand how people can say that DocumentsToGo is so much better. They seem to work similarly, except that I can actually add photos into my Word documents directly from the Pocket PC and I can't do that with DocumentsToGo. Neither of the two allow me to have multiple columns though.

Wireless printing also comes standard with the Pocket PC and works much better than I could ever get it to work on my T3.

[hedgeborn]

I hate Microsoft.

I'm a lifelong Mac user and swore I'd never buy a Microsoft anything. I was a Palm loyalist until about a year ago. Ultimately it was Palm's lack of progress with their OS and the declining quality and increasing price of their hardware that shook my confidence.

The superior handwriting recogition and greater general capabilities of the Pocket PC are what won me over (for now) Palm's Graffiti system is nearly useless compared with the PPC's inuitive HW recognition schemes. After 5 years of writing in Graffiti I still found it to be too inaccurate for anything more than a quick note. Every third letter is a typo practically and it's slow as hell. Palm is making the same mistakes Apple did in the 1990's. Basically sitting still resting on the laurels of an excellent product while Microsoft steadily plays catch-up.

Windows Mobile is still rife with Microsoft's prerequisite poor GUI design and clunky overly complex way of doing things, but at least M$ is trying to develop their OS and make a product that can work as a semi-replacement for a laptop rather than a glorified, overpriced organizer with stupid digital camera built in. :roll:

I would KILL to have the best of both Palm and PPC in one device. No one has gotten the PDA quite right yet. Apple was the closest but that was 5-10 years before anyone was ready and it was about 5 times too big and 3 times too expensive. Palm OS is fairly intuitive, but too simplistic and with no real file system or way to deal natively with real file formats it's hardly changed in any fundamental way since it's inception.

PPC can do lots of things, but it's frustratingly stupid in it's implementation. Could they make it ANY more counter-intuitive how to connect to a damn WAP? Is it too much to ask that they put all the related setting in one logical control panel? I don't know what it is about Microsoft but they just don't seem to understand elegance and simplicity.

For now I make do with my hp ipaq 4150. The hardware quality is excellent. Replacement battery is brilliant. HP did their job, but the Microsoft OS only gets a C+ from me. No landscape mode (I know they've since added it) and no EASY and SIMPLE way to manage multiple internet profiles and connect quickly to new WAP's (yet there are tons of controls for connecting via dialup??? Who does that? WTF)

I'm hoping against hope that Microsoft will somehow make an un-Microsoft like product out of their troubled OS. It is on it's way, I never imagined I'd ever own one of these things back when it was called WinCE, but it never ceases to amaze me how much they can engineer into it and yet still fall short of cohesive design and logical OS behavior that is intuitive and easy to live with.

A bit of a ramble for my first post.. sorry.

As far as this situation goes, I would not steer your g-friend towards a PPC unless she is unhappy with Graffiti. That is what did it for me primarily. I got tired of the typos and slow entry of information even after I spent 5 years practicing THIS things language. The PPC is so superior in that area that it's ridiculous, but as a calendar, todo list and the rest it's less intuitive and really no better.

[htmanning]

If she likes Palm you can easily get her a Tungsten E for little money. The new Treo 650 (now also the 700p) is also a great choice. There are a couple reasons why I would switch...

1. Carrying documents is much easier on the Pocket PC.
2. Much better audio playback on Pocket PC.

-----------
Tom
Pocket PC Blast! (http://www.pocketpcblast.com)
PDA Blast! (http://www.pdablast.com)
Treo Blast! (http://www.treoblast.com)
Smartphone Blast! (http://www.smartphoneblast.com)