05-21-2003, 12:30 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 7
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Pocket PCs... are they Dead?
I entered Circuit City yesterday, ready to put down some hard cold cash for a new Pocket PC. I wanted a new one. I deserved it.
And there I was, standing in front of the display rack, looking at this collection of PDAs. For the first time in my life, something shuffled inside me - the Pocket PCs were looking kind of boring.
Let me explain - I am a diehard Pocket PC man. I've been there from the beggining: 3600 series, dust problems, Pocket Quake, all the good (and the bad.) And I've always laughed at those black and white, low resolution Palms. I KNEW I had the made the right choice, buying that 500 dollar iPAQ.
Flash back to yesterday. Looking through the PDAs, there was so little to justify Microsoft's little shiny gadget. High resolution? Nope, that award goes to Palm. Fits in your pocket? Try stuffing a Toshiba in your pocket; a Tungsten, on the other hand, fits like butter. And the Pocket PCs are _expensive_. Don't get me wrong; I won't buy a Palm until the day I am dead. But I could not, in any way shape or form, imagine why someone would enter the store and decide to buy a Pocket PC when they had all these amazing Palm devices right there.
Microsoft doesn't know how much is riding on their new operating system. If they carry on through with this 'routine' upgrade, and OEMs don't release something that isn't a squarish rehash of the original iPAQ (only uglier), then all that hard earned market share will vanish. As will this vibrant community - Pocket PC thoughts, Pocketgamer, pocketpcpassion... their webmasters will purchase Palms and we'll all become strangers on the street again. No more iPAQs.
After two years of falling behind, Palm has simply done it better.
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