11-08-2002, 01:00 AM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Does OS 5 Catch Up to the Pocket PC in High End Features?
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20021107/D7N4UR0G0.html
Palm OS 5 devices like the Tungsten T and Sony Clie NX series have been out a week or so now and people have had a chance to play with them. Does OS 5 bring Palm OS devices up to speed with their Pocket PC counterparts when it comes to multimedia and document handling?
Read for yourself. The author makes some interesting points. Source: Greg Sperber
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11-08-2002, 01:13 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 784
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OS5 sounds impressive.....:sleeping:
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11-08-2002, 01:22 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 725
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Well, I see a little good and a little bad in this.
The good is that people are realizing that the PalmOS5 is not in the same league as the PocketPC featurewise. Further, people don't seem to be touting the "Palm is easier to use" mantra so much anymore. Not that I disagree with that, I believe Palm is easier to use, but at the same time any reasonably intelligent adult should be able to figure out a PocketPC fairly easily.
The bad is that, even with it's limitations, the Sony displays that Palm licensees are still ahead of the PocketPC in hardware innovation. Say what you will about the Treo it is a good hardware device, and Sony, well if Sony would just break down and use the PPC OS they'd win by a landslide.
So, it's still a wash really. I've choosen PPC but I can't fault the Palmies.
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11-08-2002, 01:26 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,060
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STILL no multi-tasking! :twisted: There is nothing worse, IMO, than needing to close every application before trying to use another.
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11-08-2002, 02:35 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 414
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The file thing really needed fixing. It is bad, just plain bad. On the other hand it may be that the fact that the Palm OS will not let one install files willy nilly is the reason it is more stable. I may get a PPC device again in Christmas 2003. Then I can compare the stability advances MS may have made. But, I take the bad lack of real files with the good lack of resets and slowdowns.
The guy in the article was 100% wrong about music files. All Clies can play music while reading Ebooks. He was also wrong about multi-tasking. Honestly, I have had a PSion Mako that did multi-task (at least I assume it did as you had to leave the datebook program open when you went to another program if you wanted the alarms to actually alarm you). I had a mono IPaq that surely did multi-task, but I don't know what I cared. I was not downloading pages or printing them while running other programs. You can't even have two pages open in PocketWord, but since you don't have the screen space to do so with any purpose, what difference does it make?
Now, my Clie clearly does not multi-task, but with the cool new launcher at the bottom of my software FITALY screen I can switch from any of 20 programs to any other in one or two taps at least as fast as my Ipaq could switch to programs already running in the multi-tasking PPC OS in background. The bottom line is that my Clie is faster and and easier to get from program to program in and that is what I want to do. (OK, you can probably do this with one of the dashboard-like programs power users add to their PPCs, but my point is that you don't need multitasking if task switching is well implemented)
Overall though, I am disappointed in Palm OS 5. I don't know if the biggest disapointment is the almost total lack of new features, the crashing when old programs run, or the fact that it is a year late. Too little, too late, too poorly done. I had a friend who was a successful entrepeneur and he said the key to his successful sales was that he made sure every customer got all he expected and at least some little thing he did not. What has Palm delivered that was better than expected? Nothing.
I am again happy that I got my NR70V at the end of the OS cycle. Things run very well on it, even a lot of stuff that is as old as the hills like DiddleBug are rock solid.
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11-08-2002, 02:36 AM
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Mystic
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 1,608
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Palm 5 was meant to be just a port of 4 to the ARM processor. Boring to be sure, but if even half the things I am reading about about Palm 6 come to be true. . .we will have a fight on our hands.
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11-08-2002, 02:37 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 706
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So OS5 running on the latest Palm hardware (last generation PPC hardware except for the screen) is still struggling to stuff we did with slower processors back in the Palm sized PC days. :rock on dude!:
When will they learn that learning a new way to write does not make a device easier to use. Has it occurred to the designers of OS5 that if you are going to provide apps for reading ebooks and listening to music then people may actually want to use them at the same time?
Gee, multitasking has been around in OS design for an awful long time. I suspect the "O" in OS means Ostrich at the Palm HQ :P
__________________
Get your Pocket Mojo. Anthony Caruana is the Mojo master. |
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11-08-2002, 02:38 AM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 541
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Is Palm catching up to PPC in features? No. Is the Clie? Yes, and doing a very good job in even surpassing some of it, the sound quality is supposedly better than most PPCs out there, the camera, keyboard, screen (supposedly one has/will have 640x480 pixels.) I'd be much more wary about Palm's life if it weren't for Sony dragging Palm on it's back.
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11-08-2002, 05:50 AM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 593
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Going to have to wait for PalmOS 6 before it can be really compared to PPC's. I haven't seen as many PalmOS v. PPC debates in awhile since both have established their best uses. PalmOS 6 will be the high end revolution, right now we're in the price revoultion.
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11-08-2002, 06:06 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 28
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As sad as it is, the Tungsten I played with yesterday brought me all the way back to late '97 when I bought my USR Palm 500 (or 1000?).
It's amazing how little they've able to chang in 5 years which is almost a lifetime in the computer world.
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