Palm OS vs. Pocket PC
The Eternal Debate
OK, you want to buy a new PDA and there just so many out there. What should you do? Well, it's tough, but here are a
bunch of pros and cons for both units to help you out.
Palm OS
Pros
- Good battery life - grayscale models with backlight usage can last several weeks before changing batteries,
rechargeable color models without sound should be recharged once every third or fourth day. Color with sound same
as Pocket PCs.
- Small compact file sizes, especially for grayscale screen models
- Very light
- Usually smaller form factor (overall size)
- Lots and lots of software
- Decent organizer
- Many people have them and its easy to trade programs via infrared
Cons
- Small screens, made even smaller because 1/3 of the screen taken up by Graffiti writing space
- Slow and under powered, the fastest being 33 Mhz
- Although compatible, does not actually have Microsoft Outlook, Word or Excel
- Only high end models have color, and even the top are not as sharp as Pocket PCs
- Many have limited memory, or can only be upgraded through either SD/MMC or Memory Sticks - only the TRGPro
and HandEra have support for Compact Flash cards (limited to Type I only), and these do not have color screens
- Limited options for networking, if any
- Only high end models have any sound other than blips and bleeps (and thus usually no MP3 support)
- Only high end models have any video playing capability
- Comes standard with only 8 to 16 MB of RAM (though some higher models are now coming with 32 MB)
- Only Graffiti (special pen stroke) input
Pocket PC
Pros
- Large screens
- Most are standard at 65,000 colors with backlighting (only a few at 4096 colors), no grayscale models being marketed
- Prices are now comparable to Palms
- Very fast, the slowest Pocket PC on the market at 206 Mhz
- Most have support for Compact Flash cards, and many for Compact Flash Type II, allowing the use of the Microdrive
for up to 1 GB of relatively cheap storage
- All have MP3 and WAV support for stereo music
- All have support for video playback
- Includes MS Outlook, Word and Excel standard
- Organizer based off of MS Outlook, so its perfect for people who schedule on their computers and then sync their PDA
- Networkable via Ethernet compact flash card
- Multiple types of input including Transcriber (natural handwriting or printing) and individual letter input
- Comes standard with between 32 and 64 MB of RAM
- If you like games, look no further...
Cons
- Shorter battery life than Palms (normal use averages 8 to 12 hours, constant MP3 use with headphones averages 2
hours, constant Video playback with headphones averages 1 to 1 hour and 15 min.) - for normal use, should recharge
every other or every third day.
- Large file size requires more memory
- On average, larger form factor
- On average, slightly heavier
- Easy to trade programs and files via infrared, but must install programs from desktop (or laptop)
- Requires Peacemaker Pro software to trade files with Palm users via infrared
- Limited software
Have any suggestions or comments? Email me at hwong3@lycos.com.
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