WOW! Could Palm Happen?

Wayne Mahon · 06-05-06, 10:19 AM

This is by no means a Fanboy article. Let me start off first by saying i LOVE Pocket PCs. IO even ran a PPPC site for several years. I have been with PPCs since the earlier Casios. For a long time I have been promoting Pocket PCs. I can I say I did hit Fanboy status at times and tried talking people out of Palm. Well....times change

I still have my X50v and man is my baby beautiful. I have been looking for convergence lately and sat down to really get a list of things I NEED. Well first and foremost was reliability. Because I now need reliable access to data I did not find myself feeling safe with a Pocket PC device. As much as I hated doing it, I decided to look at Palm specifically the Treo 700p. HOLY @&*** I am very impressed. Honestly it is in no way as pretty as a Pocket PC but I very rarely have to take out he stylus. and program switching is a breeze!!! memory management is incredible in comparison.

All in all to cut this short. I will keep my Axim for a while longer but I would really like to see MS take some tips from how Palm makes things so easy. There is also a 700w version of the Treo 700 but from everything I am reading...nothing has changed with memory management. Still a pain in the ##@$. MS has way to many resources to not be putting more effort into the development of the OS. So this rant is over and I have to say. The Treo 700p may cause my x50v to collect dust. I will report more later, Maybe there are crappy things I have not found yet.

Lesson learned : Don't let your enthusiasm for one device keep you from experimenting with others ;)

rascho · 06-05-06, 10:46 AM

He, he ... I have completely opposite situation. I was long time Microsoft hater (still am) and Palm lover (Sony Clie NR70V Palm OS 4.1). But a few weeks ago I was looking into buying new Palm (I was thinking TX), and then I found out a few things. There is no single device which supports PalmOS 6.0 although it is available for at least a year. PalmOS 5.4 is just a collection of hacks to support new technologies. There is no multitasking in Palm OS 5.4. Font support and eyecandies are lousy in Palm. Nevertheless memory management is much superior on Palm. You have only one memory and it is used for running and storing programs. This is designed having mobile devices in mind, while Microsoft had copied its concept from desktop systems (HD/RAM -> ROM/RAM). My Sony could run for months without a reset if I didn't install some new system hacks on it. So there are pros and cons for Palm but my main con is that PalmSource (makers of PalmOS) is sold to some Japanese company which makes Linux for mobile devices, so I believe that PalmOS will be dead in a few years.
When they make Linux for PDA, and when there is software available for it, I will probably switch to Linux as I still hate Microsoft (I don't use it on desktop at all), but currently I am very pleased with my Axim X51v.

Wayne Mahon · 06-05-06, 11:32 AM

Its good to hear your perspective. Coming from Palm I can respect your view. This should be an interesting experiment. I am still keeping my X50v. So I will try to report well on this. The difficulty being that the X50v is not a phone too. I wish I had money to get a 700w also then I could do a full comparison and report. I can be VERY impartial on this.

azmark · 06-05-06, 11:41 AM

Does SPB pocket plus run on the 700w? Or any other program that converts the X button into a real close? Kinda makes memory management a snap. And with wm5 and the small ammount I've used the 700w it makes the stylus very confy in it's holder not in your hand.

**Frenchy** · 06-05-06, 11:59 AM

I had both a Palm and PocketPC and so far I prefer the PockerPC. I have setup a Treo for a user at work and it was not working right from teh get go. Lokks nice and feel nice but not for me atm