PocketMatrix

Check out these two:

<center> http://www.palmos.com/platform/os5/palmvspocket.html

http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/pocketp ... ftware.asp </center>

LOL...

Let's remove advocacy from the discussion for a moment and talk about the facts...

On the Palm Site...
http://www.palmos.com/platform/os5/palmvspocket.html

Software Compatibility. Their statements are mostly true. If you had a MIPS-based PPC and upgraded your unit by purchasing a PPC2002, then the software you had on your MIPS-based device wouldn't run. Palm "piles it on" with meaningless and non-applicable additional data, but for the most part, it is true.


Hardware Freedom of choice. Fluff and technobabble to confuse the reader.

Software developers. True.

Enterprise Standards. If true, so what?

Market Share. True...but the numbers are changing.

Expansion. This is funny... they make it sound like all of the Palm expansion choices are available on a single device. Pssst, don't forget that within the Palm product line itself, there is an incompatibility in the connector port.

Connectivity. For the most part this is true.

Battery Life. Unfortunately ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

Estimated Street Price. A little outdated, Audiovox Maestro is about $250 now (was $220).

The Palm definitely has its place, and in some areas, far surpass the PPC. If your PDA usage is focused primarily on the PIM, then Palm wins hands down... but if you want to do a wider variety of things like multitask, play MP3s, etc. etc. then the PocketPC is the winner.

But there is no single end-all-be-all PDA.

I think ultimately most people would agree that both Palms and PocketPCs have their advantages and disadvantages. Palm's point about the battery life a Pocket PC is true. It sux. But you could argue (and I would) that more power is more important than more battery life. And with the new XScale processors apparently being more energy efficient and with long life batteries, the Pocket PCs battery life could be reasonable but still is not going to be able to compete with the current Palms' battery life. Ultimately it really does depend on what the consumer wants to use it for. If they want little more than standard PIM functions then perhaps a cheap Palm would be better for them. But if they want multimedia capabilities, internet and the ability to play PC quality games they should choose the Pocket PC.
But from the market share it appears that an Electronic Organiser+ is all that the majority want.
PocketPCs still rule IMO though.

the biggest battery hog is the backlight. If you drag a palm with a color tft screen out, its battery life is gona be shit too...

I liked mypalm as a phone book, and a cheap easy ebook reader. But with the pocketpc I can now play music, movies, play GOOD games, and if cell modem adapter prices become sane.. I can fully browse the net with it too. Also I LIKE being able to brows my PDA like a windows system, it annoyd the hell out of me about the one way strict file uploading process the palm had. (It was really stupid that I had to convert simple text files just to upload and view them).