POWER IN YOUR POCKET

If you own a Palm Pilot, you’ve probably heard someone comment: “Hey, that’s a great toy!” or “What can you do with that toy?” – The operative word being “toy.”

I don’t know about you, but I would take great umbrage at being accused of playing with toys. I’m as serious about my hand-held devices as anyone, and would hold my head up when I flash my Palm Pilot around.

Yet, I’m still deciding between Palm and Pocket PC.

Not every business type is as secure as I am, apparently, which is probably why “they” decided to invent the Pocket PC. The designers were probably counting on the fact that there are a great many people who only consider a computing product “good” if the letters PC are somehow stuck onto it – and if it can run Windows, so much the better.

That’s as good a theory as any as to why they call the latest line of products Pocket PCs. But Pocket PCs have been around for a few years, and unlike Palm, are made by several different manufacturers, such as Asus, Dell, Toshiba, HP and Compaq. All have certain features in common, including a stereo headphone jack, IrDA infrared ports, stylus, built-in speaker and microphone, and Windows MediaPlayer, which can handle MP3 files and Windows Media format movies (ASF and WMV), as well as Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, and Pocket Internet Explorer, a calculator, MSN Messenger and Pictures for viewing photos. Many come with Terminal Services and MS Reader.

And all of them run an operating system called Windows Mobile, built on Windows CE, a special version built for hand-held devices. It looks like Windows and acts like Windows, but it is a separate operating system with a separate set of code, so you cannot sync your regular Windows application to your device. Instead, you use the Pocket PC version of Word or Excel to create documents, which can then be read and edited by desktop Office apps. (This is not a specific reason to prefer a Pocket PC over a Palm, however, since Palms can do the same trick).

All Pocket PCs come with MS ActiveSync – the desktop app that syncs your Outlook data to the PDA. Outlook, naturally, is the default calendar/contact/e-mail program for these devices, and integrates seamlessly with desktop versions (but again, there is also Palm software to integrate with Office programs).

One plus for ActiveSync is that you can back up two computers (i.e. home and work) on the Pocket PC by default (not the case with Palms), and install files from any PC you can connect to.

Pocket PCs generally come with 32, 64 or 128 Megs of RAM, and 32 megs or more of ROM (where the OS and built-in applications are permanently stored). That’s more than the average Palm, but Mobile Windows is more memory-hungry than Palm OS, so some of that extra memory goes to service the device.

Pocket PCs run on XScale ARM family processors at speeds of 200 to 624 MHz, depending on the model. Most also have one SD card slot (generally used for memory cards and SD WiFi cards) and some have a CompactFlash Card slot, generally used for adding memory – the same memory cards many digital cameras use. The CF expansion slot can also accommodate CF modems, wired Ethernet cards, Bluetooth cards and WiFi cards.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of Pocket PCs over Palms is how they handle memory. Pocket PCs multi-task, while Palm devices generally run one program at a time (Palm OS 5.0 offers some multitasking functions, but Pocket PCs are better at it). Users often cite the Pocket PC screen as being easier to read than the Palm’s. And if you plan to use your device to surf the Web, you’ll be able to use the pocket edition of Internet Explorer, which works just like its big brother.

As with Palms, there are now two operating systems for Pocket PCs – Windows Mobile 2003 and Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. There are a number of differences between the two, with the most significant being SE’s support of VGA, so you can view 640-by-480-pixel (VGA) displays in Pocket PCs that support this. You can also display screen items in landscape mode using the new OS. This makes viewing some Web sites easier.

And there is also better Wi-fi security in SE, among other changes. Be aware that there are still a great many non-SE Windows Mobile devices on the market, although all new models should use the new system. It is possible to upgrade some older devices (not all though), but that will require an upgraded ROM chip from the manufacturer. Users report that not all software works with SE – although upgrades are available for most, of course.

As mentioned, Pocket PCs are more expensive than Palms. The cheapest Pocket PC running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition is the HP iPaq rz1715, which comes pretty well packed for an entry-level device. It has 32 megs of RAM (about 27 MB available to users, since the OS requires 8). The device also has an SD slot that supports SDIO, a QVGA transflective display, a 1,000 mA battery that is not user replaceable, and a 203MHz Samsung S3C2410 processor that’s XScale compatible.

How this measures up against other Pocket PCs or Palm Pilots is a question we shall attempt to answer in the near future.

Before we do that, we need to learn more about the software available for both devices – because that is going to be an important factor in your purchase decision, maybe even more important than the hardware.

More about that next time.

Dennis Turner