A slightly built female engineer is walking through the San Jose airport, lugging two enormous suitcases that appear to be extremely heavy. A businessman in a suit comes over and asks the lady if he can assist her with her bags. While reaching for one of the suitcases he notices the watch on her wrist.
“Say, that’s an unusual looking watch,” he observes as they walk out to the engineer’s car. “Thanks,” she replies, “I made it myself.” What does it do? the businessman wonders. “Oh, it runs a stripped down version of Linux, connects via Bluetooth and 802.11g, sends and receives FAXes, lets me work through email on an eyeglass LCD display, holds current digitized VFR and IFR charts for my Cirrus airplane, plus a lot more.”
“Wow!” says the businessman, “Can I buy it off you? I’ll give you $3000.” The engineer thinks for a minute and then says “Sure, I can always build myself another one.” She hands over the watch and the businessman starts to walk away. She holds up the two suitcases and calls out after him “Hey, don’t you want the batteries?”
…
After two weeks with a Compaq iPAQ 3765 PocketPC, very kindly loaned by Andrew Grumet, here’s what I’ve learned…
- the batteries go dead after looking up 10 addresses over a period of 3 days (by contrast on one charge my old Handspring Treo would last for a couple of days as a phone and then at least 2 weeks as a Palm)
- there is no battery level display (takes about 8 stylus strokes to find the current battery level)
- handwriting recognition doesn’t work for me
- it was a lot easier to enter text on the Treo’s thumb keyboard than using the stylus/screen keyboard on the PocketPC
- carrying a separate phone and PDA is painful
- I couldn’t get the iPAQ to sync with a laptop via IR, only with a desktop via USB
Palm used to have a tap counter on staff, a usability professional who would count taps. If a featrue required too many taps of the stylus to access, it would be redesigned.
I used to have a palm-cellphone combo, but have switched since to a Tungsten T and a Sony-Ericsson T68i, connected via bluetooth. Each is optimized for its specific function.
perhaps it’s time for you to try a danger device. You can access your email, AIM, sync with outlook address / calendar and much more. It stays charged for 1.5 days (less if you do a lot of AIMing). The only real issue I’ve had with it in my 6 months of using it has been the weight (6.02 oz).
Interesting, Philip. I have a Treo 300 and I love it. I have often oggled PocketPCs and wondered if I’d be happier “on the other side”. Looks like – no.
Ole
After years of using a Palm I finally bought a PocketPC. I went with PocketPC because I have some apps I want to develop for it eventually and I will need a test machine anyway.
Overall, I am happy with it. It is not as optimized of a UI as Palm, (I have found a few little things like the battery bar you mentioned that irritate me too), but I have found solutions for my complaints so far.
About the battery level display, most PocketPC users use WisBar or some variant(http://www.lakeridgesoftware.com/index.html) to take care of that and similar issues.
As far as battery levels go, I have never had my PPC run down on me, but I have it resting in the cradle when I am in office or at home so the charge gets topped up pretty regularly. That said, I go home Friday and don’t need to change it over the weekend. I use it less over the weekends, true, but I give it far more use that you are describing here without any problem. This does vary from model to model and the newer machines seem to be much improved over what I have seen in the past.
Just my 2 cents. 🙂
Compgeeks.com has the Handspring Visor Neo 8MB for $69. (I don’t remember if I have ever bought from them, but I get their weekly specials email – very tempting items sometimes)
RE PDA’s: I’m still happy with my Palm Vx. Four years old? Still does what I bought it for.
That’s a great joke! I thought it would be about the missing exchange of the $3000 and was caught off guard by the punchline. 🙂
I have the Danger Color Sidekick from TMobile. It’s a great device although it cannot sync with Outlook as the above poster mentioned. You can export your Outlook contacts and other info. as a text file and import it into the Sidekick.
The device works well as a data device. Email push is just as good as the Blackberry yet it can browse the web (not just WAP, but normal webpages including photo.net) and it has AIM (ICQ also).
It’s not that good as a phone and TMobiles coverage isn’t great yet, so I keep my Verizon phone. With the Sidekick, I’m on an unlimited data-only plan at $29./month. Danger has an interesting way of caching data on their servers so the experience is faster than other wireless devices. It’s a neat device/service, one worth checking out.
Hmm, I wonder if this cellphone handcrank would work on the iPAQ?
(First time I flew into San Jose, it had three strips: the one in the middle was a grass strip used by sailplanes.)
Yes, that’s right, a cellphone. hand. crank.
Clear!
Mr Greenspun,
use your brain + pen & paper, that way you don’t need any batteries… I said that before didn’t I?
Also, I think more products should have handcranks. My old car has a backup handcrank starter and it’s saved me many times when the battery gone flat.
Unfortunately they don’t make cars with starter cranks anymore… I guess that’s another indication of the imminent downfall of western civilisation…
Have you ever try a Psion 5 mx? It is a PDA with a keyboard. Work like hell as a PDA, never crashes. Battery life using 2 AA batteries is 20 to 30 hours.
I’d suggest trying a Sharp Zaurus C-750 (or C-760). They look fairly nice, have a great screen, and run Linux. People have even gotten CLISP with Maxima to run on the things.
On the practical phonebook/todo side though, nothing beats the Palm.
I agree about the battery fact… however I believe you should keep in mind that the Pocket PC offers a lot more in processing power and is suitable for many more advanced apps due to CPU, RAM and color screen than a Treo. Also like Jan Rychter mentioned, it is capable of running Linux, giving you much more power over the device than neither a Palm nor the Pocket PC OS do. Although the battery isn’t impressive, I think it has been improved in the newer iPaq (personally I use an iPaq 3970 and have never owned similar devices before), and being a LiIon, it can be charged every night without developing the NiMh’s memory effect. It is a pain in the *** though that one can’t change the battery like it is possible in most mobile phones. This has been changed in the newest iPaqs too, as far as I know.