Unbelievable! The new Toshiba 335e Pocket PC 2002 at $299. I have been a firm believer in Palm and Handspring devices for a long time. Many friends have bought Palm os devices because of my experiences and advice. My latest is a handspring visor with visor phone. I wanted to replace my laptop and phone on the road. Using upgraded software for contact management, remote e-mail, word, excel viewers, picture viewing I have been pretty happy but have wanted a multimedia pda with high resolution screen, phone all in a slim and light weight package.I have been waiting in much anticipation for palm os 5 phone/pda devices. I could not be more disappointed recently by the Treos (low res screen and no expansion) Tungsten T ($499 very expensive)and W (os4! have to use a handsfree cord for talking - no microphone!), Kyocera 7135 (os4 low res screen)SPH-i500 (only 256 colors), A460 (small but os 4 and low res screen). The Tungsten T is beautifly built, but when you go to a store and see the same old applications (no graphics, no music, no multimedia) and play with a pocket pc next to it and see all they offer for less, the decision is not difficult. The new Sonys are nice - put so expensive.
The CE devices were slow, large, difficult to use, and expensive.
The Pocket PC devices were nice but kind of slow, large and expensive.
The Pocket PC 2002 devices like the Toshiba 335e, Viewsonic V35 and the new light weight compaq are cheap (under $300), fast (300+ MHz) small (just slightly thicker and 3/4 inch longer than the palm V). For this difference you get 64 meg of ram (plenty), expansion (MMC and SD memory cards and bluetooth), 32 meg flash rom for updating OS, high res 240 x 320 bright color screen, truefonts (viewing text in documents like on a PC), MP3 music, Audio Advisor talking books, Windows media player (video and music), Internet explorer (AvantGo never looked so good), Acrobat Reader (view documents with graphics just like on PC - not striped to just text), Microsoft Word with spelling check, Excel, High res photo viewer, Outlook e-mail with attachments, Voice notes, handwriten notes, speaker for voice/music and ability to write in you hand writing using the whole screen with near perfect converson to text (no more graffiti or little keyboards. The V35 is only 4.2 oz. 4.8 x 3 inches for $299! And must not forget software. There are probably near 1,000 applications and games for the pocket PC. Try the games - the palm is like using an atari VS Xbox and PS2. The palm is like using cpm in the old text days of the 70's and 80's. The pocket PC is for this millenium and like getting a new tablet PC for a fraction of the cost!
I also just bought a sony/ericson phone T68i for $49 (regularly $299) at Amazon.com with T-mobile (1000 anywhere and anytime - no roaming no long distance minutes for $39 a month). This is a very small phone with a big color screen with bluetooth that can access POP e-mail! ...and I can use the Toshiba to dial the phone and get e-mail with attachements that are viewable and can edit. I don't need it all in one package anymore. It is so nice using and caring around a small phone again!
Handspring and Palm days are numbered. It is like the old days when Word Perfect ruled. Today Microsoft Word/Office rules. This will happen to palm. Compatibility, small form factor, multimedia, ease of use and value rule! You do not see many old text terminals any more - in a few years the same will be said for palms.
I can't forget to mention the new Dell Pocket PCs. If you don't mind a bulky pda - what value starting at $199!!!
More manufacturers are offering Pocket PC devices, fewer are offering Palm OS. Volume production, competition, and the almost unlimited resources of Microsoft will drive Palm out of the mainstream over time. I still like Palm for simplicity, but if you are a windows user the new pocket PCs are not hard to learn and Goodbye l
Submitted by: John
Email: soles@visara.com
Location: Chicago, IL
Date Added: 2002-12-03
