Comment WinCE is not a Palm, but a Palm+ (Score 1) 129
The danger to palm is not that WinCE is a direct competitor of Palm. As has been stated numerous times, the MAIN (note not only) function of a palm is intended to be a contact manager and dayplaner. Yes, yes, I know everything else that it does, I have my IIIxe sitting right here next to me. On the other hand, palm is off of their rocker as far as price is concerned. The average street price at the moment for the palm IIIc and the Cassiopeia E100 are roughly about the same. However, the hardware in the E100 is about 1000x better, and the IIIc is going to get about the same battery life as the E100. True the E100 may run down faster because it is used more, but the fact that it is used more is a threat to palm also. Just because people use their CE devices, and thus the battery life as far as number of days between recharging is shorter, does not mean anything in real world application. Oh, just for the record, I also have a cassiopeia E100, and it also is sitting here, my IIIxe is keeping it company. I use the windows CE device whenever I can, but there are a few applications for the Palm that made it worth spending the money and owning both.
I spend about 98% of my day away from my computer, and up and moving around. I want something that can spend the day with me. A laptop is simply out of the question, and a palm device alone is simply too weak to do 75% of what I want to do. Hotsyncing is not even an issue to me, I really don't care to hotsync except to backup the device. I veiw my windows CE box (if I can call it that) as an independent computing platform, that I can do just about anything on because of the powerful processor, the large memory space, and COLOR. Yes the things that people bag on as being too much for a handheld is exactly the reason that I use it the most. I do not have a problem slipping it into it's charger every other night for a quick refresher. And by the way, since you can plug the recharger directly into most models, even business people can carry the transformer on the road with them, and the little battery problem becomes about 5% of the issue that people are making of it.
In the end I view the comparison of Windows CE to palm in about the same light as comparing Palm to say my HP GX calculator. Windows CE can just do more, and I believe that unless palm and its subsidaries wake up, lower the price of their hardware, and start working on some new 'REAL' inovations (adding more memory is amateur), that windows CE or another like device (e.g., YOPI) will become the de fact standard, and palm will take a back seat. Truely in todays market I believe it is only a matter of time.
Don't be too critical of either palm or ce until you carry both of them daily side by side.
I spend about 98% of my day away from my computer, and up and moving around. I want something that can spend the day with me. A laptop is simply out of the question, and a palm device alone is simply too weak to do 75% of what I want to do. Hotsyncing is not even an issue to me, I really don't care to hotsync except to backup the device. I veiw my windows CE box (if I can call it that) as an independent computing platform, that I can do just about anything on because of the powerful processor, the large memory space, and COLOR. Yes the things that people bag on as being too much for a handheld is exactly the reason that I use it the most. I do not have a problem slipping it into it's charger every other night for a quick refresher. And by the way, since you can plug the recharger directly into most models, even business people can carry the transformer on the road with them, and the little battery problem becomes about 5% of the issue that people are making of it.
In the end I view the comparison of Windows CE to palm in about the same light as comparing Palm to say my HP GX calculator. Windows CE can just do more, and I believe that unless palm and its subsidaries wake up, lower the price of their hardware, and start working on some new 'REAL' inovations (adding more memory is amateur), that windows CE or another like device (e.g., YOPI) will become the de fact standard, and palm will take a back seat. Truely in todays market I believe it is only a matter of time.
Don't be too critical of either palm or ce until you carry both of them daily side by side.
