Hawai'i Tech
Palm, Pocket or ...

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

The latest iPAQ by Compaq, right, has helped drive up interest in the Pocket PC. But the Palm brand, left, still dominates the marketplace for the personal digital assistant. Advertiser photo illustration

Now there is. Compaq's success with its iPAQ handheld unit has boosted the fortunes of the competing systems.

All of them are known collectively as personal digital assistants, or PDAs, but assorted brands have sprouted over the past few years to meet the demands of mobile professionals seeking to keep all their information organized. Handspring Visor. Sony Clie. Hewlett-Packard Jornada. And the true upstart, the iPAQ.

"Actually, it's slowed a bit, but at first the iPAQ sold like mad," said Tim Patrick, a salesman for the Honolulu computer retailer Byteware, a dealer in both Palm and its competitors. "We literally couldn't keep them in stock."

There are differences among the various PDA brands, but there are only two competing types. The Palm types (the Palm, Visor and Clie, among others), all run the same operating system. Pocket PCs (such as the Jornadas and iPAQs) use Microsoft's Windows CE, the compact edition of the familiar desktop system.

Pocket PC is the name Microsoft is using to promote the assembly of Windows CE, version 3 or later, and a set of features installed by Sony or HP or whichever manufacturer has bought the rights. But a lot of industry watchers say it's no wonder the public hears a lot more these days about the Pocket PC "platform" than the Windows CE program beneath it. The two previous versions did not enjoy the best reputation.

Dennis Yamamoto, a Honolulu resident and owner of a software firm, had taken the Windows CE route with a Sharp Mobilon organizer. "I found it to be slow and cumbersome," said Yamamoto, who now owns a Kyocera Smartphone, a device that combines a cell phone with an organizer using the Palm operating system. It's his third Palm-type PDA; Yamamoto said they all would "sync" better with his desktop computer than Windows CE, meaning a faster transfer of documents and files between the big computer and the small.

The newest Pocket PCs, such as the latest iPAQs, run with the fourth version of the Windows CE system, and it's still not perfect, said Alan Lam, whose company, QComm, sells Palms and organizes a PDA users group.

"From a cynical standpoint, this is Microsoft's fourth try at getting something running," Lam said. "They are trying to get a small handheld device to run a desktop system."

Lam acknowledged that the iPAQ has driven up interest in the Pocket PC, enough so that the type now has about a 10th of the marketplace. Not a huge sector, perhaps, but enough that Lam thinks the PDA group will be seeing more of its users.

However, he said, the Pocket PC still doesn't run well with certain software that the Palm system made popular. For instance, there's a program called ACT! that manages business contact information, and it only runs with the earliest versions of Windows CE, not the ones that Pocket PCs are equipped with.

So although the later models generally run better, he said, they won't win over people who want to keep using their favorite programs and files.

There are those who disagree. Lawrence Sullivan, a Salt Lake financial planner who first adopted the Windows products because some of them (the Sharp Mobilon) had color and a keyboard, has been using various editions for eight years. Five months ago he bought an iPAQ 3650 for $550 and remains a staunch defender.

The Pocket PC is more easily expandable than the Palm, with plug-in memory cards that allow him to store MP3 files and listen to music while traveling.

"Because it's Windows-driven, it's always worked perfectly with Windows things," Sullivan said. "I use it with Word, Excel, Outlook." The Palm can be adapted to run PC documents, he said, but it requires additional software to make it work.

"After they buy all these extra things," he added, "they might as well buy a Pocket PC."

Microsoft is hoping that new Pocket PC software will be written that will become as popular with consumers as those created for the Palm.

Last month, it opened its Windows CE programming to developers to help the process along.

Already the Pocket PC is being viewed as a viable alternative to the Palm, said Sullivan, who now can hold his head up high.

"A lot of Palm users used to make fun of me," he said with a laugh, "but with the iPAQ, now they like it."

At the bottom line in the purchase of a PDA, as in other gadget categories, is determining how the device will be used before making a choice. The Pocket PC can do more, said Byteware salesman Patrick, but a lot of people don't need that much.

"If you essentially need a pocket laptop, the iPAQ is the way to go," he said. "But if you just need an organizer, the Palm is easier to use.

"Once I was trying out the iPAQ and I was trying to figure out how to delete a file," Patrick said. "It's not like on a computer, where you can right-click the mouse. I had to look it up in the instructions." In contrast, he said, "I had a Palm for about six months before I even looked at the instructions."