It's heating up out there...

Serg Koren Serg at VisualNewt.com
Mon Feb 8 02:01:05 UTC 1999


Nope, I'm not worried. I'm waiting for the Apple P1.  And if I'm not 
mistaken the Palm(3com) units outsell the WindowsCE ones by a fair 
margin.  Also, the WindowsCE ones are very limited in the scope and 
number of available apps (which is not to say MOST people *only* want 
the MSOffice micro-equivalents found on the CE devices).  Also, the 
development alternatives for the CE devices are very painful to use 
(maybe with the exception of NSBasic), whereas the Palm offers more 
diverse development environments and none of them are tied to 
Microsoft.

Cheers,
S

PS - I own Newtons, WinCE devices, an a Palm.  Of the 3, the WinCE 
devices are the most painful to use day to day.

At 5:08 PM -0500 2/7/99, My Evolution Will Not be Compromised wrote:
> Dan Ingalls <DanI at wdi.disney.com> writes:
>
>> Folks -
>>
>> A couple of pretty interesting new PDA's on the horizon, allegedly
> for spring delivery...
>
> [ Individual details WRT diisplay size, color, CPU snipped ]
>
>> Both have:
>> Palm Pilot form factor
>> Win CE 2.1 and a pile of apps
>
> I realize that this is completely off topic, but...
>
> Does it worry anyone else that all the neat, hot, new, and otherwise
> Spiffy-Whizz-Bang innovations in PDA's are seemingly *ALL* converging
> on the Windows CE platform?
>
> Will Microsoft control the horizontaal and the vertical in the PDA
> market, too?
>
> As early adopters of high technology, it behooves us to at least give
> a cursory thought to whose pockets we're lining, and what that means
> from a strategic/market driven standpoint.
>
> For instance, it's getting harder to be a PalmPilot loyalist, even
> though the little beastie suits my needs nearly perfectly in every
> other respect, because all the activity WRT Squeak and PDA's has been
> largely centered around WinCE devices (The Zaurus port is a notable
> and happy exception :)
>
> I'm not suggesting that anyone let this *wholly* influence their
> buying choices, just that we should be cognizant of which bandwagon
> we're jumping on, lest we find that in reality the destination is a
> marketplace devoid of choice (Or rather, devoid of choice as we know
> it.  There's choice, similar to the way Communist elections were
> run.. You get several choices, but all of them are approved by the
> Body Politic :).
>
> Whither the Itsy?  Come on
> DEC/Compaq/Whatever-the-hell-you're-called-today, give us something to
> be excited about that doesn't have the subliminal subtext "Resistance
> is Futile" written into the marketing text :)
>
> -Chris P.
> (P.S. I carefully considered buying a WinCE machine before I bought my
> new Palm III.  Decided against it for lack of good hotsync/software
> integration at the moment.  That and I couldn't *bear* to give
> Microsoft any more money :)
> ____________________________________________________________________
> |Chris Patti|ICQ#16333120|feoh at cosmic.com|Home #:(617)625-3194|JAPH|

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