It's heating up out there...

Kevin Fisher kfisher at rim.net
Mon Feb 8 12:04:00 UTC 1999


Not that I'm a Palm Pilot fanatic or anything (just a happy owner) but it seems
like every 6 or 7 months we have to put up with the same hype about how WinCE
devices are going to claim the marketplace.  It hasn't happened yet, and I
don't think it will anytime soon.  As far as I can tell Wince has crashed and
burned (pun?) in the marketplace again and again.  I tried the HP Wince device
and was underwhelmed....slow, klunky (who ever said the Windoze interface even
made sense on a pocket device?) and an insanely short battery life.

Then again, at the rate they are retrofitting Wince to look and feel like
PalmOS, who knows? :)


On Sun, 07 Feb 1999, Serg Koren wrote:
>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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