InformationWeek

November 16, 1998

WinCE: Your Next OS?

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Two more features both devices have in common: for a PIM, you see the hourglass cursor far too often, and the devices lock up every now and then. None of the devices is speedy; the palm-sized PCs are downright sluggish compared with the PalmPilot, while the handheld models perform comparably to today's notebook computers running the even-slower full-featured desktop implementation of Microsoft Office. As for lock-ups: Every Windows CE 2.x device I've worked with has crashed at least once; compare this with my PalmPilot, which has yet to crash after a full year of regular use.

The saving grace, though, for Windows CE devices is the instant-on feature, eliminating the time-wasting power-up and power-down required by notebook computers running today's popular operating systems.

From here, the features of the palm-sized and handheld PCs begin to diverge.

An Expensive Day-Timer?
The palm-sized PC--the clunky name devised to resolve a 3Com legal challenge to Microsoft's original PalmPC moniker--is new with Windows CE 2.0. Pocket Outlook is included on the palm-sized PC, as is a note-taker program that lets you enter text or drawings. Additional programs include a calculator and a solitaire. In general, the product is being packaged as a PIM, which may miss its true calling as a small data-collection device.

The task bar at the bottom of the screen displays the Start button, a combo box for selecting the desired input method--keyboard, Communication Intelligence's Jot, or another method of entry supported by the device--and a status icon area for providing information about the current state of your device or of a program that's running on your device.

Keyboard input is accomplished with a picture of a keyboard drawn on the lower quarter of the Windows CE screen; using the stylus, you click the keys in the order you want to "type" what you want into the currently running application. Communication Intelligence's Jot is another method of "writing" characters that reduces the number of stylus strokes for entering most characters. Jot is easier to use than the Graffiti method supported by the PalmPilot for several reasons: Jot has more ways to enter the same character, includes word completion, and provides visual feedback on the entry area so you can see where you are in writing a particular character or symbol. Other input methods can be supported; for example, the Philips Nino 300 also supports the T9 method, which is similar to the way you would "write" words using a phone keypad.

Palm-sized PCs provide instant-start buttons on the unit that will automatically turn on the unit and start one of the primary Windows CE applications--for example, calendar, contacts, task list, or audio recorder. For quick access to certain applications, these buttons are quite useful. You can reassign the applications that these buttons automatically start. This provides flexibility to tailor the device the way you want, but the customization might lead to confusion when you forget a button's new assignments.

Once an application is started, it remains running until you shut it down. Only dialog boxes (and system settings windows, which are essentially dialog boxes) provide a button to close the window. The only way to stop a running application and remove it from your program execution RAM area is to start the System Properties tool, go to the task manager tab, and select each task you want to terminate.

The note-taker tool records text and drawings and lets you send this information to other Windows CE devices via the infrared port or to a contact via E-mail. This tool is one of the highlights of Windows CE for the palm-sized PC because of its flexibility and overall usability.

The voice recorders in these units are usually worthless. Considering the quality and general unintelligibility of the recordings and the way it will quickly drain your device's batteries, I wouldn't recommend using a palm-sized PC for recording important information.

Instead of an Internet browser, palm-sized PCs include Mobile Channels, which is a way to subscribe to Web information being offered using Microsoft's Channels specification. Not many Web sites have adopted this technology, but you can use it to quickly receive news and stock quotes, for example. Palm-sized PC synchronization is limited to PIM information; if you have other types of documents that you want to carry or create on the road, the palm-sized PC may not be the device for you.

In my tests of these devices, I found that a pair of alkaline batteries would last for about one hour of continuous use. However, when you consider how little you'll actually use the device to retrieve your information, you might take more than three weeks to consume that hour of time. Sounds and alarms deplete the batteries faster than normal, so perhaps my tests were harder on the batteries than you might find during normal use as a PIM. The good news is that most palm units support rechargeable batteries, so you needn't worry so much about the environmental impact of a product that depletes batteries the way a palm-sized PC will.

Overall, though, I don't see these devices as being "PalmPilot killers" at this point. For users needing an electronic PIM, these devices are too expensive and don't provide enough functionality. However, the palm-sized PC's ability to record and synchronize data makes it an effective data collection device for specialized applications, much like the Apple Newton, but its fate may turn out to be similar.