This portion of the comparison is basically just a meandering discussion
of hand-held machines in general and this site in specific. Here I include
my opinions and advice which you are of course free to use or ignore as you
see fit; take note that I accept no responsibility for choosing the wrong
machine for your purposes or whatever -- my biggest two pieces of advice are:
- decide what you want to do with the device before you
narrow down your selection. It isn't a case of there being a
"best" hand-held machine and a "worst" hand-held machine
although some people naïvely assume this to be true. There are
perhaps best and worst machines for particular applications, though, and
it's up to you to figure out what tasks you need to perform and which
machine best addresses your needs.
- always physically get your hands on the devices that interest you
and try them out before you make your final choice. You
don't want to get stuck with a unit that just doesn't feel right.
The Nature of Proprietary
There seems to be a lot of FUD being spread around by otherwise respectable
sources about what is and isn't "proprietary". Currently every
single PDA on the market is proprietary at the OS level. This includes
the Pilots, Newtons, WinCEs, Psions, Zoomers, etc. as each of them only has
one OS provider. Most of the PDAs on the market (with the noteworthy
exceptions of the Pilots and Sharp units) are
not proprietary
at the hardware level as more than one company produces hardware platforms
that run the respective OSs. Note in particular that Newtons, Zoomers,
WinCEs, and Psions should not be considered proprietary in the hardware
sense, and none of these are more or less proprietary than the others.
The Saga of the Newton
Most PDA fans right now are watching the Newton. The PDA responsible for the
term "PDA" has gone through some eventful times recently. First,
its design team set off and formed their own company with Apple's blessing
and full backing, and the little company Newton, Inc., boasting two successful
product lines, seemed destined for success. A change of the powers-that-be at
Apple soon created change in attitude, though, and the little company quickly found
itself beleaguered by its former parent. Step by step, Apple reasserted control
over Newton, Inc. and eventually dissolved the company. Initially there were
rumors that Apple intended to sell the Newton technology, and in the past companies
the likes of Sun Microsystems and UMAX had expressed interest in such a purchase.
Apple apparently waffled around with all offers though, indicating an interest to
further the technology themselves because a "company the size of Newton, Inc.
couldn't properly market" the Newton technology. Since the reacquisition,
some of the Newton technical people have gone to work for Palm; the long-term
results of this brain-drain should be interesting. Recently Apple announced
that they will no longer continue to develop the Newton technology, instead
releasing a MacOS based substitute sometime in the year 1999. It is not yet
clear whether or not the new units will be able to run Newton software, or
whether or not Rhapsody will support a "Green Box" for the Newton.
It is also not yet clear whether or not the Newton technology will be sold. There
is at least one company that has publically announced that they have made a
"very generous" offer for it, and there may be more. In any case, it
is likely that the Newton MessagePad 2100 will be the last Newton with the Apple
brand, and possibly the last Newton period. In spite of this, sales remain brisk;
Apple will continue to support the 2100 for the next seven years. If you want a
Newton, now might be your last chance to get one -- suppliers are rapidly selling
them out. I make no secret of the fact that I like this machine. If you have
need for a powerful laptop replacement with really long battery life and less
weight, I heartily recommend trying to acquire one of the MP2100s before they
disappear forever.
WinCE
The current state of WinCE should be mentioned prominently to help counter
the hype: sure, it gets advertised on television and has some support from
some big companies and will some day probably be as good as its competition,
but for now, avoid these machines.
Why?
- WinCE 1.0 is far from perfect and WinCE 2.0 (which fixes some of the
flaws in 1.0) is now just starting to be released. WinCE 3.0 is due this
coming summer.
- Most of the current WinCE machines are not capable of running WinCE 2.0,
let alone WinCE 3.0.
- The current batch of WinCE machines are quickly being discontinued
and thrown into bargain bins in places where their makers hope people
haven't heard of WinCE 2.0 or WinCE 3.0.
- The hardware future of WinCE is very uncertain; Microsoft has advocated
using a StrongARM processor (as is found in the current Newtons) for WinCE
2.0 units and it's not clear where that'll leave current WinCE 1.0 & 2.0
users.
- Some of the current WinCE unit hardware companies are trying to make
their own custom processors in competition with the StrongARM and it's not
clear whether or not that'll fragment the near future WinCE market or what
impact it'll have on software.
- The total number of these things sold (counting both versions 1.0 and
2.0) is way below expectations and it's difficult to predict which current
WinCE vendors will stay in the game. Currently Philips and HP look the
most determined.
In short, wait until the WinCE hardware questions have been answered and
WinCE itself has matured into at least version 2.x (but version 3.0 would
probably be safer -- recall ordinary MS-Windows prior to version 3.0).
Even traditional Microsoft advocates are of this opinion these days. See
also
this article,
this
article and
this article (or for an example from a non-MS advocate,
this
article or even
this
older article).
Zoomer
It's worth noting that three of the Zoomer type PDAs are practically identical
with only the smallest of differences. Most people group them together and
accessories that work on one of them are guaranteed to work on all three.
(In fact, they were all made primarily by Casio and OEMed to the other two
companies, so the only real differences ought to be the casing and the
label. Strangely, however, Casio's own version claims longer battery life.)
These three are the Z-7000, the Z-PDA, and the GRiDpad 2390. These are
considered to be the "classic Zoomers". The OmniGo
models are both basically Zoomers but aren't exactly like the three
classic Zoomers. The Gulliver has not yet been released but
is expected to be the most capable Zoomer yet. No official release date
has yet been announced, and it will possibly even use a higher version of
GEOS. There seems also to be at least one company (is this still true?)
that custom develops Zoomer-type PDAs for extremely vertical markets for
dedicated applications for other companies. Also, ironic as it is, the
company Geofox makes PDAs in the Psion family, not Zoomers.
Java Support
The bit about planned Java support indicates more that the company has
already started to port Java to the machine indicated. Java support is
obviously important if the platform is going to survive into the next century.
I have heavily revised these entries in this last round of edits because it
became clear that although certain companies stated that there would be Java
support for certain platforms, they really meant that there would only
be support for certain versions and later. Affected heavily are the
various WinCE units -- none of the current models of which are expected to
ever support Java (and even later models are now questionable pending the
results of the Sun/Microsoft lawsuit charging that Microsoft was serving
deficient Java in some of its other products, see
this
article); and the Newton units --
only the MP2000 and above are expected to be able to run Java (and even the
MP2000 might have to get a hardware upgrade first).
Also, Telxon has supposedly been working on a Java-based hand-held. The
word "supposedly" is stressed here because although their
picture of the unit shows the steaming Java cup and some of the previously
released literature referred to it as a Java unit, their current product
specification says it runs MS-DOS...
Physical Construction
Some people complain about the physical construction of some of
the WinCE units and the Pilots. The only general truth is that you
can probably break any other unit listed in this chart
with a Seahorse (or Tarpon) and still have a working Seahorse (or Tarpon)
afterwards. If you're looking for a battle-ready unit, these two units
are possibly the current best bets. In spite of this, all of the recent
PDA work by the U.S. Marines and U.S. Navy seems to have been focused
around the MP2000 and MP130, and this fact is possibly the root cause
of the recent discontinuation of the Seahorse and Tarpon. Certainly
though certain units (like the Psions and Newtons) have better reputations
for being well-built than others.
Sub-notebooks, NCs, and Others
The Newton platform seems to be sending its feelers out into NC territory
since the success of the
eMate to first
the educational and later the general market. Now the
"
bMate" is
expected to be released in late February 1998 targeted at the business
market. These units are outside the scope of this table (unless the bMate
turns out to actually be a hand-held; this is still a subject of speculation)
and will not be covered further here except to note the curiousity that the
eMate and Psion Series 5 use the same processor.
Similarly, Brother has just released a sub-laptop called the
GeoBook that is based on GEOS 5.0
and is thus very Zoomer-like. As with the eMate, it's a bit outside the
scope of this table.
The new Siemens integrated phone / answering machine / FAX / e-mail / etc.
secretary station is based on the Newton
platform, but Psion, GEOS, and WinCE are working their way into the
telephone (and other small appliance) business as well. Java friendliness
should be a large part of how well these systems can get themselves into
embedded household electronics.
Desktop Independence
Lastly some comment should be made on the concept of "desktop
independence". These units range from the Pilot (virtually useless
without either a PC or Mac) to the MessagePad 2100 (can replace a laptop
for all practical applications). If desktop independence is an important
feature, look more closely at the Newtons, Psions, and Zoomers which were
designed with this idea in mind.
