[H-GEN] personal organiser

[Paul Gearon]

> From:          Charlie Allom <yeld at pobox.com>
> Hiyas
> 
> i dont know whether this is appropriate or not, but everyone else seems to
> be doing it ;)

Probably not appropriate, but it doesn't bother me.

> I'm looking to buy myself a personal organiser along the liunes or an
> apple newton/palm pilot/winCE device. does anyone know where to get a
> deal, or to get a good second hand one? 

Can't offer much advice here (though I wish I could).

> and of course i am looking for advice on the best type to get.
> i would prefer the newton for all the capacity for cool toys i can put on
> there =)

OK, the following is admittedly a little subjective, but 
I'll try to stick to the facts...

Apple Newtons
The Newtons certainly are _very_ good.  The thing I 
particularly like about them is their handwriting 
recognition / spell-checker and it's ability to adapt this 
to the user.

The major problems with these are the fact that they are so 
large and bulky (you need a very big pocket to fit one in - 
and no "Is that a Newton in your pocket or are you just 
pleased to see me" jokes please), and also Apple are no 
longer making them.  They also cost much more than the 
other 2 machines.

Some of the big pluses I know of include the sheer 
processing power available, and the availability of 
software.  These things really are a hand sized computer, 
and a lot of fun to use.

MS WinCE
I wouldn't buy a wince if you paid me.  True, some do have 
colour screens, and they come with a PCMCIA slot, but 
that's where the benefits end.  I'll start with ergonomics. 
They have a stylus, but only to replace the mouse, and 
using the stylus AND a keyboard isn't convenient (and 
convenience is the whole reason behind these machines).  
This brings me to the point that they are awkward to hold 
in comparison with the other 2 boxes.

Some of these issues have been addressed by the 
introduction of the Palm-Sized-PC (whose name MS had to 
change from PalmPC due to similarity with the PalmPilot 
name - it's not surprising they were caught out for this as 
even a cursory look at the Palm-Sized-PC shows that it is 
a BLATANT rip-off of the PalmPilot design).  The 
Palm-Sized-PC comes with hand-writing recognition (of what 
level I can't say) and is much easier to hold than the 
other wince boxes.

However, the real problems with wince are in the OS.  For 
starters, it's a cut-down Win95.  That should tell you 
enough, but in case it doesn't...  Wince requires 2MB just 
for the OS and each program takes up hundreds of KB.  They 
are NOT efficient in their usage of space.  Also, they 
require a special version of MS Visual C++ to compile 
programs for them, and this is _not_ free.  This leads to 
the majority of software being written by companies rather 
than hackers, which means that there is less of it, and a 
lot of it isn't free.  It also leads to the programs being 
bloated (This shouldn't surprise anyone who has worked with 
MS VC++).  I have also been hearing rumours that the 
platform can crash a lot.  This may or may not be true, but 
since the OS is based on Win95 I would suspect that it is.

PalmPilot.
This is the only one I would consider against the Newton.  
Since it is so much cheaper it was also the organiser which 
I bought for myself.  It's main advantages are it's size, 
price and availability of software and peripherals.  Unlike 
the wince boxes it makes extremely efficient use of it's 
RAM.  I currently have 19 applications installed, plus all 
of my addresses, appointments and numerous notes and I am 
using 651K out of a possible 960K.  Compare this to a 
minimal wince configuration of 2MB ROM and 3MB RAM (IIRC).

The PalmPilot comes in 4 flavours: PalmPilot Personal; 
PalmPilot 5000; PalmPilot Professional and PalmIII.  I 
opted away from the first 2 as they have no PPP support.  
Also the "Personal" doesn't have a back-lit screen.  
Fortunately, each model can be upgraded to a higher model 
for about the cost difference between the 2.  The PalmIII 
also comes with an IR port (as does the Newton).  The other 
models can have this installed easily.  Upgrades are also 
available from 3rd parties, some of which are much better 
than the original 3Com parts (or simply not available form 
3Com).

The biggest advantage I find with the PalmPilot is the free 
development tools, and hence the HUGE support base for 
these devices.  There are extensive tools for programming 
these things under Windows, Solaris, Debian and RedHat, 
just to name a few.  There is even a Java VM available for 
it.  This has led to large number of mostly free programs 
which can run on this platform.


Well, most of this has been reasonably biased (particularly 
towards the PalmPilot), but I hope I shed some light on 
what I know about these devices.  Basically the PalmPilot 
and wince are the best for price and future support.  The 
Newton and the PalmPilot are more efficient and easier to 
use (in my opinion) while wince is aimed at providing a 
familiar environment for Windows users (ref. MSJ Oct 1996). 
Hopefully no-one here requires that last benefit.  Also, 
the PalmPilot seems to have the best support base IMHO, 
much in the same way that Linux does (as it is an open 
system).

Paul Gearon
gearon at computer.org

Microsoft - Where every morning is the dawn of a new error.
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