Why CE has failed to catch on.
Sep 08 '00
Over the last few years I have owned a variety of PDA's running both Windows CE and the Palm OS. Specifically, I have had a Jornada 420, HP 320lx, a Compaq C-140 (upgraded to CE 2.0) and a Palm III. All but the Palm have either been sold off or given away. The problem with all the CE machines, and this includes the new Pocket PC models (I have spent a good deal of time troubleshooting the USB connection problems on a friend's IPAQ) is that while they are feature rich on paper, in practice they are merely technology demonstrations. They are impressive for all that they are theoretically capable of, but fall short on execution. Unless the owner/user is willing to learn, in exacting detail, every aspect of the design and operation of a CE based machine, frustration will result. The problem is that Microsoft and its hardware partners are so obviously concerned with out-competing Palm and its licensees that they have chosen to pack the devices with features whose operations haven't been carefully thought out. The result is a set of machines that, instead of managing a user's personal data seamlessly, demand to be managed by said user on a regular basis. In every case with CE, I found that after the initial "gee whiz" period wore off, I found the machines simply too bothersome and unreliable to really use. By contrast, Palm machines are considerably less ambitious in their abilities. They are well designed for personal information management and can be used for limited pocket computing tasks (e-mail, databases, e-books, games, etc.) The advanced multimedia capabilities of a CE machine are largely absent on Palm machines. That being said, Palms do what they are advertised as being capable of without fuss. The user need know nothing about the internals of a Palm device to operate it productively. This is the most important reason for Palm's success and why it is unlikely that CE, at least in its current incarnation, will ever pose much of a market threat to Palm.
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ebrandwein
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