PDA field guide
The latest in the world of personal digital assistants.
Bob from Sales comes in and says, "Hey Joe, you have to buy me and my staff a bunch of Palm Pilots. Now. We need them. Really."
Before you fork over half of your equipment budget for fiscal 2001, check out our guide to what's hot, what's not and what will make Bob happy.
We invited the leading vendors of personal digital assistants (PDA) to send us their latest and/or greatest offering. We fiddled around with the settings, kept them on our desk, dropped a few of them (accidentally) and now present this guide.
For a thorough examination of each device click here.
The Windows CE vs. Palm OS debate
The debate over Windows CE vs. Palm OS is somewhat like the Windows 2000 vs. Novell Directory Services debate, or the Windows vs. Linux debate, or the Windows vs. Unix debate (sense a pattern here?). For several reasons, both real and imagined, there are people out there who don't like Microsoft and would refuse to work with anything that they produce. If that's the case, look at the Palm OS devices.
At the start of the testing phase, we found that the Windows CE devices were somewhat easy to work with, as long as you were comfortable with Windows. But then the Palm OS devices arrived (The Handspring Visor and the two Palm units), and blew us away. The Palm OS uses a much more intuitive icon menu system to get to the programs you want, installing add-on software is much simpler and the system is more stable (We had to reset the Windows CE devices several more times than the Palms). Also, the ton of available add-on software for the Palm OS gives it an edge over Windows CE.
Features decisions
Once you've decided which operating system to go with, take a look at the features for each machine and decide what your staff wants to accomplish with the PDA. All the devices can handle contacts, calendars, to-do lists and other personal information management functions. But what if you need them to upload e-mail quickly or instantly? What about access to spreadsheets or other heavy-duty applications? Deciding how you want your staff to use their PDAs could go a long way in determining which system you finally choose. Of course, price is always an option and there are some clear choices in that area.
Finally, if you have the budget and want to make Bob happy, we've listed the "coolness" factor for each PDA so they can impress their clients or friends or family with their new "business toy."
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