No longer simply digital organisers, these latest handheld devices offer significant computing power and convenience.

When is a palmtop not a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)? When it's a handheld computer.

Everyone knows they are great for holding all your addresses and things to do, and making sure you get to a meeting on time, but what else can a palmtop do?

Given the right software and peripherals, just about anything.

They can be used to send e-mail on the road, check stock prices, fill out a questionnaire, read your water meter, capture someone's signature, or find your way around an unfamiliar city.

Technology & Business magazine evaluated the general physical ease of use of the devices and software applications, as well as looking at battery life, accessories and protection from damage.

In a quick survey amongst the System Administrators Guild of Australia, (SAGE-AU) , some of the uses we found for handheld computers are below.

Many systems admins use both Palm OS and Pocket PC powered handhelds as a portable keyboard/monitor to hook up as a serial terminal to headless servers, routers, and firewalls.

Others use PocketPCs to dial up the Internet via a mobile phone and check out the weather radar images and other up-to-the-minute information.

We found local councils are using handheld computers to collect data on weed infestations, park infrastructure, and asset information.

They are being used in conjunction with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to provide locations with up to half-metre accuracy, and are also used for outdoors staff to locate manholes, fire hydrants, and so on before conducting works.

Time to accessorise

A quick search of the Web revealed everything from a gold-plated stylus for the Palm III to a kangaroo-skin flak jacket for the iPaq.

There are functional additions, like docking stations, flash memory, solar power modules, and network adaptors to make life with your handheld a little easier.

There are also quite a number of accessories which will extend the usefulness of your handheld computer. Clever businesses are expanding the functionality of their handheld devices to improve productivity and even find new ways to conduct their business.

The addition of a GPS turns your handheld device into a powerful mapping and navigational device. Your GPS can be combined with mapping software to easily locate manholes, under ground cabling and other geographical features to help you get your job done quickly and easily.

You can also collect data with the GPS into the handheld for later downloading into your main system. If you bring a modem and mobile phone with you, you could even upload to your company's servers instantly.

Barcode readers allow handheld users to quickly take inventory in a warehouse or offsite, and return to a desk and update records quickly, saving time on data entry.

Wireless networking allows employees freedom of movement, for example making it possible to do maintenance checks and create work orders on the move, again saving data entry time.

Serial and network cables allow technical staff to log in and check equipment like routers and headless servers without having to carry a full laptop everywhere.

There is a range of other equipment also available. There are digital camera add-ons-Sharp even has a digital video camera and card especially for the Zaurus.

Other less common devices like RF (radio frequency) readers and pre-programmed flash cards can also be used to improve productivity.

Operating systems

Microsoft Pocket PC

The Windows CE operating system powers the palm-sized Pocket PC and larger Handheld PC, as well as the Xbox and other products.

The Pocket PC PDA has a quarter-VGA screen (320 x 240), which is great for playing Doom, but may make it a little difficult to manage large spreadsheets and forms for business applications, Web applications, or desktop applications designed for a full screen.

Pocket versions of Word and Excel, as well as Outlook and other MS apps come bundled, and with expansion cards it supports modem, network and wireless.

Microsoft's OS has multimedia support for various audio formats as well as images and Windows Media files.

With the limited amount of memory in handhelds this is a bit of a novelty, but with many of the machines now supporting CompactFlash and memory cards, there is the ability to carry around a few of your favourite MP3s, or maybe your company promo video on a removable card.

A CompactFlash Microdrive would expand this capability to 1GB, although it impacts on battery life.

Linux Qtopia

Linux is a Unix-like open source operating system, with several distributions available for palmtop devices. We received one Linux-based PDA for testing, the Sharp Zaurus.

Our Zaurus was a development model, running the Qtopia desktop environment (formerly called QT Desktop) developed by Trolltech. The open source nature of Linux makes it cheaper and easier to develop your own applications, in addition to the range of software already available.

This Linux-based environment offers multimedia support for various audio formats as well as MPEG video. As with the Microsoft offerings, CompactFlash and memory cards allow you to carry a lot more multimedia files with you and insert them when desired.

PalmOS

The Palm OS is, as its name suggests, the native OS of Palm devices, but is also licensed to vendors such as Handspring, IBM, and Sony.

It is much smaller than the Windows OSes (around 50KB compared to Pocket PC at 2.5MB) and applications are likewise smaller.

An issue to consider: while Palm devices can automatically install new OS upgrades, licensees must re-license each new version, and they don't always do so. For instance, the current Handspring OS is based on Palm OS 3.5, while new Palm devices use Palm OS 4.

The two PalmOS devices we tested had the capacity for extra memory, with either an SD card for the Palm, or a Springboard expansion card for the Handspring Visor Pro. The Palm Desktop synchronisation software that comes with both the Palm and Handspring products comes in Windows and Mac OS versions.

Mac OS X is not officially supported, although Palm's Web site says it's possible to run Palm Desktop in Classic mode. A new version of Palm Desktop for OS X is in the works. Palm also says the cradle won't work under OS X and you'll need to use a USB cable to synchronise.

There is no official Linux software for the Palm, but there are clients for most popular desktop environments, such as Kpilot for KDE. Palm OS currently has very limited multimedia capabilities, although these are expected to be greatly enhanced in the next version.

PDA features

These are the basic things expected of a PDA--an easily portable and uncomplicated way to organise your life.

Each deals with these tasks in a slightly different way, but with more or less the same functionality. The only notable difference was in the calendar views, where the Zaurus and Palm M505 weren't able to display a full year to a page view.

The Palm m505 and Handspring Visor Pro come with Palm's Expense program, for keeping a simple log of expenses.

The Jornada has a pocket version of Microsoft Money, which on its own is handy for managing accounts and transactions, and when combined with the full version of Money can also keep track of investments and more.

The Zaurus and Visor also both come with an application to tell you the time in numerous cities around the world.

Surprisingly, it's not too hard to find the city you want with an entire world map on the small PDA screen, so this is a handy assistant to people who travel or need to call overseas regularly.

Input

Current is applied to silver ink strips along the vertical and horizontal edges of the glass. When you push down with your stylus, the plastic touches the glass, changing the voltage field, and the touchscreen driver records a touch.

PocketPC has handwriting recognition, supporting "normal" handwriting, which works fairly well as long as you write reasonably neatly. It also has a single-letter recognition mode similar to Palm's Graffiti.

The Toshiba has the transcriber, which allows you to write anywhere, similar to the old Apple Newton, giving you the ability to write at whatever size you like.

A pop-up keyboard is also available, allowing you to tap out your input with the stylus on a virtual keyboard, but this is fairly time consuming to use regularly.

The Zaurus control panel also slides down to reveal a small qwerty keyboard which can be used for input, and a function key provides various symbols. You could probably become quite proficient at typing with your thumbs after a bit of practice.

Qtopia on the Zaurus supports plain handwriting recognition with a similar interface to the PocketPC. The handwriting recognition wasn't as good as with Pocket PC (although we had an early developer model) but it includes a handwriting trainer so you can learn to write letters the way Zaurus recognises them.

There is also the option to create personalised character templates so that the Zaurus will recognise letters the way you write them.

There is the pop-up keyboard, and a QT innovation called the pickboard, which works similarly to modern mobiles--you select the letter groups and it suggests words that can be made from the series of letters you have typed. Some people may find this faster than typing on the pop-up keyboard.

For text input the PalmOS uses Graffiti, which is a set of stylus strokes mapped to letters and symbols. This takes a little longer to learn, but 15 minutes will teach you the basics and with even moderate use you soon become proficient.

The pop-up keyboard is also available, but with Palm's generally smaller screen this can cost you a bit of real estate.

All the devices we tested had buttons on the case to select the usual PDA functions like address book and calendar.

The Zaurus and Toshiba both had control pads to move the cursor around and scroll around documents, which is also clickable. The Zaurus also has an OK button which replicates the OK button on the title bar of applications and closes them.

Power

Modern handhelds generally have internal rechargeable batteries. All the models we tested had lithium ion batteries, except the Palm m505, which had a lithium polymer battery.

The lithium polymer battery (LPB) was produced by a consortium headed by 3M, in an effort to produce a lightweight battery for electric cars.

Ultra thin and flexible, the LPB replaces the electrolytic liquid or gel of a normal lithium battery with a sheet of polymer, eliminating the risk of flammability and leakage. According to the details provided by the manufacturer, the life of the LPB is equivalent to a normal lithium ion battery.

The battery life of the Palm and Visor machines is rated in weeks. This is due to the light operating system and low power usage of the 68k processor.

The other machines all came in at around eight hours of normal use. Given that on most units there is no easy way to replace the flat battery with a charged one, we felt that this was a little bit of a limitation in certain circumstances.

One of the scenarios we considered for handheld computers was to collect survey information in public or door-to-door. This would require a full day of constant use, whereas normal use would be more like turned on for five minutes every half an hour or so.

The shorter battery life would require the user to be tied to a cradle regularly to recharge the device, which takes a few hours.

One advantage is that the Toshiba Pocket PC, HP Jornada and Sharp Zaurus both have a socket for power, which would at least give users limited mobility while connected to power, but the other devices tested all needed to be in their cradle to charge.

Durability

One of the advantages of the handheld computer is the lack of internal moving parts, so the internals are safe from even a fairly decent knock.

You may crack the plastic case or lose a bit of trim, but your electronics will continue to work. The real fear when dropping your handheld is cracking the LCD.

All of the devices we looked at had screens that were recessed by only one or two millimetres, good enough to protect the screen from a drop on the ground, as long as it didn't land on anything too pointed.

The plastic coating of the touch screen would absorb some of the impact of a fall, and also protect the glass from any scratching which would affect the resistance of the glass. Your main concern with the input screen would be piercing it and losing the oil, but anything that strong would also crack the LCD.

Another advantage of that form of touch screen is that you are able to seal it completely to the case. The effects of a dusty environment on the handheld will be greatly reduced by this, as will the susceptibility to water and dirt.

The cases aren't waterproofed so immersion would still be a problem, but they all seemed to be reasonably splash proof. One exception to this was the Jornada, which had quite a gap at the top and bottom of the screen, but when we compared it against one used by a Test Lab staff member this appeared to be a flaw in construction of the test model.

It would definitely be advantageous to have a cover for at least the screen, if not the whole device. The Zaurus and Jornada both came with vertical flip-top front covers, although the Zaurus top detached itself a little too easy when opening it.

The Visor Pro has a clip-on cover which is reasonably protective but would start to become annoying if you were using your device quite often as a work tool.

The Palm has a flip-up cover which opens to the left, and is unfortunately not reversible, although this seems not to be an inconvenience.

The Toshiba on the other hand simply has a small vinyl pocket with a reinforced front to protect the unit. Other cases are available for all these devices.

One other thing we did note is that the material used on the screen on the Jornada did scratch reasonably easily. The model used by the Test Lab has particularly bad scratches in a distinctive Solitaire pattern, but the test model had also picked up a couple just in normal use.

A Palm m100 in the lab had a fair bit of wear on the writing area, but as that is not the display area it was less of a problem. If this is an issue for you, you can buy stick-on screen protectors. This is basically a piece of clear plastic, which sticks to your screen and is easily removed and replaced when it starts to wear.

These are available for pretty much every brand of handheld. Those scrooges amongst us will also find a small piece of invisible magic tape works well for the writing area, especially on the Palm units.

Developing applications

This, along with the availability of any peripherals you need, will probably be the biggest influence in deciding what handheld platform to go for.

If you are looking for something new or unique, you may need to hire someone to develop for you. It's worth looking around on the Web though.

A quick search on Google suggests that the Palm dominates in available software. Based on number of hits, software for Pocket PC comes to about half as much as the Palm, with Zaurus software a little over a third of the Palm.

If you can't find what you need you'll have to either develop software in house, or contract some developers.

The availability of developers seems to mirror the numbers we found in software--almost twice as many Palm as Pocket PC/WinCE, and then half that again for Qtopia. Prices charged by developers appear to be similar regardless of platform.

Each OS has it's own advantages as far as development goes. Pocket PC/Win CE uses similar APIs to the desktop versions of Windows, so it's very easy for experienced Windows developers to move to the handheld arena.

MS eMbedded Visual Tools is a free download, and is very similar in interface to Visual Studio. The Pocket PC emulator will only work on NT/2000 though, so if you are developing under 98/ME you'll have to test live on your Pocket PC.

Similarly, Qtopia development tools are down loadable as free software, released under the GPL. Programmers experienced with the QT toolkit will be able to convert to Qtopia easily. QT is used by Linux's KDE desktop, and the QT environment is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so programs can be easily ported between all of these and the handheld environment.

The Palm developer's tool of choice is Code Warrior, which is not free, but if you are hiring outside developers this isn't an issue. There are free Palm development tools, notably PRC-Tools, for building applications in C and C++, which is supported by Palm.

The real advantage of developing for the Palm is speed. The applications are very light, so less coding time is needed to do reasonably complex tasks.

The February 2002 issue of ZDNet Australia's Technology & Business Magazine contains reviews of PDA products, including Editor's Choice Awards for the best products. For subscription information, visit Technology & Business.

Developing applications