PDA Priorities

Room for both

PDA Priorities: Introduction Palm OS 5 Pocket PC 2002 Room for both Final checklist Market snapshot

Though the two platforms are likely to slug it out in the enterprise space, it seems likely that both will survive. But the biggest challenge for Palm will be to dispel the myth that its OS won't be sufficiently compatible with Office applications. There's much evidence to support this fact; for example, it's just as easy to develop applications for the Palm. Tools available for that purpose are easy to use and inexpensive. And there are plenty of Office-compatible third party products available, such as WordSmith, which lets you do word processing on your Palm device and save it in a Word format. There are similar products for Access and Excel. If Palm can get the message across that it's compatible with Office software, it stands a solid chance of beating Microsoft in the enterprise game.

Of course, Palm and Pocket PC aren't your only choices. A host of Linux-based PDAs are trying to bring Linux's open source advantages to a mobile platform. That will keep device costs down, as manufacturers don't have to pay to license the operating system, and probably will allow you to run the same applications on your handheld as you can on your Linux desktop. (You all have Linux desktops, don't you?)

You may worry about the security of information on your handheld PC. Both Palm and Pocket PC offer plenty of security add-ins, but your best bet is not to put anything sensitive on a device that's so easily lost, or to encrypt the files. And save the money you'd spend on handheld antivirus programs-- there simply aren't enough such viruses to make this software cost-effective. Besides, recovering from a PDA virus is generally as simple as resynchronising your device after a hard reset.

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