DECEMBER 2003 MAXIMUMPC
MICROSOFT WINDOWS MOBILE 2003
All the basics are covered and the fancy
multimedia stuff works great too!HOT POCKETSPOCKET PROTECTORS
We hate how difficult it is to get to the notepad,
but the rest of the package is very compelling.
Ships w/hardware, http://www.microsoft.comMAXIMUMPC VERDICT 9
Essential software: The contact-list and calendar
are what most people buy a PDA for. It’s much
easier to find the right contact quickly with the
Windows Mobile 2003 contact manager than
with the Palm version. By breaking down the
alphabet into smaller groups, it’s easy to scroll
directly to the person whose info you need.
Winner: Windows Mobile 2003Extras: PDAs used to be nothing more than
fancy electronic day planners, but with today’s
speedy 400MHz processors and gads of storage
space, they are truly handheld computers.
Case in point: Windows Mobile 2003 includes a
version of Windows Media Player 9 that’s capable
of playing audio and video files. There are also
players available for almost every video format
that’s popular today, including MPEG and DiVX.
Winner: Windows Mobile 2003W
ith the release of Palm OS 5, the PDA gap is
smaller than it’s ever been before. Both plat-
forms now include native support for modern
portable CPUs, more than 64MB of memory, and mod-
ern wireless standards like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Both
platforms have large libraries of software available, from
must-have programs like web browsers to goofy toy
apps like sun compasses.
What does that mean for PDA buyers? It means that
instead of basing your PDA decision on an OS platform,
and possibly getting hardware that may not suit yourneeds, you can buy the PDA with the hardware configu-
ration you lust for, and then be confident that you’ll have
an OS that’ll do you right.
The two OSes are mighty close, but Windows
Mobile 2003 is holding an ever-so-slight lead, thanks
to its tight integration with Outlook and the bevy of
applications written for its fast processor. We expect to
see more apps written to use the new fast Palm CPUs,
but they’re just not out in force yet. For now, we’ll be
using HP’s iPaq!nSynchrony: The Windows Mobile 2003
devices have the upper hand here. For people
who intend to sync their PDAs with Outlook
(read: 95 percent of the PDA crowd), it really
doesn’t get any easier than ActiveSync. Plug
it in, set up a relationship, and all the Outlook
data you want is sucked right into your PDA.
Winner: Windows Mobile 2003Connectivity: All the parts are in the right places.
Wi-Fi support is great. Connecting Bluetooth
devices is easy. But we haven’t been able to find
an easy way to tell the PDA which connection to
use when more than one is available. Ideally, the
PDA should connect via Wi-Fi when an access
point is available, and use a GPRS-based cellular
connection otherwise. Speaking of GPRS, several
data providers charge up to $20 for the Pocket PC
app that configures your GPRS service, but it’s
free for Palm OS 5 users. Winner: Palm OS 5
Hackability: Although there are loads
of cool applications available for the
Windows Mobile platform, programmers
have a difficult time changing something
as seemingly simple as the screen
orientation. For a platform so relatively
“closed” as Windows Mobile (all Windows
Mobile devices even use the same screen
resolution!), we’d expect to see loads of
cool hardware hacks that work across the
spectrum of devices. But there really are
none. Microsoft has locked hackers out of
that. Winner: Palm OS 5Web browsing : Pocket Internet
Explorer is the ideal handheld
browser. The version that
ships with Windows Mobile
2003 drew every page we
threw at it—and fast! It even
handled web pages that use
fancy cascading style sheets
and dynamic HTML without
any problems (unlike previous
versions of the browser).
You can easily toggle image
downloading on and off,
too! Our only gripe is that
it doesn’t allow landscape
browsing. Winner: Windows
Mobile 2003Basic interface: Windows Mobile 2003 is
much better than earlier versions of the
Pocket PC OS, but we still don’t understand
why an extremely basic function like the
Notes app is buried in a menu instead of
accessible on the main screen. Yes, the on-
screen keyboard and main menu elements
are more easily accessed than those on Palm
devices, but we still can’t forgive the Notes
faux pas. Winner: Palm OS 5THE UPSHOT