And Another Thing

Jon Honeyball is dissillusioned with the current crop of PDAs.

I must be getting old, but I am finding the current crop of PDAs entirely undewhelming. No, that's not true - they are deeply yawnful, unexciting and boring. Why? Well, because they don't actually do anything better than last year.
      Let's take the new whizzy XScale processor as found in the new iPAQ and a few other devices. It runs at around 400MHz or so, compared with the 205MHz of the previous inhabitant. So you would think it goes quicker, but unfortunately not - it is just as slothful and stuttering and ‘oh yes I think it's about to load errr yes good it’s done’ as the 205MHz.
      But that's the least of its troubles. Does anyone else look at the software held in PocketPC 2002 and say "what a pile of steaming excrement?" The diary is dire. The email client is fabulously clunky and awkward to use. The contacts lookup is tearfully dull. Note taking is waste of time. The web browser is an insult to the word 'HTML' because it is so staggeringly limited in its capabilities. Oh yes, there is a media player which can... oh dear... I think I'm falling asleep.
      No wait, there is now a Terminal Server client. Woohoo, maybe this is the great thing. Maybe, except it is pain to use and operating a 640x480 server desktop via a 320x240 pixel PDA screen is like wallpapering the hallway via the letterbox slot.
      I could fire up a Bluetooth connection to my GPRS phone and do email and IRC that way. That's if I can navigate my way through the 80 or 90 steps necessary to get an iPAQ to talk to a T39M phone via Bluetooth and GPRS. Life is simply to short - it would be easier to use carrier pigeons. And please don't let me start on the subject of Word and Excel in this device. Both are pitiful imitations that would be a good joke except for the disembowling they do to your documents.
      Where is the innovation? Where is the new thinking in how to link diary events to contacts to notes? Where is something worthy of the hundreds of pounds these things cost?
      Alright, let's look at the Palm world. Oh my, we have just stepped into Prehistoric Computing! PalmOS was a nice idea back in 1995, but the cracks are as big as the Grand Canyon now. Oh yes, it supports external memory - providing you remember to use the applet to shuffle the documents into and out of the internal memory space - it's too dumb to natively support any thinking post 1960 in this space. I keep looking for the punchcard slot on my Palm 515.
      Don't get me started on Smartphones either. The XDA is a sick joke - 32Mb of RAM, no screen protection, memory slot on the bottom so the cards fall out - oh yes, you know how to talk dirty to me! And the pricetag brings tears to the eyes. The HP version is better, but still a long way short of what it could be, what it ought to be.
      So we have to wait to ‘Pocket PC 2003 .NET We Got It Right This Time’ to see improvements in the Windows camp. Palm has a new version of its OS, but is about to take A Big Leap into the unknown with that platform.
      For myself, I've given up. My iPAQs and Palms are collecting dust. I have returned to a Filofax. At least I can upgrade it when I want to, and use a nice fountain pen. I recommend the MontBlanc range but there are alternatives from a wide range of vendors. And despite your best efforts, it will still cost a lot less than an iPAQ.

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