David Le Page
The notebook computer market could be in for a shock following Microsoft’s launch of its new Pocket PC system, which was demonstrated at the Computer Faire in Midrand last week.
The shock is that for half the price, mobile computer users are going to be able to get most of the functionality they look for in a notebook PC – along with far greater portability and convenience.
For Microsoft, they represent the newest incarnation of their Windows CE (consumer electronic) operating system. And, much as it irks this Palm fan and Microsoft detractor to admit it, Pocket PCs represent the next step in the evolution of the handheld computer. That’s a new market that has been created over the past three years, led by the Palm series of devices.
But while the Palm devices offered a formidable electronic organiser with a host of potential secondary functions, including e-mail and limited internet functionality, the Pocket PC has acquired that extra amount of functionality required to tip its user profile into the notebook arena. What’s more, it has acquired the functionality of two other very trendy devices, neither of which has yet made a huge impact on their markets in stand-alone form.
One of the problems with the Palm was that it was never a serious text editor. The limitations were several: a lack of built-in software for that purpose, the slowness of entering text using its handwriting recognition system, and its comparatively poor display (less so in later models).
Of course, the Pocket PC is also, in its basic form, dependent on hand-writing recognition for most text entries. But this year, a company called ThinkOutside launched an innovative product that is available in slightly differing forms for most palmtop devices – a folding keyboard that offers the ease of use of a notebook keyboard. This is already available for the Palm, and will be available for the Pocket PC.
Where the Pocket PC will still score over the Palm, once the new keyboard is added to both sides of the equation, is in its new- found integration of famililar MS Office products, such as Word and Excel, in stripped down form. Internet Explorer has also made it on to the new mobile desktop. This means that if you’re not the kind of notebook user who needs a powerful multimedia machine for portable presentations, most of the notebook functions you’re likely to want are here in this new device.
What’s more, you get one hell of lot more battery life (a promised 14 hours in the Compaq Aero 1500) and pocket-type portability. Compact Flash memory cards offer up to 300 megabyte of additional memory (an initial 32 megabyte is standard), as does a mind-boggling plug-in hard drive from IBM. The IBM drive is half the size of a matchbox, and will soon offer in excess of a gigabyte of storage space.
The extra memory means that the Pocket PC becomes more viable as a digital sound recorder (they all have built-in microphones), a function already present in the CE devices.
But a portable Windows Media Player has been developed that will also allow the playing of MP3 music files, and Windows Media Files, which are half the size of MP3s. That’s the one trendy function built in.
The next is that of a reader. Electronic books have been the subject of considerable hype for some time now. Part of the problem in marketing them has been persuading people to buy devices dedicated to being readers only. The exceptional clarity of the Pocket PC screen however, makes it, if not an ideal reading environment, a far more practical one.
Finally, with the addition of a little video camera plugged into the expansion slot, the whole thing can become a video camera. Another promised plug-in should take the whole package cellular.
Casio, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard have all produced Pocket PC devices based on the new Microsoft devices, and will be pushing them hard over the next few months. The Compaq Ipaq in particular is impressively slim, rivalling its Palm adversaries.
So imagine – in one tiny system, you get organiser, full e-mail and internet access, voice recorder, MP3 and video player and viable big text reader. Why buy a notebook for twice the price?
The crucial question is – does the Pocket PC live up to the promises? The Palm devices’ success in large part derived from the fact that what they promised, they delivered, simply and without complications. But how good is the Pocket PC’s handwriting recognition? How easy is it to synchronise data between it and a PC? How reliable are the applications onboard?
How much extra is Microsoft going to charge for the portable versions of its office software?
These questions remain to be answered. But at the very least, the Pocket PC is likely to set a new benchmark for handheld computing, and the likes of Palm and their competitor Handspring are going to have to sprint to keep up.