ViewSonic's Pocket PC: Why it could kill the Palm

[CyberViking2000]

By Josh Taylor
October 8, 2002

Until now, the handheld market's been divided between high-end Pocket PCs and low-end Palms. But ViewSonic's new Pocket PC could change all that. Here's why.

With its initial entry into the handheld market, ViewSonic has fired the first of what will likely be many shots in the Pocket PC price wars. After playing with the new Pocket PC V35 for the past few days, I'm not sure what I find more impressive: the device's $299 price, or the fact that ViewSonic has delivered such an excellent PDA at that price.

Click here for the article.

[asian1]

Hi
View Sonic PDA will face tough competitors:

1. Sony Clie:

Sony Clie (US$ 149)

2. Palm Zire:

Palm Zire (US$ 100)

3. Aplux Taiwan:

APLUX (US$ 95)

4. Dell:

DELL PDA (US$ 200)

5. AMD MIPS:

AMD PDA for China

[MarkTime]

don't compare greyscale screen's to color units...

this is a good value pda, palm's are underpowered.

That may change, but probably palm's prices will change too.

I like the palmOS, but the Sony did make the better palm's....palm's on machines had lousy displays.

after palm is destroyed, we won't see super cheap pda's anymore, then the price of the OS will become a factor.

[AmigaMac]

It's going to be hard for Pocket PC to kill Palm when Palm OS has over 75% of the PDA market!  And the problem with Pocket PC powered PDAs is that they're not compatible with everything like a Palm OS powered PDA is, and Pocket PC also lacks the amount software that is readily available for the Palm OS!

[System]

one word, stability and longeverty (spelt right?)

OK so it is two but what the hay!

The Palm is a more stable device, I work at PC World and we have a display of PDAs 2 Palms, 1 Sony, 7 PokPC (Compaq, HP , Tosh, and XDA). None of them have any extra s/w installed, only what they come with out of the box. The PokPC's do lock up for no apparent reason, some (Compaq's) more often then the others. The Palm & Sony rarely lock (they have but not often).

Longeverty(?)

Batteries:
Palms will last for days-weeks
PokPC hours-days


Oh and PokPC are Microsoft based so need huge memory (32-64Mb) and large amounts of processor power.