Palm IIIc: Not Quite a Pocket PC!

You've read the hype and the pre-release reviews. Now, the much-anticipated Palm IIIc has arrived on your favorite retailer's shelves. The Palm IIIc is based on the popular Palm III design, but borrows a Windows CE innovation -- the color-screen display. Palm (www.palm.com) is marketing their color-screen PDA to business users and staying clear of the multimedia user. But for either the Palm IIIc misses the mark.

This will be a little different from your standard Palm review. For one thing, I'll talk about the shortcomings of the new Palm IIIc. I'll also take a look at the careful (sneaky?) wording and logic Palm marketers use to describe their product.

When I first received the Palm IIIc I was impressed with the display quality as compared with my other Palm devices. The display is crisp, clear, and readable. The 8 bit, 256 color display is quite an advancement for a Palm, but not so much so when compared to the newer 16 bit, 65,536 color screens of the new Pocket PCs. Also, the Palm IIIc display is only 160x160 pixels, the Windows CE Palm-size and Pocket PCs have a 240x320 display.

"Ah!" you say, "but the battery life on a Palm is much better." Palm promises two weeks of "regular usage," but Palm's idea of "regular usage" is only 30 minutes each day. Multiply that by two weeks and you get 7 hours of "continuous use" on fully charged batteries. Let's say that translates in the real world to 6-9 hours. Compare that to the 8-10 hours of continuous use you get with a Palm-size or Pocket PC and there is no practical difference. Add to this the fact that you tend to slip either device into a data/power cradle each day to recharge their batteries and the whole battery life argument goes completely out the window.

It used to be an accepted fact of life that Palm computers were smaller than Windows CE devices. But the new round of Pocket PCs changes that a little. The Palm IIIc's dimensions are 5.06 x 3.17 x 0.67 inches and it weighs 6.8 ounces. Both the HP Jornada 545 (www.hp.com/jornada/) and Compaq's new iPAQ Pocket PC (www.compaq.com/pro ducts/handhelds/index.html) are about the same size. The Jornada weights a little over 2 ounces more, the iPAQ actually weighs a fraction of an ounce less. (Please see the reviews on pages 14 and 19 for more on these Pocket PCs.) Later this year Casio will introduce a smaller "Multimedia Pocket PC." Size is no longer a factor.

The Palm IIIc does have more memory than ever before. It comes with 8 MB RAM for running programs and storing files, and 2 MB of Flash ROM to store its built-in programs. The Windows CE Pocket PCs have up to 32 MBs of RAM and 16 MB of ROM. To be fair, the Windows CE operating system and built-in applications are larger and need more RAM and ROM. The reason for this is that the Windows CE operating system is more capable and the suite of built-in applications more comprehensive than the Palm computers. In addition, the advantages in terms of the ability to store data, add new programs, and build in a lot of good applications is definitely with Windows CE.

Normally, when I review Windows CE devices, this is where I discuss the multimedia features. For example, Casio's E-105 Palm-size PC (and the new E-115 Pocket PC) lets me play MP3 music through stereo headphones, make voice recordings and watch video files. With an optional camera card I can even take digital photos and make videos with the E-105 (www.casio-usa.com/E105). The Palm IIIc is lacking tremendously in this area. There is no MP3 Playback, no stereo sound capability, no voice recording, and consequently no headphone jack. Handspring (www.handspring.com) has hinted that they will develop an add-on module for their