Better, best, worse and worst?

The relative merits of the main PDA suppliers (Psion, Windows CE, Newton, and PalmPilot) have been changing a lot in recent months, as new releases and new products have become available; at least one major release for each of these platforms.

A PDA must have calendar, address book, to do list and text display features at a minimum; it should also synchronise to desktop or enterprise databases, and be capable of handling general databases, email and web browsing. All of this must come in a size that is convenient to carry all day, everywhere, and with battery life to match.

You may recall from last year that I had considerably mixed feelings about the Psion Series 5 when it was launched. There were so many good ideas, like the wonderful keyboard, but so many mistakes as well, like the missing email and web programs, and the curious omission of synchronisation for address books. It has improved even more than I had hoped, now that the Psion Messaging Suite is available, thanks in particular to Palmtop for their EnRoute, Spectrum emulator and Doom clone game.

Newton is the curates egg cast out of plastic and silicon. In concept, it captures the essence of a PDA far better than the pocket computer machines, like Psion and CE. A computerised notebook with reasonable quality hand writing recognition is exactly what a PDA needs to be, and Newton does that very well. But the current Newton MessagePad 2100 is far too big for the purpose. Adding a keyboard, as Apple seem to expect you to do, makes this deficiency worse. If only the eMate had the same performance as the Newton it would create its own category, definitely not a PDA, but a proper portable computer. There are many honourable attempt at this category, all of which have disappeared in the fog of computer marketing; from the classic Tandy 100, through the Sinclair Z88 to the Psion laptops. All had long battery life, and would fit comfortably in a briefcase. The Toshiba Libretto, the closest current version of this old type of computer, doesn't measure up to this standard, good though it is.

Windows CE has given me my most frustrating PDA moments of the last two years. The combination of the badly designed 1.0 release of Windows CE, and the most uninspired Casio Cassiopeia, proved the adage that a bad designer should be condemned to use his own products for life. Even the newer and better Hewlett-Packard HP320LX and Philips Velo didn't make up for this. However, Windows CE 2.0, as embodied in the HP620LX, is much better, despite retaining some of my pet hates from CE 1.0.

So far it is clear that both CE and Newton can only reasonably be used from a briefcase. For general use the Psion Series 5 can be used from a pocket, but not for email, as the hip flask PC Card adapter takes up too much extra space. This leaves only the PalmPilot to really fit the bill as a PDA: small, long battery life, and adequate applications. Furthermore, PalmOS shows the connections to the Newton of the Palm Software design team, who originally wrote Graffiti for the Newton, then honed their OS writing skills with the Zoomer. The style of the applications and the button oriented user interfaces are strongly reminiscent of a character based version of the Newton OS, with all excess trimmings removed, including the true hand writing recognition. This isn't a complaint: the PalmPilot is a delightful example of design engineering done right, which results in a product with all of the essential features in software and hardware, including an acceptably small size package, and low cost design. Getting the compromise between maximum functionality and minimum cost is the hallmark of truly great design.

When asked for the perfect PDA, which covers most of the mail I receive about this column, I have to say that there isn't one. But for me, and I know for other Real World authors, the best currently available compromise is a PalmPilot in my pocket, a GSM/PCN phone for use with it, and a Libretto in a briefcase for those times when I have to type a lot, and a power socket is nearby. Any of the bigger PDAs could replace the Libretto in a pinch, but I am forced to say that it has the edge.

Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: January 14, 1998