MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Fujitsu FLEPia - world's first e-reader with color e-paper

Azayzel · 04-25-2007, 07:59 PM

Hmm, I've been sitting by the side holding back my comments about the supposed suckability of WinCE; guess I'll put in my 2 creds...

I started with the original Palm Pilot Professional about a year after it came out and switched to a WinCE device when 3Com, then to become Palm, in their infinite wisdom refused to upgrade their devices to color. I looked into the Linux market of PDA's when the Sharp Zaurus came out and thought it would be cool to tinker around with one of those too, but couldn't justify the cost of yet another upgrade since I had just picked up the iPaq 4150.

While there may be a few extra "custom" apps for the Linux-brethren, on the Windows Mobile front there are a ton of custom apps as well; most with a lot better UI's than the stuff on the other side. I even picked up a Windows Mobile phone before I left the US, and it had a ton of apps people had written, many in the homebrew section. I think where people cannot come to terms with M$ is just that, it's the big company with deep pockets getting their hands into everything digital; whereas *nix is free and open to tinker as you will. While Windows might not let you tinker legally at the kernel-level, you can pretty much make it do what you want it to just as well. While you might need to d/l the toolkit from Microsoft and can just clobber something together with Vim, it's not that hard. Of course, if the complaint is that the OS is "embedded" in the sense that you cannot address it directly; i.e., it's transparent and your restricted to one given function, that will be the same with Linux as well, unless the manufacturer wants you to get at it (or you find some type of hole to exploit/subvert the system).

While everyone has their own opinions, what it boils down to for me is "Does the darn thing do what it's supposed to?" and "Does it do that well and have an intuitive/not crappy interface?" I don't buy a camera to be an eReader or a remote for my entertainment system to be a PDA, so why complain when you can't use your book as a calculator?

04-25-2007, 07:59 PM	#63
Azayzel Cache Ninja! Posts: 643 Karma: 1002300 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Tokyo, Japan Device: PRS-500, HTC Shift, iPod Touch, iPaq 4150, TC1100, Panasonic WordsGear	Hmm, I've been sitting by the side holding back my comments about the supposed suckability of WinCE; guess I'll put in my 2 creds... I started with the original Palm Pilot Professional about a year after it came out and switched to a WinCE device when 3Com, then to become Palm, in their infinite wisdom refused to upgrade their devices to color. I looked into the Linux market of PDA's when the Sharp Zaurus came out and thought it would be cool to tinker around with one of those too, but couldn't justify the cost of yet another upgrade since I had just picked up the iPaq 4150. While there may be a few extra "custom" apps for the Linux-brethren, on the Windows Mobile front there are a ton of custom apps as well; most with a lot better UI's than the stuff on the other side. I even picked up a Windows Mobile phone before I left the US, and it had a ton of apps people had written, many in the homebrew section. I think where people cannot come to terms with M$ is just that, it's the big company with deep pockets getting their hands into everything digital; whereas *nix is free and open to tinker as you will. While Windows might not let you tinker legally at the kernel-level, you can pretty much make it do what you want it to just as well. While you might need to d/l the toolkit from Microsoft and can just clobber something together with Vim, it's not that hard. Of course, if the complaint is that the OS is "embedded" in the sense that you cannot address it directly; i.e., it's transparent and your restricted to one given function, that will be the same with Linux as well, unless the manufacturer wants you to get at it (or you find some type of hole to exploit/subvert the system). While everyone has their own opinions, what it boils down to for me is "Does the darn thing do what it's supposed to?" and "Does it do that well and have an intuitive/not crappy interface?" I don't buy a camera to be an eReader or a remote for my entertainment system to be a PDA, so why complain when you can't use your book as a calculator?