After lots of stalling, I've decided the time has come to share some of my experiences moving from a PalmOS device (my Sony SJ33 Clie) to a Pocket PC device (my "new" refurbished Toshiba e405.) I am by no means an expert on PPC devices after a few weeks, but I think I have learned a lot that might be interesting to others. As I may get a bit long-winded, I've broken this article into parts. Only this first installment is written so far, so I don't make any promises about when the next portions will appear.
When I first made the jump, I thought I would be a lonely voice sharing the secrets of conversion from Palm to PPC. Now I realize I'm one tree in a forest. A lot of people are making the jump. Some turn right around and head back to Palm, but some live happily ever after in the Windows Mobile world. There are some good sources of info out there from people who have converted, and a good Google search will probably pop some up for you. Maybe someone will post a reply to this article that has a few of those links also.
Before I bore you with too much detail, let me emphasize a few high-level observations:
1) You will do even simple tasks in different ways on Palm and PPC devices. In my case, there are a few things that are more annoying with the PPC, but it is more powerful even for basic PIM tasks. For example, even with my 240x320 screen, Pocket Informant has some really nice calendar views that I would find it hard to live without if I ever go back to a Palm PDA. But Palm is simple, when you do something it takes less taps, and when you do it you generally know exactly what you did. With Pocket PC, sometimes I just hope it did what I wanted it to do, and I often am left with the feeling that I "missed" something or maybe it didn't enter the data where I wanted it to go, or just plain OOPs!
2) Neither OS is, in my opinion, significantly better. I prefer PalmOS, but Windows Mobile is more fun. By that I think I mean it is more modern. Going from PalmOS to Windows Mobile feels a little like moving forward two versions of a software application. It's slicker and more powerful. But as you probably have experienced somewhere down the line, the plain 'ole boring versions of software from the past are sometimes actually better than the newer versions.
3) If a PDA is based on a decent OS (such as PalmOS and Windows Mobile), then what matters most to me are the following:
* Large user base (it gives some assurance of software availablity and support)
* Lots of good software at reasonable prices
* Lots of good hardware at reasonable prices
There's been a hiccup in my opinion on the Palm side with the hardware, and that's why I'm using a PPC device right now. But I really do like PalmOS, and may very well make the trip back to the Palm world in the future.
4) If you convert to PPC, you will have to convert to using MS Outlook as this is what the PIM functions sync to. It's similar to the Palm Desktop's role for a Palm PDA.
5) If you are not too picky about how your data is stored, or if you pretty much stick to standard contact , tasks and calendar info, then you may find the transition relatively painless. But get ready for some work if, like me, you have to have everything just right so that you don't have to think about entering or retrieving data, and you don't want to get annoyed while using the device, and you have a whole lot of structured data in places like Shadow and Notepad. Hopefully, though, with some of the ideas in future parts of this article, you will be able to get functional pretty quickly, and then you can take your time to make things just like you want them. That first week or so when I didn't have my data all converted over, and I didn't know what basic programs could serve the functions I was doing on my Palm, I was very frustrated. If you follow some of my suggestions you may get to that point pretty quickly.
THE STATE OF PALMOS
There is a lot of growing discontent these days with the PalmOS products available on the market. Power PDA users are increasingly growing frustrated with the lack of PalmOS power devices with some of the features that are expected by the hi-tech users... HiRes++ screens, decent battery life, stable operation, WiFi and BlueTooth, decent quantities of memory, etc. The T5 shows promise, but came out amidst all kinds of issues, and even the Treo 650 has some memory issues. Now word comes out that PalmOne promises to fix the Treo, but I haven't seen any indication they are so commited to pleasing the T5 customers. I think traditional PDA buyers of the more powerful PDAs may face a string of disappointments on the PalmOne side because all the money and the future hopes are riding on smart phones, not traditional PDAs.
But those desired features are popping up in the Windows Mobile world on a regular basis now. While the screen resolution has actually lagged the hires Palm devices for a while, more recently there are a new crop of VGA devices such as the Dell PDA that our very own Alexander Turcic has picked up. The temptation is there for Palm users to think about a switch to Pocket PC. I suspect that even many of the current Palm users that won't admit it have even been tempted and are thinking about it every now and then.
No one knows what the future of PalmOS is, and PalmSource seems to be struggling. Troubles abound in getting devices out with Cobalt (PalmOS Version 6), and many wonder if the operating system is viable. Rumors tell us it may be slow and not ready for prime time. And horror or horrors, it seems that PalmOne is becoming more serious about making Treos with a non-PalmOS basis. That comes just as they are wrapping up their multi-year and multi-million dollar contract with PalmSource. Other licensees are hard to come by, and they are not nearly as large as PalmOne. Anyone who is looking for continuity is surely thinking about how long they will be able to stick with PalmOS devices, or if we will all be buying Treos running Windows Mobile in a year or two.
I don't pretend to be able to tell the future, nor do I think that PalmOS is on its deathbed yet. For example, the Zodiac gaming system is a very impressive piece of hardware, and there's every hope that there will be a Zodiac 2 coming out in 2005. There's a massive collection of PalmOS developers still hard at work, and while there's an occassional defector to the PPC platform, the masses are not jumping ship. I also believe that recent polls have indicated some amazingly high loyalty rates in PDA owners. In a poll I saw, the numbers were something in the neighborhood of 75-80% or more of existing PDA owners plan to stick with their current OS rather than switch. There's just way too much good stuff going on with PalmOS to worry much right now. (If you are shaken by the rapid fire bad news for Palm recently, just spend some more time reading the daily Palm Addicts news and you'll remember all the good news about Palm, and your fears will be eased!)
SOME BACKGROUND ABOUT MY LIFE WITH PDAs
PalmOS PDAs have been my platform of choice for many years, beginning with a Palm I which I splurged on after seeing it at an office products store. But my journey into a more organized life began with Franklin Planners and Day-Timer paper products not long after I began my career in business. Until then I was content with lots and lots of pieces of paper and some sticky notes for the reminders that I wanted to keep right in front of my nose. It worked okay for me in school, but in the business world I needed more, and most importantly, I wanted a backup. The thought of losing my paper organizer was actually frightening because I'd be lost without it. I even made occassional backups with the copy machine. And just the other day, I saw the remnants of someone's paper planner scattered and splattered all over the road I take home from work. My stomach turned as I thought about that poor person's consequences. Not to mention the personal security risk if the wrong people pick up those lost papers.
When I switched to a Palm PDA, I got two very important things. (1) I got a backup copy of my data on my PC, and (2) I got to play with a really cool toy all the time, even at work! When the Palm IIIxe came out, I jumped on one. It lasted me a long time because I was afraid to buy a color PDA and lose my great battery life. Eventually I bought a Sony Clie SJ33 with a hires color screen and I started to discover that PDAs are a whole lot more than I thought. My battery life was great, and the new screen and memory capacity revolutionized my view of PDAs forever. I found some of the great sites like Palm Addicts and Brighthand and PDA247, and eventually even MobileRead.com. I discovered the amazing software available that allowed me to have all kinds of content to read, simpler PIM functions due to the screen quality, and I learned that you can do all kinds of ebook reading as well as clipping web site content for mobile reading.
I'm dependent on all these sorts of functions for my daily life. But mostly I depend on the basic PIM functions... Calendar/Datebook, Address Book, ToDo Lists, and Notes. It may not sound fancy, but that's the real reason I have a PDA, and it really does help me keep my life a lot straighter than it would be without it. Like David Allen says in his Getting Things Done book, you must have a trusted place you can record all the things that are running around in your mind that you feel compelled to keep track of. When you put all that in your trusted place, you can free up all that mind power that was so preoccupied with keeping track of things, and you can be creative and focus on the work you need to do at that moment. Even with paper planners, that principal was so valuable that I felt a huge burden lift once I figured out how to keep all those sorts of things on paper in an organized fashion. (As many of you have discovered, the paper planner or PDA is not enough by itself. You have to figure out what information you need to record, how to record it, and how best to keep it organized.) But now a PDA is a place I can really trust that my data is safe and easy to get to. Not quite so easy on my PPC as on my Palm, but good enough, I guess.
Now that you know why I use a PDA, it will make more sense when I talk about adopting and converting to my new PPC. For me, it's all about PIMs and mobile reading. Everything else is a bonus, even if other programs are useful or important to me. And I'm really only interested in simple games. The kind that you can play to relax when your mind is numb and you're worn out from the day. Anything that has too much action or is too challenging and complex just makes me want to go back to Patience. Which reminds me... I have a complaint about solitaire programs. But for that, you'll have to wait for next time!
NEXT TIME... My new Toshiba PPC and the conversion of my Palm data.
Note: Part II can now be found at
PalmOS to Pocket PC: Part II - Conversion