What are your opinions? Im debating which one I would need....


HP Pocket PC
OR
Sony Palm

I would be using it mostly for work...

-To Do lists
-Meeting Schedules and notices
-Addresses and Phone Book
-Excel Spreadsheets

For Personal Use I would use MP3 for the Car...

Would like to look at images and mpegs but thats not very important...

Thanks

 

If you only need it for business, the Palm has worked great for me. I have the IBM C3, rebadged Palm Vx. It is much smaller than ANY pocket PC and will fit in my front shirt pocket or pant pocket. It only weighs a few ounces and most business people are still using a Palm and you can get tons of apps for it.

If you want more features, with apps that look similar to your PC and you do not mind the extra size/weight, get the Pocket PC. There is a lot more you can do with a Pocket PC now - at a price.

 

I never even saw a Pocket PC working, so I can't really help for your comparison. However, I am a heavy Palm-based PDA user for the last few years and currently using a Visor model from Handspring with many Springboard modules (wireless modem, MP3, GPS, ...) One advice to you is that I found people ended up using these PDAs lot more than they thought they would. Your requirement list seems pretty simple and I am sure both of these can do those things just fine. I know you can do all those with least expensive Palm or Visor units and you don't have to get a Sony. Just do not ignore the expandability and how comfortable you feel with the unit if you used it much more often than you think. You can browse this site to get an idea for what kind of applications are available out there and how people are using these.

 

As a 4-year Palm user who switched to an iPAQ Pocket PC last year, I can't say enough about the Palm's ease of use and durability. Your useage list is almost perfect for a Palm device, with the possible exception of Excel spreadsheets.

Real spreadsheets (not just a database displayed in rows and tables) really suck the life out of a Palm device. I could run 8700 row databases in HanDBase for Palm with no problem, but just a 200 row Excel spreadsheet with lots of calculations took almost a minute to open. For serious Excel, the iPAQ has the advantage in processing horsepower, and the display is considerably better.

I was a serious Palm user ( 4 different models in 4 years) that filled up the 8 megs of memory with data, and still recommend it to people who need a great replacement for a Daytimer or other Day Planner system. There's nothing faster than a Palm for looking up a name or address or creating a new appointment with a reminder alarm. But the darned alarm beep is way too quiet for me, even in the leather case the iPAQ will wake you up from across the room. But then I have to charge it 2 or 3 times a week, and could go at least 2 weeks on the Palm before a charge.

iPAQ - much faster processor, much better display, more PC-like, louder alarm, better sound all-around, built-in memo recorder,

Palm - much easier for Daytimer functions, much better battery life, usually smaller than Pocket PC's, a dizzying array of software titles

 

yeah, what modify said...

Plus, with the iPaq, you can pop in a wireless network card and be connected to your office or home network to surf the net or email; and Windows CE comes with the Terminal Server Client so you can remotely administer a Windows2000/XP server. Very cool.