PDA's -> UMPC's
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As a developer, I'm really dissapointed with the windows mobile pda devices, always have been but it was more understandable why they were so limited a few years ago. Now with all these ultra mobile pc's on the market and more coming and prices dropping they are surely getting into the territory of running the windows mobile pda's out of town. You can get a full windows xp, full fold out keyboard and wifi the whole nine yards in less than 800grams of weight 8 inches by 5 inches by less than one inch thick. That's only about twice as large as my Viewsonic pocket pc from a few years ago. Take that forward a couple of years, they'll get even smaller, more powerful etc. Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
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John Cardinal wrote:
Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
Oh god I agree so much I want to jump through the screen.. I'm working on an application for the PDA now using .NETCF and it's a pain in the butt. Such simple things that become hard because of the PDA's limitations. They really do seem like toys and the more I work on them the more I become convinced of that. (Were you the one working on AHLTA? Someone asked about that here a few months ago.. I forget who it was).
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual." - Frank Herbert
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It is a toy compared to even HTC's own UMPC which also fits in your pocket and runs Vista: http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htcshift.htm[^]
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and how much is a toy like that going to set you back?
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
Two things: 1) that's a new product and is about 2,800usd , but there are others that run windows xp for under a grand and they will be coming down in price and size quickly to the point where a pda in the current sense just isn't really going to exist anymore. 2) The point is that it's not a toy at this level, it's a real tool and can be used for something useful like a mobile technician doing on site service and entering in detailed and complex service data etc. Which is exactly what we're looking at it for and why we have chosen not to support this feature for our software with the current pda's out there - they are just too limited for any useful work purpose beyond contact management and ultra simplistic applications.
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John Cardinal wrote:
Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
Oh god I agree so much I want to jump through the screen.. I'm working on an application for the PDA now using .NETCF and it's a pain in the butt. Such simple things that become hard because of the PDA's limitations. They really do seem like toys and the more I work on them the more I become convinced of that. (Were you the one working on AHLTA? Someone asked about that here a few months ago.. I forget who it was).
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual." - Frank Herbert
Patrick Sears wrote:
Were you the one working on AHLTA?
Not me, but I do make service management software and it involves features for remote technicians who are on the road and can currently use a regular notebook computer. I've looked at pda's repeatedly over the years as an option since at least 2000 and there was just no way to support the same or even similar level of functionality as the notebooks can. I looked at it again recently realized two things: .net CF is ultra limited in so many areas it's not even worth looking at right now and found the UMPC's that are out there which really are close to making a current windows mobile pda obsolete.
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Two things: 1) that's a new product and is about 2,800usd , but there are others that run windows xp for under a grand and they will be coming down in price and size quickly to the point where a pda in the current sense just isn't really going to exist anymore. 2) The point is that it's not a toy at this level, it's a real tool and can be used for something useful like a mobile technician doing on site service and entering in detailed and complex service data etc. Which is exactly what we're looking at it for and why we have chosen not to support this feature for our software with the current pda's out there - they are just too limited for any useful work purpose beyond contact management and ultra simplistic applications.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
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As a developer, I'm really dissapointed with the windows mobile pda devices, always have been but it was more understandable why they were so limited a few years ago. Now with all these ultra mobile pc's on the market and more coming and prices dropping they are surely getting into the territory of running the windows mobile pda's out of town. You can get a full windows xp, full fold out keyboard and wifi the whole nine yards in less than 800grams of weight 8 inches by 5 inches by less than one inch thick. That's only about twice as large as my Viewsonic pocket pc from a few years ago. Take that forward a couple of years, they'll get even smaller, more powerful etc. Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
Although I understand your reasoning, there is a huge user base interested in owning a PDA (especially after the GPS/mapping applications have become common). Currently Symbian/Nokia Series60 phones have a far bigger market share, but this could change. On the contrary, I believe that UMPs are only of any interest for business people. Mobile applications are a trend that developers should be interested in. What I find disappointing about Windows Mobile devices is that there are many OEMs offering complete crappy devices. The reliable devices are hard to find, this is not Microsoft's fault, but it certainly does harm for them. Perhaps they could also produce the actual hardware, however I don't see this coming anytime soon.
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Totally agree; and why I have never owned/used a PDA. Got one for my wife, a few years back, and she spends more time swearing at Active Sync then she does using the device.
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTLi have cursed active-stink to hell and back and when i asked my good friend at ms why they cant make the damn thing work properly he said "i think they only have one programmer working on it ... and he isnt very good" says it all really
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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As a developer, I'm really dissapointed with the windows mobile pda devices, always have been but it was more understandable why they were so limited a few years ago. Now with all these ultra mobile pc's on the market and more coming and prices dropping they are surely getting into the territory of running the windows mobile pda's out of town. You can get a full windows xp, full fold out keyboard and wifi the whole nine yards in less than 800grams of weight 8 inches by 5 inches by less than one inch thick. That's only about twice as large as my Viewsonic pocket pc from a few years ago. Take that forward a couple of years, they'll get even smaller, more powerful etc. Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
The funny thing is, I do not believe that the majority of the devices running windows CE or Windows Mobile are used as PDAs. Handheld scanners, vehicle mounts, and wearable terminals make up the majority of these devices. The OS is more of a toy than the devices are, and Windows Mobile 5 really reached its limitation. I saw devices that shipped from the manufacturer with only 2 MB of available RAM. Windows Mobile 6 has rectified many of those limitations, and these devices are very cool.
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As a developer, I'm really dissapointed with the windows mobile pda devices, always have been but it was more understandable why they were so limited a few years ago. Now with all these ultra mobile pc's on the market and more coming and prices dropping they are surely getting into the territory of running the windows mobile pda's out of town. You can get a full windows xp, full fold out keyboard and wifi the whole nine yards in less than 800grams of weight 8 inches by 5 inches by less than one inch thick. That's only about twice as large as my Viewsonic pocket pc from a few years ago. Take that forward a couple of years, they'll get even smaller, more powerful etc. Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
I actually find PDAs rather useful, although they are limited compared to a UMPC or laptop. It depends what you use them for - in my case as a device to easily access contacts/calendar and for taking notes (I use OneNote for quickly noting down possible features,bug reports, etc.) However, I've yet to find a UMPC with the form factor of a PDA - I carry mine in my handbag, and it's not *that* much bigger than my phone. I doubt any UMPC we're likely to see in the next 5 years could match that.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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As a developer, I'm really dissapointed with the windows mobile pda devices, always have been but it was more understandable why they were so limited a few years ago. Now with all these ultra mobile pc's on the market and more coming and prices dropping they are surely getting into the territory of running the windows mobile pda's out of town. You can get a full windows xp, full fold out keyboard and wifi the whole nine yards in less than 800grams of weight 8 inches by 5 inches by less than one inch thick. That's only about twice as large as my Viewsonic pocket pc from a few years ago. Take that forward a couple of years, they'll get even smaller, more powerful etc. Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
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I own a Pocket PC and I use it a lot for listening to audio books, reading books, keeping track of finances, notes, as a planner, a GPS and - if necessary - to go online. It cost ~300$. It's small and there are a ton of apps out there for it. Maybe if you're a .NET developer, but .NET is not well suited for embedded development; for Pocket PC you'll want to develop using MFC / Win32API.
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As a developer, I'm really dissapointed with the windows mobile pda devices, always have been but it was more understandable why they were so limited a few years ago. Now with all these ultra mobile pc's on the market and more coming and prices dropping they are surely getting into the territory of running the windows mobile pda's out of town. You can get a full windows xp, full fold out keyboard and wifi the whole nine yards in less than 800grams of weight 8 inches by 5 inches by less than one inch thick. That's only about twice as large as my Viewsonic pocket pc from a few years ago. Take that forward a couple of years, they'll get even smaller, more powerful etc. Windows mobile or CE devices or whatever they're calling them now is looking increasingly like the toys that they actually are. I wouldn't want to be investing a lot of time learning the vagaries of the .NET CF right now.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
x86s are too power-hungry for most applications. The ARM processors are so much more efficient in performance per watt it's not even funny, even compared to the 'special low power' versions of x86 processors. Similarly one of the limiting factors in Windows Mobile device memory size is that the memory refresh eats battery power, more power required proportional to the amount of memory. That's why you rarely see devices with more than 64MB of RAM, which as we know is just barely enough to run Windows XP. Windows CE has a compromised memory protection model to fit better into the space available. Microsoft have in the last couple of years completely reengineered the CE kernel for Windows CE 6.0 (Windows Mobile 6 does not yet use CE 6.0, confusingly), changing how the process memory model works. I don't think they're expecting to port XP to ARM processors.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991 -
I actually find PDAs rather useful, although they are limited compared to a UMPC or laptop. It depends what you use them for - in my case as a device to easily access contacts/calendar and for taking notes (I use OneNote for quickly noting down possible features,bug reports, etc.) However, I've yet to find a UMPC with the form factor of a PDA - I carry mine in my handbag, and it's not *that* much bigger than my phone. I doubt any UMPC we're likely to see in the next 5 years could match that.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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x86s are too power-hungry for most applications. The ARM processors are so much more efficient in performance per watt it's not even funny, even compared to the 'special low power' versions of x86 processors. Similarly one of the limiting factors in Windows Mobile device memory size is that the memory refresh eats battery power, more power required proportional to the amount of memory. That's why you rarely see devices with more than 64MB of RAM, which as we know is just barely enough to run Windows XP. Windows CE has a compromised memory protection model to fit better into the space available. Microsoft have in the last couple of years completely reengineered the CE kernel for Windows CE 6.0 (Windows Mobile 6 does not yet use CE 6.0, confusingly), changing how the process memory model works. I don't think they're expecting to port XP to ARM processors.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991Mike Dimmick wrote:
x86s are too power-hungry for most applications. The ARM processors are so much more efficient in performance per watt it's not even funny, even compared to the 'special low power' versions of x86 processors.
beyond a certain point though how much does it matter, once you get to the point that other components become the primary power draw cutting one even farther matters less and less. See the flop of Transmeta Crusoe based laptops. What exactly is the power draw of the rest of the hardware in the package?
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
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Mike Dimmick wrote:
x86s are too power-hungry for most applications. The ARM processors are so much more efficient in performance per watt it's not even funny, even compared to the 'special low power' versions of x86 processors.
beyond a certain point though how much does it matter, once you get to the point that other components become the primary power draw cutting one even farther matters less and less. See the flop of Transmeta Crusoe based laptops. What exactly is the power draw of the rest of the hardware in the package?
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
The big power draw on most PDAs is the backlight, and this is proportional to the physical size of the screen. UI has to be pretty carefully designed for screens this physically small - standard Windows XP applications won't cut it. The pixel count of the screen does have an impact too. XP is unusable at 640x480, the UMPCs start at 800x600, while standard 'low-res' Windows Mobile devices run at 320x240. VGA is an option, but is intended for giving higher DPI, not greater screen area. Windows Mobile devices use built-in Flash for storage, rather than hard drives. Hard drives do add significantly to the power draw. Flash 'hard drives' are available but they have to be a lot bigger than the Windows Mobile built-in Flash (commonly 128MB, 64MB for the OS and 64MB user-accessible) for Windows XP or Windows Vista to be installed. The Samsung Q1 SSD variant comes with 32GB of Flash. After that it's typically WiFi and cell radios, then dynamic memory refresh, then CPU, assuming that the applications are written sanely and block whenever they don't have anything to do. If you go into a tight loop, using 100% CPU, the power drain attributable to the CPU goes way up. Still, code compiled for ARM running on a common Windows Mobile processor will typically use less power than the same code compiled for x86 running on a Pentium M or AMD Geode.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991 -
THe one John linked to is about the size of a paperback book, a form factor I've been wanting for years. Now if they could just get the price down.
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
They are definitely heading in the right direction, but the prices are going to bea little high for a while yet, I suspect. The PDA I use is this one[^]. It's significantly smaller than a paperback (it's only just bigger than my purse) and has the advantage that it's a navigation device as well. It works for me, at least. No more waiting for the laptop to boot up to check my calendar or take a note...and it synchronises to the laptop so I can stil do that if I want to. :)
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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They are definitely heading in the right direction, but the prices are going to bea little high for a while yet, I suspect. The PDA I use is this one[^]. It's significantly smaller than a paperback (it's only just bigger than my purse) and has the advantage that it's a navigation device as well. It works for me, at least. No more waiting for the laptop to boot up to check my calendar or take a note...and it synchronises to the laptop so I can stil do that if I want to. :)
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
One of the things I'd want to be able to do would be read books on it. A 3.5" 320x240 screen is just too small for that use, only 20% of the size of a paperback page. Assuming it had a pixel density high enough to keep the text size the same, at the speed I read I'd be hitting the next screen button every 10 seconds. In practice it would be worse, the sony ebook reader is 170DPI vs 110 for your PDA and can't quite manage a font as small as a print book uses.
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.