Pocket PCs: No longer just a Toy
LOGAN HARBAUGH
Small, portable devices lose their novelty status as they address compatibility issues. Handhelds' increased functionality and software support are making the market soar and driving competition as Microsoft grabs for a bigger market share.
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Like Windows before it, Microsoft's Pocket PC has come of age in its third iteration. With a 15% market share compared with Palm's 80%, Microsoft has been motivated to innovate and to drive innovation among its third-party partners.
While many IT managers may see personal digital assistants as cute little toys, others are migrating applications for their key travelers to PDAs, including sales-force automation tools, database access, Web portals, E-mail, and productivity applications.
The big issues for these early adopters include standardizing on a hardware platform, synchronizing with data, and developing apps. The Pocket PC provides a highly qualified platform. With hardware available from more than a half-dozen manufacturers, improved synchronization software and hardware, and strong development environments, the Pocket PC is poised to gain business and consumer market share quickly.
For consumers, the draws are relatively inexpensive devices, high-resolution color displays, MP3 audio capability, and access to books, magazines, and lots of games. Many of these same attributes can make the device attractive to businesses as well. Especially attractive is the integration with the Windows desktop, provided you're using Microsoft's applications.
While early advertising emphasizes MP3 music files, there's a great deal of information available in audible formats, including many books and magazines in Audible Player formats, and seminars and instructional tapes converted to the MP3 format that mobile workers will want.
It's relatively simple to create speech-to-text files that can be listened to while traveling. Microsoft's ClearText technology makes the Reader application usable. It's quite feasible to read a novel on the device with text clear and sharp enough that you won't have a headache when you're done.
Storage of up to 340 Mbytes, the Reader, Media Player, a pocket version of Internet Explorer, and optional applications that allow viewing graphics files and portable document files combine to give portable access to almost any data.
Connectivity using the Compact- Flash slot lets users connect to company networks or the Internet, using either a 56-Kbps modem or Ethernet. With 56-Kbps modems available for less than $100, it's not outrageously expensive, either. In addition, Infrared Data Association (IrDA) connectivity allows wireless connections to PCs, mobile phones, and other PDAs, including Palm devices, with the included PeaceMaker application.
Socket Communications Inc. will have a Bluetooth card in the next quarter that will allow short-range wireless connectivity without the line-of-sight issues of IrDA devices. The HP version of the Pocket PC, the Jornada 540, comes with a docking station that can connect to the user's PC by universal serial bus as well as a serial connection-a welcome addition.
The Microsoft ActiveSync application provides improved synchronization with Outlook, synchronization of files on the PC or servers, and easy downloading of applications to the Pocket PC. Third-party applications are already available to synchronize with other E-mail and productivity applications such as Lotus Notes and Novell GroupWise and enterprise resource planning applications.
Microsoft and other manufacturers such as Syware Inc. have released development environments for the Pocket PC that make it simple to develop Pocket PC versions of internal applications, and to allow access to SQL databases.
Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 Windows CE Edition is in beta. It's compatible with other editions of SQL Server, supports CE devices running Windows CE 2.11 or later, and provides essential relational database functionality in less than 1 Mbyte. Data can be synchronized over the Web using an HTTP connection through an Internet Information Server to a SQL Server database located behind a firewall or proxy server. Synchronization also can be performed over wired and wireless LANs and WANs.
Syware has unveiled Visual CE for the Pocket PC, the first database and forms-builder software to support the new array of Windows-powered Pocket PCs. It lets users build databases and create custom forms quickly, and it includes a full set of standard controls and development tools.
Accessing the Web with the Pocket PC is surprisingly straightforward. The Pocket version of Internet Explorer can display any normal Web site, and the user can choose between a view optimized for the pocket-sized screen or a normal view of the site by using scroll bars. With the right cellular phone and adapter, users can even browse the Web wirelessly. Because of current data rates, this requires a certain amount of patience, especially with graphics-intensive sites.
Users of Pocket Outlook can synchronize with Outlook on their PC or access an Exchange server. For other types of E-mail, HP includes software such as America Online Mail and Yahoo Messenger with the Jornada. Anyone with AOL or Yahoo service can send and receive E-mail on the Pocket PC just as they would on a bigger system. BSquare Corp.'s Messenger, available separately, provides Hotmail connectivity, including instant messaging functionality.
For printing, HP includes JetSend with the Jornada, and it can be downloaded from www.jetsend.com for other Pocket PCs. JetSend lets Pocket PCs send print jobs via an infrared signal directly to any JetSend-compatible infrared printer. Print jobs sent via infrared execute up to 10 times faster using JetSend and use less than 540 Kbytes of memory, preserving more of a device's precious memory capacity for other applications.
One advantage the Pocket PC has over the Palm is its expandability via the CompactFlash slot. A variety of peripherals can be attached. Several vendors have storage cards ranging in size from 8 Mbytes to 260 Mbytes in solid- state cards, and IBM has 170-Mbyte and 340-Mbyte hard disks that fit into the tiny CompactFlash slot.
Socket Communications has released a line of CompactFlash plug-in cards for attaching Pocket PCs to mobile phones, Ethernet networks, USB ports, bar-code scanners, and serial peripherals.
The Digital Phone Card is a low-power, plug-in card that connects any Windows PDA or notebook to data-capable mobile phones made by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, Siemens, and others. The Low-Power Ethernet Card provides high-speed, location-independent synchronization; it's the only Ethernet adapter available for ultra-thin Pocket PCs equipped with Type I CompactFlash slots.
The USB ActiveSync Card makes it easy to synchronize a Pocket PC with a notebook or desktop PC. The barcode laser scanner and scanner wand cards make mobile data collection fast and accurate. The serial Component Object Model cards attach a Pocket PC to industry-standard serial peripherals. HP incorporates software drivers for Socket's Digital Phone Card and Low-Power Ethernet Card into the HP Jornada 540 Series Color Pocket PC read-only memory.
Additional peripherals include keyboards and printers. IBiz is shipping the KeySync keyboard, which allows light data entry on the Pocket PC. Targus will have a Pocket PC version of its Stowaway folding keyboard available by late summer. I tried the KeySync and found that the keyboard and Jornada were able to keep up with my 40-words-per-minute typing.
The combination of the Pocket PC's size and the availability of a keyboard to answer E-mail and write short articles is compelling. I could live with this combination at shows, instead of a seven-pound notebook. With a small printer such as the Pentax PocketJet 200, an office that fits in a conventional briefcase isn't difficult to achieve.
The Pocket PC incorporates enough new features to be noteworthy in itself. That those features truly enable business applications-including access to portals, storing and viewing graphical data and sound files, as well as very readable text-and provide full access to E-mail and the Web should help Microsoft penetrate the PDA market.
But with Palm's 80% market share, Microsoft will have to keep innovating to catch up. At the recent PC Expo in New York, the buzz was clearly still centered around the market leader in handhelds. Consumer electronics giant Sony Corp. unveiled plans to join the market with a handheld slated for a fall debut. And then there's Research In Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry PDA with wireless E-mail, which was a hot item at last month's JavaOne conference in San Francisco.
It's unlikely the PDA market will cool down or consolidate any time soon. In fact, it's likely to provide consumers and businesses with more choices than ever.
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Selected Products For The Pocket PC
CompactFlash cards for communications and memory
Socket Communications
Newark, Calif.
510-744-2700
www.socketcom.com
Jornada Pocket PC and JetSend
Hewlett-Packard
Palo Alto, Calif.
800-443-1254
www.hp.com/jornada
Microdrive CompactFlash hard drive
IBM
Armonk, N.Y.
800-426-7777
www.ibm.com/storage
PocketJet 200
Pentax Technologies
Broomfield, Colo.
800-543-6144
www.pentaxtech.com |
