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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: limtex who wrote (2700)	3/24/1998 9:11:00 PM
From: Gary Spiers	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

OFF TOPIC Someonesorry i can't remeber who wrote exactly that to me about the incompatibilty of office files on the CE machines. Yesterday i bought the Libretto 50CT with 32 Mb ram and i'm sitting at home configuring it now. Twas I - knew I had mentioned it to someone. If I did not have my current palmtop I would also have a Libretto by now. BUT there will soon be compatible office files MS will IMHO get it right. Perhaps but there are palmtop vendors out there right now that have better products that are more compatible with existing MS apps than the WinCE devices - Psion for example. Trouble is they do not have the Microsoft name and so can not call their products Excel or Word so people assume a lesser degree of compatibility. Eventually MS will get it almost right but at what cost to those that bought under the illusion of functionality now - we are already on third generation WinCE devices in less than two years and some of the first generation devices are obsolete and unable to be upgraded to WinCE2.0. To me it just looks like maximised technology churn to optimise profits. In the meantime why can't i use a sandisk to back up or keep my confidential files on my libretto or for that matter my 660cdt because i don't need to travel with my 3.25" disk drive? Unbelieveably, I understand that you can not do this. MS decided that the user must backup their palmtop through the desktop and not to a flashcard. There is no built in mechanism for backing up all user files from a WinCE device to a flash card although there may be some third party applications that do this - if this is important to you then you should check this out carefully. MS designed the WinCE to be as dependent on the desktop (Win95 or NT only) as possible. No options for MAC, Unix, Dos, or Win 3.11 users (or what about Lotus or Corel users) - all are left out in the cold. Incidentally I would also check out the functionality of the WinCE apps - assume nothing. For example Excel had no graphs, no macros, a very limited set of functions and limited sheet size under WinCE 1.0. I think that this is still the case for WinCE2.0. OTOH my 'obsolete' palmtop has a full version of Dos Lotus built into rom replete with graphs, macros,full size sheets and the saved files will import into Excel without a special conversion program (although macros will be lost). I would strongly suggest making a list of everything you need from a palmtop and then verifying [not from salesmen but from people that use the devices;-)] that you can meet those needs with the palmtop you choose and do check out non-WinCE devices - their extra functionality may surprise you! In case anyone thinks I am anti-Microsoft, I am not. In general I am happy with their desktop operating systems but I just do not like the way their applications work - wrong style for me - unfortunately I see the 'one size fits all' trend becoming ever stronger. BTW i get the feeling that SNDK is on its way. Nothing specific just the announcements from NOK/A, seeing the growth of D Cameras in the stores and the new product announcements. I think and hope so :-) I think any further correspondence should be by email so that we do not annoy anybody:-) Gary