HANDHELD COMPUTERS

Abstract

Four years ago Palm created the first successful PDA. Today it holds an 80% share of the market for handheld computers. Its most serious competition is a family of devices from various vendors based on the Windows CE operating system. In some ways the competition between these two systems is reminiscent of the earlier Macintosh- Windows battle. Users become familiar with a device and develop strong preferences. The Palm OS was originally designed for a device with 512K of memory and no hard disk. Subsequent models doubled and redoubled available memory until the current generations of devices (IIIxe, Vx, IIIc) have 8M RAM at the same or lower prices than the original model. Although the Palm OS was modified to allow use of larger memory, it retains its original base architecture and processing speed. It is almost impossible for an ordinary user to use anywhere near the full 8M. Windows CE is a scaled down version of the Windows 9x operating system. Just booting the system seems to use up 3M of the RAM, and with Pocket versions of Word, Excel, IE, and (in some models) Access it is fairly simple to fill a typical 16 or 32M systems. CE devices typically have a slot for a plug in "Compact Flash card".