The Future of PPC

[Austin]

I noticed a thread with a similar topic, but it was kind of long and being how lazy I am I decided to post my question in a new one.

Right now, there are _many_ more Palm OS apps than WinCE/Pocket PC apps. Do you think this will change now that Microsoft has the edge with a more advanced OS? I'm kind of worried that I will spend a couple hundred dollars on a PDA that won't have a good selection of software. I know that if I buy a Palm based PDA, I won't have this problem. I guess it's a question of Quality (PPC) vs. Quanity (Palm). Any thoughts on this?

[T¹]

The only reason that there are more Palm apps than PPC apps, is because Palms have been available for much longer. Microsoft have had the technological advantage over Palm for ages now.

And...are you mad?? Although there is more Palm stuff than PPC, there is ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY a "good selection of software". There might be more Palm stuff available, but most if it are copies of the same apps/games, of which 80% you'd never dream of installing - I.e if you had both PDAs, you'd be spending more time installing stuff onto your PPC than your Palm.

Also, while the Palm may have more software, i'm pretty sure that there are less and less Palm apps being released, while more and more PPC stuff gets released by the day. I tell you what, why don't you do the following test: Pretend you have both PDAs. Go to relevant websites (Palmgear, Pocketgear, etc) and see what you would actually download and install if you actually owned the devices. You'll soon see what i mean.

[RICoder]

T1 hit my point pretty closely.
It's all about usefulness. While there are more apps for palm, the usefulness of these apps is questionable.

Sit down, and think about what you would want to do. Then go digging for the software to do it for PPC and Palm.

For me, there is no question, I want to surf the web and read eBooks...I can stop there because PPC wins on that front alone. Then you get into games and VPN and stuff like that...

[Luciano U. Werner]

[ulrichpeter]

[Dan East]

I would rather play Pocket Quake on my iPaq for 2 hours than not play Pocket Quake on a Palm for 20 hours.

Feel free to replace the words "Pocket Quake" above with any of the thousands of things that a Pocket PC can do that Palm can't.

Dan East