Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 2

Hi Fellow travelers,

Have a Vx and love it. But want better readability-visibility and alarm system. Considering voice recorder. Looking at iPaq vs. Prism. Currently use address book, read books, calculate, bankbook, write notes. Not a real power user (surrounded by computers everywhere at home and work). Issues w/ipaq: availability, dust under cover, rumors about replacing battery in about year or so....But its color looks great! Any suggestions as to how to consider the comparison? I'm leaning toward ipaq.

Thx!
JDevP

Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Arlington, TX
Posts: 334

I have a Prism and a guy at work has a Jornada 540 or 545.
We both have 65k colors, but his is a little sharper due to
having more pixels. The Prism is $100 less, has more software available and the springboard modules as bonuses. I have not regretted going with the Prism. I also have a Visor Deluxe. For the money, the Palm OS can't be beat.

Rick

[Edited by gadgetguru on 12-09-2000 at 08:11 AM]

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Rick

www.visorsolutions.com

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

Before you make any decisions, check out Tom Mulch's incredible article on The Gadgeteer, "Daily Use Comparison of Palm OS and Pocket PC." This guy is a power user that's most likely tested every use you're likely to have for a PDA. He really puts both through the paces, discusses them objectively, and posts loads of screenshots. Note: the PalmOS device he's using is the IIIc, not the Prism.

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 46

Actually, the HP only has 4096 colors. The Prism has a true 65k palette (but can't display all of them at once due to resolution limits).

Also, the HP isn't $100 more; it's $50 more when you compare the 'street' prices of $449 (everywhere) for the Prism and $499 (Outpost.com) for the 548.

It's really apples to oranges, anyway. The HP can use CFII cards that provide a wide range of expansion and more RAM per dollar than Springboards, plus you can run apps from them and write directly from your desktop on your PC. They also don't need apps to replace the PIMs like Action Names or Address Pro because Pocket Outlook and the rest of the MS Pocket suite provide most of the functionality of their PC counterparts. They also sync up more seamlessly than Palms using third party apps like PocketMirror to interface with Microsoft products.

Before I get attacked for being pro-PPC, rememeber that I have both. I use my Prism primarily for work and scheduling while the E-100 collects dust until I want to blow someone away with PocketDoom, the new NES emulator, PocketMAME, Turjah, Pocket PacMan or any number of other incredible games (or full length MPEG videos). I love being able to take my Prism, go online and find dozens of new apps per day. Nothing like that kind of support for PPC's, unfortunately. It could change, but for now I'd be bored just having a PPC as my only PDA.

quote:

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Originally posted by gadgetguru
I have a Prism and a guy at work has a Jornada 540 or 545.
We both have 65k colors, but his is a little sharper due to
having more pixels. The Prism is $100 less, has more software available and the springboard modules as bonuses. I have not regretted going with the Prism. I also have a Visor Deluxe. For the money, the Palm OS can't be beat.

Rick

[Edited by gadgetguru on 12-09-2000 at 08:11 AM]

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bill s.
lead artist, the 3do company
visor prism / casio e-100
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Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 2

Once the InnoDrive line comes out, I think that the Prism will definately be the better chioce. They plan to have an adapter for both Memory Sticks and MMC, which should mean cheap mass memory for the Visor Line. And they also plan to be able run apps of the storage, unlike the CLIE.

Bobby

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 46

I'm not convinced it'd make the Prism a superior choice, but it would be a welcome ability to launch apps and write db files from and to the Flash Modules.

Really, were it not for the software support, the PalmOS devices would hold no interest for me at all. The WinCE PDA's may not be as streamlined in their UI but they're definitely much more powerful and easier to synchronize with the Windows desktop. Did you know you could drag & drop stuff to and from a PPC and explore its folders from your PC? Palms really need this level of interaction and accessibility (not to mention a better color screen) if they plan to remain so dominant in their market share.

quote:

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Originally posted by The_Mac
Once the InnoDrive line comes out, I think that the Prism will definately be the better chioce. They plan to have an adapter for both Memory Sticks and MMC, which should mean cheap mass memory for the Visor Line. And they also plan to be able run apps of the storage, unlike the CLIE.

Bobby

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bill s.
lead artist, the 3do company
visor prism / casio e-100
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 5

I was in your position- had a Vx, but wanted color. This was 6 months ago, before the prism came out. I got an Ipaq. A fun toy, but the OS and PIM apps are really poorly designed, the battery life sucks, and the production is not consistent (mine was ok, but many others had bad units). Plus I was used to a lot of apps (datebk 4, etc) on my pV, and there are not any good addins for Wince.

As soon as the prism came out, I sold my Ipaq on ebay and got one. No regrets.

Perhaps, if I had never had a palm, I would have been happy with the ipaq, but there were just too many shortcomings.

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 46

The battery life of my Prism is not noticeably better than my Casio E-100, which uses a less sophisticated battery than the iPAQ... It's about the same as my IIIc's were, if not actually a little faster on the drainage rate.

All in all, just about any color PDA is going to have a maximum-brightness on life of around 2-3 hours. In order to preserve battery power, you have to turn that screen down. PPC's have auto-dimming capabilities while Palms have greater control over how dim you can make the screen. It's all relative, but I think I was able to stretch my IIIc out to roughly six consecutive hours while retaining 17% battery life by lowering brightness and underclocking the CPU with Afterburner. I think the most I got out of my E-100 (without the benefit of an underclocker and powering a large CF card) was around 4 hours off and on use.

So far, the longest I've gotten my Prism to last is about 3 hours of sporadic use without underclocking and fairly varied brightness.

As for the PIMs, it's all relative. After I got used to their more-Windows-like feel, I got a little spoiled. When I went back to the IIIc and Prism, I was a little let down by the low rez, primitive look and low use of color.

b

quote:

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Originally posted by gmaass
I was in your position- had a Vx, but wanted color. This was 6 months ago, before the prism came out. I got an Ipaq. A fun toy, but the OS and PIM apps are really poorly designed, the battery life sucks,

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bill s.
lead artist, the 3do company
visor prism / casio e-100
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 2

Thanks for all of your replies. I actually saw a working Prism today at Staples. Faster and nice color. $200 more?! Im still holding on to my nice, stable, dependable Vx. Heard there is to be some new hardware Feb 2001 (OS 4). Maybe Ill just hang out.
JDevP

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 4

About that Prism screen

"As for the PIMs, it's all relative. After I got used to their more-Windows-like feel, I got a little spoiled. When I went back to the IIIc and Prism, I was a little let down by the low rez, primitive look and low use of color. "

This was exactly my reaction when seeing the Prism in the flesh at CompUSA. If HS offers 65K colors then they really ought to consider:

1) a finer resolution screen to go with it, so it compares favorably with the PPC's. Does this screw up all the Palm developers with a new screen raster? Probably. Could it be hacked to fill the new resolution? Probably.

2) the ability to turn off color and implement a greyscale render-- you'd get a nice paper white screen and black text. Might save battery power as well. Macs and PC's have been able to switch resolution from color to grey for years. Offer a choice of bit depth and resolutions.

3) the ability to antialiase text-- I believe the bit depth allows it and in 16-bit greyscale mode, this could be an effective remedy for the coarse screen. The chunkinerss of Palm text is more evident than ever in color, on both the IIIC and Prism.

These issues hold me back from selling my Visor Deluxe. Like to get comments on these possibilities from knowledgeable developers and users.

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- Loren
www.neotrondesign.com

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Baltimore MD, USA
Posts: 717

Re: About that Prism screen

quote:

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Originally posted by Loren

1) a finer resolution screen to go with it, so it compares favorably with the PPC's. Does this screw up all the Palm developers with a new screen raster? Probably. Could it be hacked to fill the new resolution? Probably.

2) the ability to turn off color and implement a greyscale render-- you'd get a nice paper white screen and black text. Might save battery power as well.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 4

"Palm has promised finer resoultion in PalmOS 5.0, which will be out Real Soon Now."

That going to be backward compatible with existing software?

"A greyscale render would also be nice, and is probably much more in the realm of possibility. However, it would result in a zero savings of battery power...(edit)... Visor Deluxe and Prism have different battery lives because they have different hardware for their screens, not because the power requirements go up with the number of colors."

That seems counterintuitive! It stands to reason you're going to waste more by pumping energy into three color layers or clumps of crystal rather than one. You wouldn't notice on your desktop screen because you're plugged into AC. But then, what do I know, I'm an editor, not an engineer.

Thanks, Winchell. Like to hear more opinions.

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- Loren
www.neotrondesign.com

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 434

Antialiasing and font rendering have their limitations

Antialiasing is at its best when it is used to remove the "jaggies" from a rendered font (i.e. one where a type template is zoomed or reduced to service a request for a particular size font). Antialiasing is most useful on relatively low resolution devices like CRT and LCD screens for displaying a rendered font. This is necessary because the machine is trying to do two often mutually exclusive things when it renders a font: maintain the shape of the type template and produce legible type. Microsoft has done an OK job of refining TrueType over the years, and the quality of the Microsoft Reader on the PPC is proof that Microsoft can do some things right. It can produce very good approximations of most any typeface thrown at. Granted, it would absolutely suck with Hiroshige! But that would have more to do with the PPC's low resolution, because the distinctiveness of Hiroshige doesn't begin to really show until you are at 1200dpi . . . In any event, for reasons I will discuss below, a rendered font will never beat a bit-mapped font for legibility on a LCD of comparable resolution.

In contrast, the bit-mapped fonts used by the Palm OS are entirely pre-set, like the type on a typewriter. When well crafted for a particular resolution (as the non-bold fonts for the Palm OS are), there would be no benefit to having a machine try to re-optimze (antialiasing) what a human has already designed for maximum legibility. This holds even if the fonts were designed for a 1 bit (a pixel is either on or off) display, but are being displayed on a 1+n bit display - as long as the pixel can truely be on or off. This is true of LCD displays, but it is not true of CRTs (where a pixel is made up of a cluster of colored dots - and antialiasing would help).

It is because of the quality of Palm's low tech bit-mapped fonts and the LCD screen that the non-color Palm devices hold up as well as they do against the higher resolution PPC, if legibility is the only criteria. As soon as you try changing type sizes or if you want to use different typefaces, the superiority of the PPC's font rendering technology rapidly becomes apparent. Yes. The Palm can compete; but you have to load custom fonts, and this is cumbersome and the quality of many of the fonts is lacking.

[Edited by yucca on 12-16-2000 at 01:28 PM]