Registered: Nov 1999
Location:
Posts: 145

Can we start a poll of how many users with the Visor as the primary PDA were former users of other major OSs?

1. What make and model PDA did you formerly use (Palm xxx, Psion xxx, WinCE xxx, PDA Newbie)?
2. Why did you switch? (price, features, size, etc.)
3. Are you now satisfied? (no, not patient enough to wait for Springboards, etc.)
4. Are you considering switching from the Visor to another system?

I'm curious, because I just played with a friend's Psion 5, and was impressed. Very nice machine, and well-equipped. Lots of 3-party software available for it also. I did research on the Revo, by Psion, and found that it's only about an inch longer and 2 ounces heavier, but naturally comes with a keyboard. At ~$384 it costs as much as a Visor with Stowaway, and smaller than the two put together, even folded.

The Stowaway is novel, but if you really want to type anywhere, nothing beats just flipping open the unit and typing away.

Of course the keyboard is smaller, and Psion has no Springboard, but the EPOC units seem to be so refined, that I can't imagine anyone switching from one of those to a Palm OS, or WinCE for that matter. I hear all the time people who abandon CE, but none who abandon EPOC. Why is EPOC so popular in Europe?

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1883

I did not have one of the mayor OS-es but I used to own a Royal Davinci.
A nice litle machine but with limited usability... (hardly any 3rd party software )

So I switched to HS with Palm OS...

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Kansas City, MO
Posts: 295

Geek.com has an article posted about one of their reviewers moving from an EPOC to a Visor!
http://www.foxpop.ndirect.co.uk/Palm/strangercover.htm

He has very favorable things to say about the Visor. He also presents a VERY complete reveiw of the Visor desktop software. Thought you might be interested.

<><



[This message has been edited by LanMan (edited 04-14-2000).]

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

quote:

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I'm curious, because I just played with a friend's Psion 5, and was impressed. Very nice machine, and well-equipped. Lots of 3-party software available for it also. I did research on the Revo, by Psion, and found that it's only about an inch longer and 2 ounces heavier, but naturally comes with a keyboard. At ~$384 it costs as much as a Visor with Stowaway, and smaller than the two put together, even folded.

The Stowaway is novel, but if you really want to type anywhere, nothing beats just flipping open the unit and typing away.

Of course the keyboard is smaller, and Psion has no Springboard, but the EPOC units seem to be so refined, that I can't imagine anyone switching from one of those to a Palm OS, or WinCE for that matter. I hear all the time people who abandon CE, but none who abandon EPOC. Why is EPOC so popular in Europe?

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Registered: Nov 1999
Location:
Posts: 145

Thanks, LanMan!

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Boston, MA, USA
Posts: 90

Being a Brit, I was a loyal Psion user. I'd had a Series 3a with it's calculator keypad and switched to a Series 5 for the bigger memory and a MUCH better keyboard. (I'd say the keyboard is as good as a full size laptop).
Even when my girlfriend got a Palm III from work I swore I would never change. Why should I learn to write in a new way when I can type quickly. I even showed her that I could enter data faster on her Palm using the on screen keyboard and the stylus than she could using graffiti....
BUT
What made me switch was the support for Psion / EPOC devices in terms of syncing is not as good as it is with PalmOS. This was a big factor for me as we use Meeting Maker at work and at the time it had no direct support for EPOC. Syncing the Visor is very easy.
Secondly the expansion posibilities offered by the Springboard slot. The Psion Series 3a and 5 both had expansion slots (although they were different from each other).
Then the price. My Psion 5 was $500 on closeout in Radio Shack. The Visor persuaded me to jump into PalmOS at a cheap price.
The Psion Series 5 was significantly bigger than a Visor too.
I still carry both around with me most of the time, and I must say the keyboard on the Psion is still a joy to use. Even after 5 months of Graffiti I still can't do a lot of the punctuation, I always get U when I want V and a host of other little annoyances. I get Jeff Hawkins' point that it's easier to get a human to change than to get an intelligent enough hand held device to recognise anyone's handwriting (a point Apple have learned!) but I still can type quicker than I can Graffiti. Maybe I'm enough of a geek that I can type quicker than I could write on paper....

Anyway, that's my story. Hope you're interested.

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

fubar:

I'm always interested in people's choice of input methods, especially when a whole continent chooses one over the other.

You're right that typing is faster, but unless you're at a desk with both hands free, the difference is negligible. I can write with Grafitti faster than I can hunt and peck on the Visor's virtual keyboard, but I've have a lot of practice (the first weekend I owned a Palm, I entered all by contacts' information in by hand; within the first week I was a Grafitti whiz).

I think the pen input is an essential component to the Zen of Palm. A keyboard raises people's expectations of what they can accomplish with a handheld unit. Most PDA owners own laptops, so there's not much sense in using a handheld for tasks that can be better done on a laptop. That's why Wince, powerful as it is, is failing, and why Psion is unlikely to penetrate the US like it has in Europe. Also, even a very small keyboard increases the overall size of a handheld beyond shirt-pocket dimensions (an important marketing constraint, since the PDA's core demographic are middle-class males who don't have purses). That's why the Newton failed.

I'd love to see Symbian's upcoming wireless Internet PDA that will have a Palm form factor (I forget what it's called). If someone comes up with something better than the Palm at the right price, I'm all for it.

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: El Paso
Posts: 8

I've found the fitaly keyboard considerably faster than either graffiti or the qwerty onscreen keyboard. Whenever I enter in graffiti now, I feel like I'm moving in slow motion, though it's still faster for things 2 words or less or a few numbers. Otherwise I use fitaly all the time.

-=greg=-

Registered: Nov 1999
Location:
Posts: 145

fubar,
A "V" is easier to write if write a "U" but from right to left, (instead of left to write with the little tail).

There are a lot of alternate forms...e.g. the "D" is a shortcut symbol backwards...

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Boston, MA, USA
Posts: 90

Gameboy,

I agree that the keyboard makes a device too big for a shirt or jeans pocket - size was one of the things I liked about the Visor.
The Psion 5 has a pen and a touch screen, and although it didn't ship with handwriting recognition, I think 3rd parties have developed it...
I'm not sure I agree that 'most' PDA owners have laptops... I've had 3 PDAs and never owned a laptop. I'm sure they all have PCs of some kind, but I bet most are desktops. If you're carrying around a laptop, I agree it does somethings much better than the PDA, but then there's your shirt pocket argument...
I think wince is failing for a lot of reasons and that the Newton was ahead of it's time. Look how much more popular laptops are now that they are as powerful as desktops and lighter that ever.

Goyena,

Thanks for the tip... do you know where I can find more like that...??? There's just some parts of grafitti that I just can't get used to.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 434

Yep, I would guess that most PDA owners do not have laptops. If I was forced to carry a laptop everywhere with me, I probably wouldn't own a PDA. If I owned a laptop but didn't have to carry it everywhere, I would own a PDA because of the size factor. My personal need are fairly limited when I'm not at home or at work, so a PDA is fine (as long as I can get my hands on that Stowaway to put in my briefcase ).


------------------
Eugene Hsieh
Editor, VisorCentral FAQ
Come visit my homepage.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Provo, UT
Posts: 64

quote:

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Originally posted by fubar:

Thanks for the tip... do you know where I can find more like that...??? There's just some parts of grafitti that I just can't get used to.

---

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Boston, MA, USA
Posts: 90

ronbot,

you mean RTFM...??!!! Thanks!

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Dallas, TX
Posts: 12

I had a Psion 3c and loved it, and after having had my visor since November, I'd switch back to the Psion anytime. The problem with it is that I couldn't get it set up to sync again after my hard drive crashed. I just got tired of messing with it.

It's just a little heaver and bigger than the visor, and comes with a spreadsheet, a great database, address book better than visor's, better date book (you have the flexibility to specify exactly when you want an alarm go off rather than relative to the event time as on the visor), anniversary/birthday is built in to the datebook, to-do list is better, there's a good file manager built-in, word processor is built in and has outlining, spell-check, etc, Psion has a voice recorder and you can even attach voice recordings to alarms--my Psion would announce every morning that it was time to call my daughter and be sure she had gotten ready for school--

I could probably go on awhile.

But if you can't sync, it's not so useful.

I'm still thinking about giving the visor to my daughter and going back through the hassle of setting up the syncing--I got the visor out of curiosity and frustration, wanted to see what the palm system is like. I definitely feel the lack of a good word processor, spreadsheet, and database make it inadequate for anyone who wants more functionality than a datebook. By the time you buy all the software and go-type keyboard, you'll have spent more than you would on a Psion. Lots of people appear to be interested in the latest cute toy, and the visor is better for that, but for a small palm-top computer, the Psion is the one.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Boston, MA, USA
Posts: 90

That's it...!
The difference between the two is that the Visor is a PDA and the Psion is actually a computer shrunk down to PDA size. I agree that the apps on the Psion are so much better than the PalmOS ones, even with the improvements made by Handspring in the Visor.

Did anyone here ever have one of the Toshiba Libretto computers..? They were a little bigger than a Psion 5 but had a color screen and ran full Win95. They were pretty good, but they're no longer available - I wonder if Microsoft stopped Toshiba from making it when WinCE came along...? The Libretto had a good keyboard and a neat mouse joystick / button thing on the side of the screen to use with you thumb while you were holding it. It ran full apps too from a real hard disk.

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

ggrozier:

I think your post illustrates my feeling that there are three core markets in mobile computing: notebooks, subnotebooks, and PDAs. Unfortunately the blur between these distinctions often results in unrealistic expectations.

You mention the lack of a word processor, spreadsheet, database and keyboard in the Palm system. These expectations are reasonable for subnotebooks (I'm stretching the category a little to include Psion), but not PDAs -- at least not out of the box. Windows CE has failed primarily because MS doesn't get that distinction. Any device that's "a little bigger" than shirt pocket dimensions ceases to fall in the PDA category. It either fits in your pocket or it doesn't.

Palm is designed with the minimal feature set in mind: notes, appointments, to do lists, calculations and contacts. Everything else is left to third party solutions. Half of all Palm owners surveyed do not use anything other than the built-in applications. Because that minimal feature set requires only minimum data entry -- a few words, a few digits -- a keyboard is superfluous.

Psion would seem to fit your needs better because it's the right tool for the right job: subnotebook functionality. It's something you can use for minutes or hours at a time. The typical use case of a PDA is something like: pull it out of your pocket, enter/look up a note, and put it back in your pocket.

I'm hoping that in the future, the marketing of mobile devices be better distinguished, instead of offering the illusion that one device can be everything to everybody. And yes, that includes Springboard-enabled Visors.