Registered: Nov 1999
Location: NY, USA
Posts: 18

What does everyone think about todays announcement at Micro$oft. I think that now that Bill Gates is going to be in control of all microsoft development we could see a real challenge to the Palm OS. What does everyone think about this?

Mitch

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Chandler, AZ
Posts: 289

Its always difficult to determine where Microsoft will go. If he wants the market bad enough, that is definitely one company that can afford to pour in as much money as it takes to make it happen.

Looking down the road a few years, handhelds will be extremely popular. For many people, the handheld will be enough computing power for their daily needs. Given this fact and the realization that you can already install 340MB harddrives, flash RAM, modems, mp3 players, ethernet, etc into the units, I wouldn't be surprised if down the road handhelds were able to surpass laptop sales.

Given this estimated market share, I wouldn't be surprised if larger software applications eventually are ported over to handheld devices. Microsoft could provide a huge array of compatible APIs with desktop windows and programmers could program software for Windows and without too much problem beable to convert it to the handheld unit.

Alais .. too early to tell.. To Palm's credit, however, there is a LOT of support for it from a variety of OEMs and possibly their may be some converts from the WinCE side.. Palm is also the most popular PDA out there right now and not necessarily because it is the most sophisticated (from a specifications POV) but because it gets the job done. Microsoft hasn't figured this out yet and I really don't see this happening any time soon.

Joe