If you want an overpriced replacement for
your Month-At-a-Glance planner, stop here.
Go buy a Palm. If you want a reasonably
priced (for features vs. Palm platforms),
feature-rich, colorful platform, get a Win
CE machine. Windows CE is finally getting
its share of the market that it deserves.
I have a Cassiopeia E100 and I know someone
who has a Palm V, and both of us like my
Cassiopeia better. I can watch an MPEG movie
on my Cassiopeia, play a few games, listen
to my MP3s (in stereo!), while he watches
the battery meter go down on his Palm V.
The Cassiopeia is a fast little machine. Using
a Xircom CompactCard Modem 56, I can surf
the 'Net in full color or read my E-mail on
this little beauty. I do, frequently. On long
trips, I can kick back and listen to my MP3s.
If I'm not doing anything terribly important
in a meeting, I can play Missile Command or
Taipei while appearing to take notes (just
leave the sound muted). It has a cursor pad, a
feature not found on many of the Windows CE machines
and on none of the Palm machines. It transmits
in the IRDA standard for Infrared, unlike the Palm.
The palm uses some weird format that no other machines
can recognise. The Cassiopeia can accept Compact Flash
cards, Types 1 & 2, in its top slot. The Palm platform
doesn't have anything this standard on it. Closest thing
is HandSpring's SpringBoards, and they're completely non
standard. It's just a waste of their time to invent that
port on the Palm platform. I bet that there's very few
SpringBoards to come out in the next 6 months, and all
the time companies are putting out new CompactFlash cards.
I could get one to hook it up to a GSM cell phone, or
any serial device, or any 2 serial devices, or a 10mbps
Ethernet, or a phone line, etc... There's just so many
things that Windows CE does best, and the Cassiopeia comes
out on top. It's lighter than the Jornada 430se I used to
have (until the speaker broke), and it's more palm-sized.
It fits nicely in a pocket. It's a little thicker than a
Palm 5 and weighs in at only a few ounces, probably more
than the Palm 5. The screen is a vibrant, easy to read
16-bit Active Matrix display (65,536 colors). Unfortunatly,
it's a little difficult to read outside in direct sunlight.
That's just a small drawback to an otherwise wonderful machine.