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PDA Wars: Choose a Business Winner
Compare the Pocket PC and Palm platforms to determine which PDA will provide the greatest productivity boost for your organization.
by Steve Makofsky

For this solution: Pocket PC 2002-compatible PDA, Palm-compatible handheld device

To me, it's quite bizarre: PDA users have developed an almost religious fervor when defending their chosen device's honor. The whole thing reminds me of the early days of the IBM PC and Macintosh, when newsgroups would flare with sharp-tongued discussions on which was the better platform. So, with much apprehension, I decided to put both Pocket PC 2002 and Palm OS-enabled devices to the test. I wanted to discover what separated the "toy" from the useful business companion, and how they fared when I tried to do actual work on each platform. If you're considering deploying PDAs throughout your organization, I'll cover the benefits and shortcomings of each platform and device to give you a better picture for which one might provide the greatest benefits for your business.

One note: I won't be covering the Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry device in this article (see Resources). Although RIM has proven to be a compelling choice for many business users, unless RIM dramatically adds functionality in the next 12 months, I predict its market share will be swallowed by the more powerful PDAs with wireless capabilities.

For this competition, I decided to compare two of the most commonly used devices with color displays: the Compaq iPAQ 3765 and the Handspring Visor Prism. Although grayscale is typically more pocketbook friendly, nothing beats a killer color screen—especially when remotely accessing your desktop or viewing Web pages wirelessly. To do a fair comparison, it's good to know the specs for each PDA (see Table 1).

I've also decided not to include processor speed and memory in this comparison. Most people's first guess would be that the iPAQ, which runs a 206 MHz ARM processor, would steamroll the Prism's 16 MHz DragonBall CPU. Well, it doesn't. The processor speed is really only tied to how well the OS itself performs. Because the Palm OS is lighter and smaller, the Prism doesn't suffer performance issues warranting the faster processor. Forget memory as well, because it really only affects how many contacts, appointments, MP3s, and how many third-party add-on software packages you want to load on to your device.

Now that I've set the stage for the competition, I'll look at five features common to each device, and offer my verdict on the winner in each category.