When I consider the three operating systems for PDAs, I am surprised how different they are. While Palm was the first to win a mass market, it delivers little more than a diary and contact manager, with a little email thrown in. Psion and the other Epoc devices do a very good job of delivering the components of a desktop computer in a pocket-sized format. But while the Epoc Web browser is more or less equivalent to a browser running on a desktop PC, the absence of off-line tools means most people will use it only with a wired connection. Windows CE, on the other hand, does a poorer job of packing a desktop computer into a handheld device.
Battery life is often a problem, and there is just too much clutter.
All that is about to change, because Windows CE is about to wake up to the Web. Sure, it's had a browser for some time, but performance has been an issue. More important still, to be a useful alternative to a desktop PC's browser, the PDA browser must work well while the device is disconnected from the Internet. Looking at Microsoft and its Windows CE offering, while for most functions it is beaten hands down by its competitors, it trounces the others in this vital area. Admittedly, the rendering of Web pages is very slow with Windows CE devices, but if you overlook that, Windows CE and the Web work reasonably well together.