A big status symbol among the CEO set is showing off one's Palm and, if the other person has a Palm, exchanging electronic business cards by beaming them between devices via infrared ports. Fittingly enough, the Pocket PC includes a feature called Peacemaker that lets one point a Jornada at a Palm and transfer contact information between the two. Palm uses special software to let users fill their devices with things like the daily news summaries from the Wall Street Journal, top stories from the New York Times and breaking news. Text powers just get better with the Pocket PC's Microsoft Reader software, which displays entire books in crisp and clear colors on the small screen. My instant favorite became reading the entire content of Microsoft's on-line magazine Slate using the reader, which makes reading complex material on the screen almost as easy as reading a proper paper book.
Books are just the beginning.
Pocket PC includes the Microsoft Media Player that lets the Jornada play highly compressed MP3-type files in full digital glory through headphones. An expansion slot allows users to store music on CompactFlash memory cards, giving the gadget unlimited space for music files. The product includes the MusicMatch software that rips tracks from your own music CD collection and saves them as Windows .wma audio. The Jornada comes with 8 mb of storage, which allows only limited music storage. There also is a built-in voice recorder that allows one to dictate on the run and attach voice notes to Microsoft Pocket Word and Pocket Excel files for later reference.