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Pocket PC not ready for prime time
One thought leads to another this afternoon. I downloaded Larry Lessig's new book, Free Culture, as a PDF file. Then I downloaded Adobe Reader for the Pocket PC. Then I opened the 352-page PDF on the Pocket PC. First, I was warned that the file wasn't properly tagged for viewing on the Pocket PC, and I had to tell it to do its best. Then, it ran short of memory (I was listening to an IT Conversations audio interview at the same time on this device) and the Pocket PC asked me to let it steal some storage memory to use as program memory. (Why couldn't it do this dynamically?) Finally, it just stopped loading the PDF. At least the audio file kept playing until it finished. (Then, promptly, I got a "crash" with random graphic garbage overwriting a pop-up menu). This is the software that will power millions of 1GB cell phones in the next few years? UPDATE: I tried to read Lessig's book on my Palm Tungsten C. It doesn't try nearly as hard to display the text using pretty fonts, but it did load the document successfully, unlike the Pocket PC.
Posted on April 6, 2004 at 05:24 PM | Permalink
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Comments
I was surfing the web, looking for info related to Pocket PCs and came across this weblog. I must say I disagree. Maybe the improvements made in the past year make the difference, but I find the Pocket PC to be a stable, user-friendly device.
Adobe software for Pocket PC is not the greatest, but it tends to work well. Almost always I use Repligo instead. As a document reader it is superior. I regularly use it to read, annotate, and highlight documents - some as long as 300 -400 pages. I do not have the problem with crashing.
With Softmaker's TextMaker I have a full wordprocessor.
With Dell's Axim 30, I have a device that has withstood my careless drops and provides excellent wifi functionality.
In fact, during a two-week period when I was without both my computer (monitor fried) and laptop (hard drive crashed) I was able to use my Pocket PC for EVERYTHING. And I can be a very demanding user.
I suggest taking another look at the Pocket PC.
Posted by: Michael Nelson at Feb 13, 2005 8:17:47 PM
