Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Where the smartphone ends...

...and the UMPC takes over.
For years now I'm a PDA/PocketPC(with phone) user. Have had two Palms pda's, a Casio PPC, an Acer n10, a HP Jornada HandheldPC, a HP rx3715, a Palm Treo 650 (still using), a T-Mobile Vario (still using) and now my main device is the HP hw6915; with keyboard and nice working GPS. And I'm always connected...so no complaints. I am a one-piece man, I like devices that do it all: phone, PIM, gps, email and internet, entertainment (games, music and multimedia).
At least, I was.
But now I have an Everun UMPC (yes, I'd call it an umpc) and things have changed. I use my smartphone less and less for browsing or reading or entertainment. (And for the record: I use my laptop also less; with the Everun I browse the internet and read my email on the couch).
The Everun has taken over much of the pda's work, at least when I'm commuting. In the train it's hard to do some work, but reading an ebook and listening to music is great. Something I could do on my pda, but with the small screen it's not such a pleasure. Combined with a BT phone or using a wifi hotspot I can have the full internet experience. A PDA can't do that.
Still, there is not so much between how I use my pda and how I use the Everun. Both have there (dis)advantages:

PDA:
+ small, light
+ gprs/gsm connection, always on-line
+ instant-on, stable, no hard-disk
+ BT, wifi, multimedia, internet, email
+ battery last for at least a day
- small screen
- not a full internet experience (browser is limited)
- OS is slimmed down, you need special programs for the Windows Mobile platform
- Wifi doesn't work with all hotspots, like the once with wpa2-psk protection
- not much storage memory, max. 2 gig/4 gig.

Everun:
+ large screen
+ full OS, can run a lot of apps you also have on your laptop or pc
+ large storage room (30 gig or more)
+ set up wifi is easy
+ full internet experience (IE or FireFox, incl. YouTube vids)
- large and clumsy (need a girly bag to carry it)
- hard-disk is always risky on a mobile device
- no cellular capacity (at least on this model)
- not instant-on, you have to wait 5-10 seconds until Windows has started
- battery last only 3 to 4 hours with Wifi on

So, I ask myself, has the Everun an edge? It's large, has no cellphone build in, not instant-on. Why not stick with the pda?
I think the advantage of the Everun lies in its OS, which enables it to be used as a 'normal' computer, with all the productive apps (Office XP, FireFox) as well as all the multimedia capacities. You can do fun and productivity better, much better than a pda. I think that's the power of the Everun, and a lot of other UMPC's.

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