Are there serious differences between the PocketPC and Palm operating systems that one should consider when buying an all-in-one handheld + phone?
As this is GQ, please keep the “I hate MS!” replies to a minimum. 
I’ve been a user of an all in one PDA/phone for about 5 years now, starting with the Treo 300
The main difference between Palm and Pocket PC is the ability to multitask. With Palm you can only run one program at a time. If you open one program, it closes the other.
With Pocket PC it is possible to run more than one program at once. If you’d like to listen to music and browse the web at the same time, you can do that.
The Palm OS did seem to be a little more stable than the Windows Mobile 2003 or 5. I say this not having used Palm OS since 3.5 and for about 2 years now. My last two phones have been Pocket PC based.
My advice is play with the phones you like if you can. See how the form factors fit you. Palm has a lot of freeware out there, Pocket PC has a lot of programs, but you usually have to pay some for them.
You can do that with PalmOS too; most (possibly all) media player apps will run in the background while you use something else. PalmOS is capable of multitasking, although I think the apps have to be purposely designed to run that way.
I’m not a Windows Mobile user, but I think it probably offers an easier learning curve than PalmOS to someone familiar with Windows in a desktop environment; that’s not to say that Palm is difficult - if it was, it wouldn’t have lasted this long - but some of the concepts in PalmOS are just a bit weirdly foreign (for example, most applications don’t have an ‘exit’ function - you end them by pressing the ‘home’ key to go back to the desktop - for a long time, this felt like abnormal termination to me).
Windows Mobile devices have come under fire in the past for being generally bulkier and more battery-hungry than PalmOS, but I don’t think this is necessarily true any more. Palm is a more minimalist style of OS than Windows Mobile, with less graphical dressing up, but it gets the job done.
AFAIK, barring games which might be released only on one OS, there is no common function or activity that can be performed on one platform, but cannot on the other.
For the record, I have a Treo 650 and I’m reasonably impressed with it; it came with an email client, a web browser, all the usual organiser functions, and (bundled, but fully functional) software to natively view and edit Microsoft Office documents and PDFs.
Hope this isn’t too much of a hijack, but I am starting to look at these and a key requirement is running a sat nav system. Any strengths and weaknesses between OSes for this functionality? Or should I be looking at something different?
Thanks for the catch on palm OS multi-tasking. Like I said I have not used palm since version 3.5 – In my experience with Pocket PC it will support GPS quite easily. I’ve seen a lot of stuff out there for Palm and GPS, so I’m assuming it works equally as well.
For the record I’ve owned a Treo 300 (palm), Samsung I-500 (palm), a PPC 6600 (Pocket PC 2003), and a PPC 6700 (Windows Mobile 5)
As far as being a phone was concerned I enjoyed the I-500 the most. It was a small clam shell design and actually looked like a phone. For PDA usage the PPC 6700 has worked pretty well.
The Windows Treo 700w has a lower resolution screen than the Palm version (700p).
If you go with Palm version, I’d wait for the Garmin SmartPhone/GPS product to be released, rather than buying the Tom-Tom version that is available now.
We could all wait for the iPhone from Apple and see what it offers. It’s got to be more than about music, right?
I need a smart phone that will work with my Cingular account and my work’s Sprint/Nextel account, and sync flawlessly with Outlook at work and Entourage/Mail/Calendar at home. I’ve been waiting for years. I currently carry the cell phones and a Treo (Palm), and it’s driving me nuts. Actually, this very second I’m using call-forwarding on my personal phone, but it costs about a buck a minute for forwarding into Canada. I’m wanting to shout, “life sucks” but when I realize the magnitude of that problem to people that are starving, well, then, I’m really pretty fortunate.
I know you want to not hear “I hate MS!,” but I do. Despite that, my next device will probably be PocketPC or Windows Mobile. I absolutely love the Palm OS, but it seems to not be keeping up with my needs these days – I want more and more. There are some Linux-based units out there, but I don’t keep up enough with them to know what they are and how well they’d work for my own needs. So, I’m back to waiting for the iPhone. 
I just switched from Palm to Windows Mobile. I actually found the Palm better in many ways:
- More free software add-ins (I especially miss MetrO, a program that let you figure out subways in different cities)
- The notes feature on the Palm was faster and easier to use.
- The Palm was easier to navigate – programs could be categorized and the most useful ones could be put in one place. Windows Mobile limits the programs you can put on the start menu, so it less useful.
- Palm progams seem to run faster.
However, the Windows Mobile is ahead in its compatibility with MS Outlook.
I carry one of these for my business. I love it. It has become my brain in a matter of a couple weeks. Having internet access in my pocket has been a nice bonus, also nicely doubles as a WLAN detector/tool. Its windows Mobile reading and writing excel files synched to my PC so far flawlessly, making expense tracking and such a breeze.
The media center functions have been great and the music cuts out if the phone rings making it so you never miss a call no matter how loud you play your music. I have actually started carrying a USB bluetooth adapter and some of my common utilities on a mini SD card in the phone so I can connect my phone to a client PC to transfer a file. Sometimes I can get away with carrying nothing but my phone and a phillips screwdriver to get through my work day.
My only problem so far has been getting my bluetooth headset to play nice, its kinda twichy about how long you press to pick up/hang up/ignore a call.
One thing that might tip the balance in favour of Windows Mobile (although it pains me to say it, because I’m a PalmOS fan) is that there are emulators available to enable most PalmOS software to be run on it; they don’t work with anything that needs a conduit, and probably not with anything that needs to access specific hardware, but for the majority of Palm apps, they are apparently fairly good.
There is (AFAIK) no Windows mobile emulator for PalmOS.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. I’ve been hearing rumors about the supposed iPhone for more than six years – twice as long as the widescreen “true” video iPod that also hasn’t appeared yet. Apple’s a secretive company, they could be working on such a thing, but I doubt it. It’s not like there’s a huge untapped market for mobile phones.