Hi,
I have to agree with Lane that the future for the Pocket PC looks bright.
After porting a subset of GUI3000 to the Pocket PC, I have done quite a bit
of development on the
platform, and people are actually excited about things. The Pocket PC is
turning into a
good development platform.

I also agree that things will really get on a roll when the Bluetooth
products start shipping
in volume. I am working with a company who will be providing Bluetooth
solutions, and they
have a queue of customers waiting.

Pete


"Lane Rollins" <[log in to unmask]> wrote in message
news:9qa6jb018rj@enews3.newsguy.com...
> I just got back from the Pocket PC Summit in Santa Monica. I haven't seen
> this much enthusiasm about a technology in a long while. I really think
you
> are going to see some amazing things in the next 12 to 18 months. It's a
> combination of things coming together. The first is Windows CE is really
> starting mature and become a useful foundation for mobile devices. The
> second is better use of power all around. The third is the advent of
> bluetooth shipping.
>
> Every developer I talked to was really excited about the latest version of
> windows CE 3 for the pocket pc, known as either Pocket PC 2002 or Merlin.
It
> really seems to help with the user experience and is as stable if not more
> so then the last version. The bigger news on that front was the beta
release
> of version 4 or Taliskar, which should hit the streets in December. The
> biggest complaint I heard was the lack of support for the developers.
>
> On the power front your seeing a lot of developments that will be helping
> the battery life. On shipping products like the new HP Jornada 560 series
> devices they are using a new chip from Microsemi to do drive the
> backlighting of the display. This a lone is extending the battery life up
to
> 50%. The other big thing coming soon is the Xscale processors coming from
> Intel. Peter Green from Intel said that for most application you would see
a
> 10x improvement in power consumption for processors rated at 200Mips like
> the ones today. The 400-500 Mips Xscale processors are going to use less
> power then the current 200 Mips Strong Arm processors do.
>
> Finally bluetooth is going to help with reducing the cabling mess. It's
not
> meant to compete with 802.11b, even though with the stronger transmitters
it
> can. It's real goal is to replace IR and cables. It's non directional
unlike
> IR and has greater range then IR. Today, yes today, you can print to many
> different printers, some like the HP DeskJet 995 have it built in or you
can
> use external adapters to do the same. Some cell phones with embedded
> bluetoothm, like the Ericsson R520, can be used as a modem for your
pocketpc
> with no cableing between them.
>
> The following section is a from a post from Jason Dunn on his website
> www.pocketpcthoughs.com
>
> I'm currently in the first keynote of the Pocket PC Summit, and Ben
Waldman,
> the VP of the Mobile Devices Division, is the keynote speaker. He had some
> interesting stats that I wanted to pass along:
>
> . Worldwide PDA market declined 21% overall in Q2, 2001
> . Excluding Palm, the worldwide market grew by 8% (translation: people are
> not buying Palms)
> . Q2 2000 to Q2 2001: Palm 54% down to 32%
> . Worldwide 2001 Q2: Pocket PC is at 35%, Palm at 65%
> . Q2 2001 Palm Europe sales: 40.5%
> . Q2 2001 Pocket PC Europe sales: 40.6%
>
> Craig Dewar and Dale Coffing were helping Ben Waldman and they showed off
> the 02 Pocket PC phone device - I was totally stunned at how simple it was
> for them to connect with the phone, and setup a conference call between
two
> people. Why does Dale Coffing get to have all the fun? ;-). I can
hopefully
> get some hands on with the device and perhaps some photos. Ben mentioned
> they'd have some "good news" for North American users in a while...we'll
see
> what happens, but I imagine they'll be announcing a North American GSM
> (GPRS?) version, and perhaps even a CDMA version.
>
>
> I've got to agree with Jason the O2 pocket pc/phone is an amazing device.
> Great functionality in a very sexy device. The only picture I can find of
it
> quickly is at
> http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/archives/00002445.html#comments.
> Microsoft is attacking the convergence of phones and PDA's on two fronts.
> There are some like the O2 that are Pocket PC's with phone capability.
Then
> there are units that are phones with some computing capablity, such as the
> "stinger" devices. You can see examples of prototypes on microsoft's
> pocketpc.com
>
>
>
> Dan Davis wrote
>
> > I work for a company that does a lot of business with Symbol, and I'd
> > like to point out that *most* of what they sell as far as their
> > palmtop-turned-barcode scanner devices are actually PalmOS, not
> > PocketPC.  They only recently started using PocketPC devices, in
> > addition to PalmOS that they've used for a while now.  It remains to
> > be seen which will be the more successful product line
>
> The symbol people I talked to made it sound like most of the new orders
for
> devices where coming from the pocketpc side of the product line. I'm
> personally not to excited about the 2800 but for route/sales automation
type
> projects the 8100 seems like a great product. Beyond the stand alone
devices
> they are making some jackets for the compaq ipaq. At the show they where
> loaning out 802.11b pc cards or the 2800 series devices so people could
use
> the events wireless lan. A lot of people were bumbed out that they didn't
> have any CF 802.11b cards to loan out, but right now they can't meet the
> demand for the product.
>
> > I'm still trying to figure out what the
> > best deal is in a palm device that can do GPS+MP3+internet/cellular
> > access without having to swap cards constantly.
>
> If you wanted to switch to the dark side try a compaq ipaq with Destinator
> GPS system. It does voice prompting on where to turn, with warnings prior
to
> getting to the actual location of the turn.
>
>
> -Lane
>
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