Windows mobile vs. palm os
 

i'm about to get the new pink treo centro and right now i have the 6800. does anyone have experience with both types of phones and can give me pros and cons? i don't have to give up my 6800 (which i like but not love) until i know if the new one is better or worse.

Don't really know too much about the Palm OS, I do know that you cannot have more than 1 program open on Palm OS though, which you can on WM.

You like multitasking? If so, avoid Palm OS like a plague.

really, like i can't open my calendar while on the phone? or get a call while i'm playing sudoku? or is it more important things?
thanks in advance.

I'll assume phone overrides anything that's open... but you won't be able to browse the web and have a game open for example. You'd have to close the browser and open the game, or vice versa.

the treo centro, is very cumbersome to use. its a very large downgrade from the mogul... I would recomend playing with it first before decideing..

one of my co-workers has 1. and would never recomend it. Me and another co-worker where trying to give her some ringtones that i created and sent via bluetooth and took us an hour to find the files, then the phone doesnt take mp3 format only aac and another format cant remeber which.

i was planning to get this phone for my wife, decided I wouldnt do that to her

"Some" programs can run at the same time, but the list is super small. The calendar program is one of them and the only other off the top of my head I can think of is PTunes.

A great example of a major downside to the Palm OS is when you are download a file from a website. The browser that comes with it, Blazer is really good and quite quick at loading pages, but the second you close it the program is completely closed. You have to keep that download window open and do nothing else on your phone until that download is done. Even if you get a phone call it will kill the browser if you choose to accept the call.

Ironicly, Palm was the first mobile phone OS that had a program that was able to play videos off YouTube and it is still the best damned player out there. I wish they would make a Windows Mobile release of that program.

http://www.kinoma.com/

palm is faster, but windows is better for multi-tasking.

well I have 700wx and the mogul. I used the mougal today and I perfer the 700wx over teh mogul. its easier to use and treo setup the mogul right because everything is laied out and easy to use on it. I'm just getting used to teh mogul and its gets anoying sometimes.

Yes, but the 700wx has Windows Mobile, the original poster is comparing a Centro that has the Palm Operating System against the Mogul with Windows Mobile.

POS stands for two things. Not a coincidence.

Palm is more basic. I like it for some things, but I have no intention of ever going back to it. My mommy can use her Centro substaintially better than the Dash I let her use previously.

I had a Treo 755P. The pros of the POS: it's fast and easy to use. The cons: doesn't multi-task, not as powerful OS, no GPS built-in, no wi-fi, and with the Centro, remarkably tiny screen and buttons. The Centro is clearly designed for someone w/ outstanding eyesight and very thin fingers. It is harder to do some stuff on the Mogul, but the power of it more than outweights its cons. I would def. look at the 755P in lieu of the Centro though if you are going to make the switch to the POS.

I love the built-in GPS, wi-fi, big keyboard and huge screen that the Mogul affords. I also get better battery life from the Mogul.

I used the Treo 700P for about 10 months and I had to get away from it.

Pros:
- Fast loading system
- Good built in browser

Cons
- No multi tasking
- Not heavily developed for
- File system is complicated - Very difficult to run and open files from a SD card
- Overall less modifiable. For me this was the biggest loss

I had a Treo 600, 650 and 700p. All were pretty good phones and were pretty fast as the PalmOS isn't as demanding as WM is.

It can do multitasking, but its limited to certain apps. For example, you can play music in the background while taking a call and working on your calendar. However, other things won't work at the same time.

Regardless, I am very happy with WM and will not go back to the current ancient version of PalmOS.

Here is some info on PalmOS multitaksing I took from an article on a slow website.

palm is good for people that want PDA functionality but do not know much about operating systems. it is simple to use for first time users. the operating system is fast and somewhat decent. now PPC's on the other hand are for users that like to customize by tweaking and adding new apps and so on and so forth. more advanced users pick the windows mobile operating system because it just does more and has so much more potential. palm will release a new operating system someday, but the one they have now is way below par. test the centro out. my wife had a 700p for about a year and then got the 700wx. she is a simple user but likes windows mobile a lot more.

Ok, I'm kinda seeing some misinformation here, like PALM os doesn't have much development, is only good for first time users, etc etc.

Multitask. You can mutlitask in a large sense of what you would expect mutlitasking to be. You run PocketTunes, it plays in the background even when you exit and load another app. You load Blazer while listening to PTunes, if it is set to load the same page you were on when you exit, it loads the exact same page you were viewing if you quit and come back. If you quit your email client while viewing a specific email, when you reopen the email client it opens on the exact same email you were viewing. If you were composing an email and quit, it saves the draft and opens writing the exact same email state you quit at. If you do ALL of these at the same time, guess what? It behaves exactly how you would expect.

Aside from the evil thing that people hear about PALM os not multitasking, you have to realize this means in most use cases you get the functionality of mutitasking exactly as you would expect and WILL NOT RUN OUT OF PROGRAM MEMORY.

Every IM client (free and paid) supports running in the background and gives alerts while not in the application.

And you can customize the living crap out of the PALM interface with Zlauncher. As far as 3rd party apps, good luck sifting through the thousands of PALM developed apps out there...

Here are some actual cons:
-Palm databases require more care when it comes to deleting apps, etc. You can cause database corruption which can result in system instability. Fixable and easy to avoid, but you should be aware of it.
-Palm file system is not what you are used to with windows. It doesn't look the same and it doesn't function the same, takes getting used to.
-No wifi drivers currently.
-Interface requires some tweaking with 3rd party apps to make it look better, but you can achieve very nice results.
Just a quick example http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...p-C3BA4944.jpg
-NVFS file system can cause dbcache resets. What this means in a nutshell, system tries to flush the cache but might flush something that needs to run in the background on accident. Easy to fix with Resco Locker, but you need to be aware of it.

You're right, that is misinformation. The Palm OS hasn't seen ANY development. :)

And if you close Blazer while downloading something, peace out! It's very annoying in Kinoma when using it for YouTube and you have to close it for a moment to check it for something as the program just shuts down.

well they have been adding new ringtones and color schemes to their os...

Yeah, Versamail 4.0.1 did not just release and 1.0.7 ROM for 755p. But feel free to continue talking like you know what you're saying.

I'm not going to bash on the Palm, my wife much prefers it to WM. She started out with a Centro, but swapped it for a 755P. The Centro was cute BUT the key pad was cramped and battery life was very poor. She loves her 755p.

Thanks for bringing up Versamail. That is the reason I left palm. That POS never worked right with Exchange. After using Palm since the mid 90's I was done with constant crashes because of that app. There was nothing like the sound of mystery reboots to brighten my day. I really loved the Treo form factor and the keyboard was awesome, but Sprint has no newer Palms with windows mobile. The best way for me to look at the pros is by putting together a list of what I miss about palm OS.

* The sms chat program
* VolumeCare
* Battery life

It has been about a year since I jumped ship, first to a Dash, then a Wing, now the Mogul. I'm not looking back BUT if I was shopping for a smartphone for mom or dad, the Centro would be high on the list because it is much easier to use than WM.

Please tell me that it displays email in html form.

the palm is also almost as good as the blackberry when it comes to emails... probably up to 6 accounts, but it's a horrible multitasker as mentioned in previous posts... like when it comes to a new task being opened up, the previous one closes, but i think the best idea is to have some kind of task makager for every multitasker in the world.

Yeah I dislike VM, but VM appears to be very YMMV. Many users at TreoCentral use VM + EAS with no problems. Me on the other hand I have problems with it so I use Chatteremail.

There's also Sprint Mobile Email, which is free and uses a "push" email cheat. Their server sends your phone a sms when you get a new email, telling it to pull your email. So you get sudo push without having to even be connected to vision.

VM has html display option for all IMAP and POP accounts, even as far back as 3.5.4. EAS is the kicker though I think. Might need chatteremail for that, but I can't really say as I don't use my EAS anymore unless I'm doing a restore of my contacts.

Yeah, I know there are alternatives, but of all the crap wrong with the WM phones, Outlook is pretty damn bulletproof when it comes to corp mail (Exchange). Having to install another program might fix one thing and break something else. I really like to keep it simple (reliable).

Like always, it's a tradeoff depending on what you want.

Outlook > VM. But Palm has multiple free IM clients that work better than WM's paid IM clients...

Palm has native threaded sms (portable to WM I know, but you get the point). I can go back and forth about which is better at what all day.

People having issues from actually having a used a product is totally valid, compared to regurgitating stuff they read online. I haven't had any instability at all so far with Chatteremail. But that's why I have NVBackup just incase.