During the summer of 1997, the top dog of the desktop PC crowd was a 300MHz Pentium II processor. Now, five years later, Intel's second-generation PXA250 ("XScale" core) is delivering 200MHz, 300MHz, and 400MHz CPUs to Pocket PC PDAs--literally putting yesterday's desktop PC in your pocket.

On the other side of town, Handspring, the company founded by the original designers of the Palm handheld organizer, has released its Treo line of PDAs. Both the Treo 90, a run-of-the-mill organizer, and the Treo 300 are part of a new PDA genre called "communicators." These two combo phone/organizers run on the Motorola 33MHz DragonBall VZ processor--not much compared to Intel's hyperactive clockwork, although it does double the speed of the original 16MHz Handspring Visor of three years ago.

Calin Pacurarium, head honcho for Handspring's Treo communicators, explains the disparity in processing speed as a difference of philosophy. "If you look at handheld computers and the way they're actually used, we've found that everything can be done, and done well, within the level of technology we're using. [On the other side] what we've seen from the Pocket PC mentality is a continuing effort to bring the speeds and feeds and features of the desktop into the handheld space."

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So is there anything you can do with a Pocket PC handheld that you can't do with a Palm PDA? The extra power that a Pocket PC delivers is due mostly to its OS. Windows, in all of its forms, is noted for its simplified graphical user interface (an excellent concept for a handheld) as well as its bloated code. And nothing beats back bloat better than a fast CPU.

Pocket PCs are also targeting Bluetooth (a high-speed, low-power, microwave wireless link) as their connection to the rest of the world. Bluetooth is a bit more versatile than the typical PDA's proprietary module connector--such as Handspring's Springboard--that passes for connectivity within a competent, but more limited, range of devices. Of course, making Bluetooth work with everything it's able to support (WLANs, LANs, telephones, and perhaps even the universal remote control for your media center) may require you to install drivers, which is also a good reason to have a lot of memory on tap.

Beyond the operating system, a decisive reason to choose a Pocket PC PDA over any other handheld is harder to discern. Palm PDAs have all of the best features of an old-fashioned paper organizer (address book, appointment book, and the like) and generally interface well with Windows. Pocket PCs support additional software like Adobe's Acrobat Reader, AOL Instant Messenger, and other upscale applications that one would associate more with a desktop Windows PC than with an organizer. And there lies the key to knowing which one you should be looking more closely at. The more you need to perform the functions of a desktop computer--without spending the money for a portable computer--the more you should be leaning toward a Pocket PC.

Keep in mind, however, that the price difference between a Pocket PC and a Palm PDA can be tremendous. In fact, while a high-end Palm costs around $400 in most cases, a comparable Pocket PC can easily hit $700. You could buy a Dell Pentium 4 desktop PC with a flat panel display for that price. That's a heavy duty tithe for the privilege of flashing a Windows logo from the palm of your hand.

Do your mobile users need the power of a high-end Pocket PC or would a Palm PDA suffice? TalkBack or send e-mail to us.

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