Palm vs Pocket PC 2003

Palm vs. Pocket PC 2003, and a few words about palm-like dedicated chess computers as well   

01/25/04

Ok, so you've decided that you are going to purchase a pocket device to play chess. Now comes the hard part, deciding which unit to purchase. Since I am fortunate enough to have both types of these devices, I feel like I can give you the pros and cons of each.

Aside from chess, other factors such as cost and usability are probably going to be your most important concerns. I will touch upon these topics, but I will also discuss some other important things as well. For instance, many people (including myself) do use their PDAs for other things. As such, factors like application availability, ease of use, and compatibility with MS Office may be important.

In terms of chess applications, both the PocketPC and Palm have some decent offerings. For instance, Chess Genius is available for both platforms. Chess Tiger is available for the Palm. And of course, there are Pocket Fritz, Pocket Grandmaster, and Pocket Chess Partner, which are available only for the Pocket PC. There are other chess playing programs available for both platforms as well, and these are suitable for players that are not quite as strong.

In terms of database offerings, the Pocket PC has CE board, while the Palm has Chesspad. Both of these tools are quite useful for studying and annotating games.

In terms of FICS/ICC access, Palm has a client called Chess Client for Palm OS, while the Pocket PC has Olmichess (which I have not used yet).

So the playing field is almost level when it comes to the types of chess software available for both platforms, however, there are more Pocket PC chess programs than Palm chess programs. Furthermore, there have been relatively few new chess programs released for the Palm OS since this original article was written.

Note that there are also a couple of PDA-like dedicated chess computers on the market. Should you buy one of these? The short answer is "No". A general purpose device like the Palm or the Pocket PC has a great deal more flexibility, and a better display. The only possible advantage that some of the dedicated units have is price. But remember that you get what you pay for.

Ok, without further ado, here is a qualitative comparison of the various alternatives. 

Palm

Palm and Sony are now the two most popular producers of Palm OS based handhelds. So generally speaking, there are a wide number of units with varying features to chose among, if you want a Palm-based unit. In the year since I wrote my original comparison article, the number of models running the Palm OS has literally exploded.

Note that there are still two different families of Palm-OS units on the market. For instance, many of the Sony Clies and the Palm Zire use the older, slower Motorola dragonball processors with OS 4.X, while the Palm Tungsten models use the newer, faster, TI OMAP and Intel XScale processor with OS 5.X.  The latter is the superior OS for chess, since it does not have the overly restrictive memory limitations that the OS 4 had. The problem is that there is currently only one engine that has been optimized for OS 5, and that is Chess Genius (probably the strongest engine for Palm as of this writing).

Pros

• The Palm OS is very easy to use.
• Character recognition works fairly well - you need to learn a special alphabet, but it is fairly easy to pick up.
• Good battery life for the slower monochrome, dragonball base units. Battery life for faster color models with the TI or Xscale processor are about the same as the Pocket PC (note: Palm has a comparative analysis of battery life available, but this is hardly an unbiased report). 
• There are some units that are amazingly small.
• Some Palms include software to read and edit Excel, Word and Powerpoint documents, but not all units do.
• Some Palm based units are cheaper than Pocket PCs are.

Cons

• OS 4 based Palms are much less powerful than OS 5 units (a factor if engine strength is a concern)

Pocket PC

Pocket PCs run Microsoft Windows CE. Manufacturers include HP-Compaq, Fujitsu, Acer, Casio and Toshiba. And while the Pocket PCs are good for chess, they are a bit more cumbersome to use than their Palm OS brethren. With Windows Mobile 2003, there have been a number of enhancements made to the Pocket PC OS which have enhanced stability, and improved process/program management.

The Pocket PC is for power users and strong players. Buy one of these, install Pocket Fritz, and let the beatings begin ;-). Other chess playing programs for this platform include Chess Genius, Pocket Grandmaster, and Pocket Chess Partner And as for a chess database application, CEBoard cannot be beat.

Pros

• There are reduced versions of Word, Excel, and Outlook included with these units (but not on the Casio BE-300).
• More processor power (and a more powerful OS) means that more complex applications can be written for this platform.
• It is easier to port programs written with Microsoft development tools to the Pocket PC than it is to the Palm. So you may eventually see more applications for the Pocket PC.
• This is a gamer's machine, and the development community for PocketPCs really seems to be hopping right now.
• You have your choice of several different character and writing recognition modes. All work surprisingly well.
• Battery life has improved, especially for units with the new Intel PXA255 processor.
• Pocket PCs usually come with a fairly large amount of RAM standard, which is a factor for chess engines, which tend to be memory hungry, not matter what platform they run on.
• There are more chess programs available for the Pocket PC.

Cons

• Many functions are needlessly complex on this unit. I think it has a higher learning curve then the Palm.
• Pocket Powerpoint is not included in PocketPCs, only with HPCs.
• Applications tend to be larger and require more memory.

Dedicated PDA-like Chess Computers 

I first need to make a disclaimer here. I no longer have any dedicated chess computers. However, I don't need to own any of them to make the following points. First, a dedicated computer is capable of doing one thing, and that is playing chess. One might argue that since it is a specialist, that it might do its job better than a general purpose computer (like a PDA). Unfortunately, this simply is not true. The PDA programs are more feature rich, and there is a tremendous variety of software (including chess) available for them. If you don't like a particular program, you can try another one.

As an example of this flexibility, almost all the PDA programs allow very easy export and import of chess data with a desktop machine (via PGN). Only the most expensive dedicated units allow this capability.

Pros

• Possibly the cheapest solution, but note that you can find a used palm on e-bay for $20.
• Maybe a collector's item some day.

Cons

• You are locked into using one chess engine.
• Computer is only good for one purpose, and that is to play chess.
• Display quality inferior to PDAs.

Recommended Units

If you are shopping for a Palm OS unit, then I would recommend buying either a Palm or Treo. The manufacturer of the Treo used to be called Handspring, which was recently purchased by Palm. I would not touch a Sony product with a ten foot pole, since their reliability and quality control is terrible. If you are shopping for a Pocket PC, then I would recommend one of the newer IPAQs (I have a 2215). The engineering on the 2215 is very good (it really combines some of the best elements of the HPs and Compaqs). Furthermore, there are quite a few accessories available for the IPAQs. At this point, I would recommend that you stay away from Toshiba, due to their poor customer service.

Relative Performance 

I had originally intended to give some comparative data that would allow an apples to apples comparison of Palm vs Pocket PC. However, the data is simply not available on the web. In theory at least, some of the brand-new Palm's with the Intel Xscale processor should have performance which is very close to that of the newer PocketPC's, assuming identical chess engines. The fly in the ointment is that this is a brand new processor for the Palm, and most of the current body of existing software for the Palm (chess programs included) are written for the older processors. Thus, most of the software will run in an emulation mode. While this mode typically still provides better performance than the older processors, it is very inefficient when compared to native code running on one of the PocketPCs.

Right now, it looks like Richard Lang's ChessGenius is the only cross=platform program available. It would be really interesting to see a NPS comparison between Windows Mobile 2003 and Palm OS 5.

Summary

With the introduction of Windows Mobile 2003, Microsoft is ahead of Palm, at least in terms of the number of chess programs available. But for those that just want a simple, cheap organizer-like device and are not concerned about playing strength,  one of the cheaper Palms, with Chess Genius or Chess Tiger running on it would be a good choice. For those with a bit more money, I think the PocketPC makes a better choice, although it still has a steeper learning curve than the Palm.

Other Resources

Brian Whitby's site - Brian has screenshots and links to a number of Palm and Pocket PC chess programs

Chess Genius - Chessgenius is available for both the Palm and PocketPC platforms

Chessbase - The makers of Pocket Fritz

Chess Tiger - This famous PC program is available for the Palm

Pocket Grandmaster - PGM is available for PocketPC devices and smart phones

Lokasoft - Makers of Chess Partner for the PocketPC

Review of Pocket Chess Partner by Jim Van Dorp

Reviews of Palm chess programs on this site

Reviews of PocketPC chess programs on this site

Tom's Hardware Review of Palm and PocketPC devices - Tom Pabst's very popular hardware site

PocketPC thoughts - An article on the relative speed increase between Windows Mobile 2003, and Pocket PC 2000