Welcome to the first installment of "Under the Hood," a continuing series of articles that will explore Windows Powered hardware and software in more detail. Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" features helped inspire this column. In them, Paul weaves a story about a person or place. But he takes his time with the story and goes into much greater detail. The ending usually surprises me, and I always learn something new about the person or topic.
The "Rest of the Story" is a good analogy for Under the Hood. Throughout the pages of Pocket PC magazine you find reviews of Windows Powered devices and software, as well as articles about how to use each
in a creative or productive way. In this column, I will explorer these devices and software in more detail. You'll end up learning something new and important about the subject.
What exactly is a "Pocket PC?"
This first column starts with what seems to be a fairly simple question. Exactly what is this device called a Pocket PC? The physical Pocket PC is created by "Original Equipment Manufacturers" (or OEMs). They include Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Casio, Symbol and Palmax. The OEMs are responsible for the distinctive looks of the different devices, the accessories that come with the Pocket PC, and any add-on software included with the device, (other than the Windows CE 3.0 operating system and built-in Microsoft applications).
There are two important hardware differences between Pocket PCs and desktop PCs. First, a Pocket PC is not limited to a set design using a limited number of components. This flexibility enables manufacturers to use different display types or even no displays, different processors, and different types of input such as keyboards, touch screens and scanners, all of which work with the same operating system. Second, the
operating system and built-in applications are stored in Read Only Memory (ROM) chips rather hard drives. ROM is much faster than a hard drive, which means that you can press the On button and go directly to your applications without the slow boot-up process associated with desktop PCs. It's also permanent, which means you don't have to install (or re-install) the operating system or built-in applications.
The Windows CE operating system provides the OEMs with a lot of flexibility in the components they can use to build a device. For example, Windows CE supports more processor types than other Microsoft
operating systems, so an OEM could chose one from a list of more than a
half-dozen processors. Several different storage types are supported, allowing Casio to create a Pocket PC that uses MultiMedia Cards for storage, while HP and Casio have Pocket PCs with CompactFlash slots. Compaq has Expansion Sleeves that add CF or PC Card slots, and Palmax has a monochrome-screen Pocket PC with a full PC Card slot. (Palmax not yet available in the U.S.) This flexibility enables other innovations, including Sym-bol's built-in barcode scanner and wireless networking capability.
Variety comes at a price
It's great to have a number of OEMs creating different Pocket PCs, but variety comes at a price. Each brand of Pocket PC uses a non-standard serial port, which prevents Pocket PC owners from using standard cables to connect to a desktop PC and from sharing serial peripherals between
device brands. Further, it means that some peripheral manufactures have to create different versions of their product for each Pocket PC. For example, Targus markets the Stowaway portable keyboard for the HP Jornada 540 series Pocket PC. They are working on separate products for the Casio and Compaq Pocket PCs. If OEMs would standardize the serial port, manufacturers could create one version of their peripheral for all Pocket PCs. This would encourage the development of peripherals and bring down their price.
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