Pocket PC Web Searches

As Pocket PCs gain in popularity, many people are starting to use them as a means to stay in touch while on the road. An increasing variety of modems (wired and wireless) make our favorite "pocket" computer a road warrior's champion. Even browsing the Web can be done without so much as booting up the ol' laptop. But how satisfying is it to surf the Web on a Pocket PC? I spend a lot of time looking for things on the Web, so I decided to test how some of the popular search engines perform on my iPAQ Pocket PC.

Criteria for the comparison

The idea of being able to pop open a browser at any time was certainly appealing. However, there are some important restrictions associated with wireless computing. Wireless IP (CDPD) service, advertised as "national," really means that you get reception in major cities, with connection speeds of 19,200 bps. That's better than the days of 2400 band modems, but if the 56K dialup on your desktop PC tries your patience, you may want to wait a bit before you go for wireless IP on your Pocket PC. 128K service is coming, but it's not widely available yet. At any rate, because of current connection speeds, download time became an important criterion for my search engine comparison.

Another consideration is screen presentation. You can set Pocket Explorer to "Fit to Screen." This does a creditable job of presenting a full-size Web page on our little 240x320 screen, but it can also make portions of the page, especially graphics, much too small to read. I tried each search engine with Fit to Screen turned on and then turned off, just to see how it affected the experience. This is not part of the comparison rating, but I include my recommendation for each site.

More important for comparison purposes is how much stuff the site puts on the screen, and how much of it you have to wade through to get to the actual search form. The screen shots of each site give you a good indication. Pay attention to the vertical scroll bar in the browser ­ it shows not only how far down the page I had to scroll to get to the form, but also (by the size of the slider) how much of the page you see at one time. You'll notice that some of the pages are quite large (very small slider box), while others are almost completely displayed at once (large slider).

This test was conducted on a Compaq iPAQ 3650 equipped with PCMCIA Expansion Pack and a Novatel Merlin CDPD Modem. I used the Verizon Wireless CDPD Service in the Washington, D.C., metro area.

The results

The Search Engine Roundup table below shows the download times for each site, as well as subjective ratings (0 worst, to 100 best) for ease of use and what I call "page elegance," and another subjective rating of how effective the search was (again, 0 to 100). Less quantifiable comments are included in each site's narrative summary, following the table. The two Time-to-Load categories are reported as percentages, using the time of the worst performer to determine zero. A couple examples will help clarify this. AltaVista had the slowest Time to Load Search (45 seconds). It scored 0%, determined as follows: 45/45 = 100%; subtract that from a possible 100% and you get 0%. In the same category, Google had the best time (5 seconds). 5/45 = 11%; subtract that from 100 and you get 89%.

AltaVista (www.altavista.com)

As one of the first, AltaVista is one of the most popular search sites on the Internet. I've often used it when engaging in desktop search sessions, so it was a natural for inclusion in this roundup. My, how perceptions change when the window gets smaller! AltaVista's strength on the desktop is its wide variety of search offerings, including multimedia searches, product searches, and Find by Category. This very strength becomes somewhat of a hindrance in Pocket Internet Explorer. Altavista's load times were the slowest of the group, and its search form is buried almost halfway down the page. News, Shopping, and Real Estate links at the bottom of the page are nice features if you can wait for them to load. View with Fit to Screen ON.