By definition, PDAs are designed to be mobile extensions of your desktop. That means you should be able to carry not only your appointments and contacts but your vital documents too. Which platform fares better with your spreadsheets and virtual paperwork?
On the surface, Pocket PC would appear to have the edge when it comes to Microsoft Office compatibility. After all, Microsoft built the Windows Mobile OS and outfitted it with Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. But these apps are mere wisps of their desktop counterparts, and files lose their formatting when copied between PDA and PC. In addition, you have to drag a file into the Sync folder yourself for it to automatically update every time you work on your PC.
While the Palm OS offers no out-of-box support for Office files, many of the latest models, such as the Tungsten E, come bundled with a compelling third-party solution. DataViz's Documents To Go enables you to view and edit desktop documents on your PDA without converting them first to a PDA-specific format, and the latest version offers native support for Word and Excel. You also can view Word and Excel documents received as e-mail attachments--a major plus for wireless-PDA users. Best of all, Documents To Go provides seamless synchronization between Palm OS and Windows, so any changes are updated automatically, which is the way it should be.
Still, because Palm OS doesn't provide additional support for Office files with all of its models (Documents To Go Standard Edition costs US$29.95 (S$51) as a standalone application), there's no clear winner here.]
On the surface, Pocket PC would appear to have the edge when it comes to Microsoft Office compatibility. After all, Microsoft built the Windows Mobile OS and outfitted it with Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. But these apps are mere wisps of their desktop counterparts, and files lose their formatting when copied between PDA and PC. In addition, you have to drag a file into the Sync folder yourself for it to automatically update every time you work on your PC.
While the Palm OS offers no out-of-box support for Office files, many of the latest models, such as the Tungsten E, come bundled with a compelling third-party solution. DataViz's Documents To Go enables you to view and edit desktop documents on your PDA without converting them first to a PDA-specific format, and the latest version offers native support for Word and Excel. You also can view Word and Excel documents received as e-mail attachments--a major plus for wireless-PDA users. Best of all, Documents To Go provides seamless synchronization between Palm OS and Windows, so any changes are updated automatically, which is the way it should be.
Still, because Palm OS doesn't provide additional support for Office files with all of its models (Documents To Go Standard Edition costs US$29.95 (S$51) as a standalone application), there's no clear winner here.]
