Windows Phone Thoughts: Pathetic!

Last night, I had to set up a Palm T|X for my mom. (She was a happy Pocket PC user, but the hospital she's working at has deployed some Palm-based solution to manage patients, so she doesn't have much of a choice, and would prefer to carry one PDA instead of two.) While I was setting up the Palm, I rapidly saw all the pathetic aspects of PalmOS I forgot having to deal with: 15 categories, proprietary file system, no omnipresent Start menu (or multitasking), primitive SIP, and so on.

However, the Palm blows the Pocket PC away in one very simple scenario: when I finished, my mom pointed out she didn't have an extra sync cable, and would prefer not to carry the cable back and forth. There were two solutions: either buy a new cable, or set up wireless sync. I told her the latter should work, and proceeded to set up WiFi sync, on the latest Palm, in about 30 seconds. It just worked, and was just as fast as the USB sync. I couldn't help but think that the i-mate JasJar or the Palm 700w I own, two of the most advanced handheld computers on the market, can't accomplish this simple task. Meanwhile, a rapidly-outdating device with a rapidly-outdating and possibly-dead operating system has consistently supported network sync for the last 10 or so years and still does perfectly, whereas Microsoft developed a halfhearted implementation that was a pain to set up and then proceeded to ditch it. Sorry, I know we've been down this road before many times, but I can't help but rant after having seen how an utterly primitive handheld trumps the Pocket PC in this simple and useful scenario. Pathetic!