Windows CE’s success can be in part attributed to the brand recognition of the Microsoft name. Now, "HPC" (Handheld Personal Computer, the catch-phrase for Windows CE-based devices) has become almost as synonymous with "PDA" as "Windows" has with "PC", yet there are probably as many differing machines running Windows CE as there are handheld machines running other operating systems. This doesn’t mean the company has, or will ever have, the largest market share but it does mean that WinCE will get the lion’s share of media and non-media attention, and may well leverage out better PDA operating systems (such as Epoc), as happened on the desktop. ![]() The PDA market was "legitimized" by Microsoft’s entry, and I knew as soon as I saw WinCE come out that it would eventually come to dominate the handheld computer market. Still, Microsoft has always been able to see markets with potential, and with the success of the Psion, and the phenomenal popularity of the Pilot, it was inevitable that Microsoft would keep working at a PDA until they succeeded in having a competitive product.Īnd they’re still working at it. ![]() The first attempt was known as Winpad, and was pretty much stillborn. Windows CE (or WinCE, as the sometimes-appropriate nickname) is not Microsoft’s first attempt into the handheld computer market. Also, the greater cpu power means that future game applications will have more enhanced sound than the earlier machines. While the original PalmPilots were restricted to 4 grayscale levels, the new ones are capable of 16. The Dragonball-EZ is faster than its predecessor, and this makes possible certain enhancements. It involves the new Dragonball processor in the Palm IIIx and V. With that settled, there’s a bit more information I need to share about the new PalmPilots. "Overall, we are very happy both with CodeWarrior 5.1 itself, and with Metrowerks support."Ĭonsidering that Metrowerks makes a lot of compilers for other operating systems and platforms, I found it pleasant to see them respond so quickly and thoroughly to Palm Creation’s dissatisfaction. Here is a quote from Palm Creations on their current opinion of the Metrowerks product: A company’s reputation can be won or lost based on the competence and civility of its tech support people. Initially Palm Creations reported very negative results with Metrowerks tech support apparently somebody over there started kicking butt and taking names. Their assignment of bitfields was implementation dependent, and they did not allow for this in their code. The final and most damning problem Palm Creations faced, was that, even with the upgrade, they could not run the code Codewarrior generated! This turned out to be Palm Creation’s fault not Metrowerks. I have to say that Metrowerks bent over backwards, including examining Palm Creation’s code, to make things right by them. Palm Creations developers also reported that they could only set breakpoints in the current source file with the upgrade Metrowerks showed them how to set breakpoints in multiple files. Again, it appears the upgrade has taken care of this as well. ![]() I only mention them so that if the developers of this app are reading this review, they’ll know the UI I’m suggesting they do (or something similar to it that ends up with the same benefit).Another complaint was the slow speed of the debugger. Those apps aren’t screen markup apps, so they aren’t alternatives to this app. For example, the way text boxes in desktop apps like Word or online apps like FloorPlanner let you do. I will update this to 5 stars if the seller lets users choose the sizes of the text boxes, and let text wrap within it. Since I don't know ahead of time which screen pics will only need short notes that won’t need editing, I probably won’t use the app. For example, the main use I have for an app like this is to mark up screen shots with notes and specs for web developers, and I’d only be able to use this app about 1/4 of the time for that since 3/4 of the time I have to write detailed notes that I edit to make more clear. ![]() This limits the range of things the app can be used for. Besides the tedium of having to pay attention to when a line return is needed throughout your writing process and doing the returns, the much bigger issue is it makes it so you basically can’t edit your text, unless you want to go back and delete all of the line returns and re-enter all the line returns to accomodate the edited text. To get it to move to a second line, you have to do a line return each time. The text boxes always start as a single line/row, and the text will keep going endlessly on the same line right off of the screen. The main weakness of the app is that you can’t set the size of a text box and then have the text wrap within the box.
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