New Aero gives Palm Pilot a run for its money

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jul 19, 1999 by Peter Lewis

If Microsoft is to sustain its dominance of the software industry in the 21st century, it must spread its Windows software far beyond desktop and portable computers and into our television sets, our automobiles, our telephones and even into our pockets. But not even Captain Kangaroo could fit the forthcoming Windows 2000, with 50 million lines of computer code, into his pocket.

So, to make good on its "Windows everywhere" strategy, Microsoft is developing several new versions of its flagship operating system, including a lightweight version called Windows CE.

Microsoft has been refining Windows CE to run an array of small, inexpensive devices, including video game consoles, Web-TV systems, cable set-top boxes, digital video recorders, desktop or wall telephones with video displays, wireless phones and pagers, dashboard computers for automobiles, cash registers, kiosks and automated teller machines. Microsoft has even toyed with placing Windows CE in refrigerators and other kitchen appliances.

Some of the recent improvements in Windows CE are on display in the Compaq Aero 2100 pocket computer.

The Aero 2100 is an advanced clone of 3Com's popular Palm Pilot, a small, lightweight device that stores personal information and performs simple processing tasks. More than 4 million Palm Pilots have been sold in recent years. The Aero 2100 has the same list price, $449, as the new Palm V. Like the Palms, the Aero is intended to fit in a pocket or purse and complement, not replace, the user's desktop or portable PC.

Until recently, the operating system was the biggest difference between the Palm Pilot and its palm-size PC imitators, including devices from Casio, Everex, Philips, Uniden, Hewlett-Packard and other companies, plus Compaq. The 3Com Palms use the Palm OS; the other PPCs use Windows CE.

But with the Compaq Aero the imitators are starting to differentiate themselves from the market-leading Palm Pilots and, for the first time, to offer themselves as compelling alternatives.

They are still more expensive than all but the top-of-the-line Palm V and VII models from 3Com. They are still a bit more complicated to learn and operate. They are a bit bulkier. They still lack the vast libraries of third-party programs available for the Pilots. And they are still a bit more sluggish. But the Aero has narrowed the gaps considerably, and added features that the Palm Pilots would do well to emulate.

The most obvious difference is the Aero 2100's 256-color display screen. The screen is 2.4 inches wide and 3.2 inches high, slightly larger than the monochrome screen of the Palm organizers. 3Com has improved the readability of the Palm Pilots' notoriously dim screens, but the screens cannot compare with the Aero's bright, active-matrix color display. On its brightest, battery-sucking setting, the Aero's screen is legible even in direct sunlight.

Color is nice, but it is unclear how important it is for a pocket organizer. Other than being able to display a game of Solitaire in color, the added hues are mainly useful if one wants to use the Aero's Picture Viewer utility to show off digital pictures of the kids, for example. Someday, perhaps, it will be useful for watching movies and music videos, but that day is not near.

Microsoft has advanced display technologies in the works that promise to greatly increase the already decent screen resolution on future Palm-size PCs. Prototypes I've seen make text so sharp and clear that the idea of using the device as an electronic book suddenly makes sense. One can imagine downloading newspaper and magazine articles to the device through a desktop PC.

But reading longer works like Moby Dick or The Road Ahead on the device still seems like a bit of a stretch.

Those paper-quality screens are in the future. Today, I'm more likely to listen to Moby Dick on the Aero than to try to read it on screen. One of the most intriguing advantages the Compaq has over the Palm Pilot is its ability to act as a portable audio device. It has an adequate built-in speaker, and comes with an external ear-bud speaker and microphone.

At the touch of a button the Aero can function as a digital voice recorder. Again, this is primarily useful for smaller tasks, like reminders on what to get at the grocery store or where the car is parked in the airport lot. For recording long speeches, an old- fashioned analogue cassette recorder is probably more efficient. Thirty minutes of audio recording consumes one megabyte of the Aero's precious memory (8 MB to 16 MB, depending on the model). A 24 MB memory-expansion module is available as an option for $129. Even more storage space, up to 100 MB, can be created by adding a Compact Flash PC card to the Aero's built-in card slot. A 40 MB card costs $166. There is also a 56 K modem card for $159.

Lately, I've been enamored of the Aero's close working relationship with a company called Audible, which sells audio recordings of popular books, newspapers and magazines that can be downloaded over the Internet (www.audible.com). The user has to download and install in the Aero a Windows CE helper application, called Audible Manager, and it took a couple of tries to get it installed correctly. But once that hurdle was crossed, I was able to buy audio recordings of current books and to subscribe to a daily, audio summary of articles in The New York Times and other publications.