[plug] Agenda VR3

[Christian]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 03:46:04PM +0800, Simon Scott wrote:
 
> 	hahaha, actually people, Ive read the review on Slashdot and its NOT
> that bad. Its a developers unit. A lot of the software doesnt work, true,
> 	After playing with it for a few hours, the HWR still sucks but I
> managed to input a name and phonenumber with it with only a few errors.
> Still not great, but vaguely acceptable as a massively alpha release. 

A "massively alpha release"???  You paid $600 to do alpha testing for
them?  And, btw, it's not meant to be an alpha or beta or "developers
unit" release.  They're actually selling this lemon!

> 	I really think that the review on slashdot was written by a 14 yr
> old Microsoft junkie.... some of the points he makes are absolutely
> ridiculous, ranging from 'the software doesnt work!' (well, duh, wait for
> the public release) to 'it slows down heaps with 6 apps open!'....AFAIK,
> this is one of the first palm-tops with multitasking, so which is better,
> slowing to a grind after 6 apps or 1 app at a time?

Have you used a Palm handheld?  You don't *need* multitasking!  You can
be doing something in one app, change to another and then change back to
the previous app and be back in exactly the same place you were before.
The change takes (on my IIIc which is supposedly not the fastest Palm)
on the order of 0.5 seconds.  Based on the review of the VR3, it takes
longer to than this to change between apps that are already open!  So,
the answer to your question is obvious: 1 app at a time is better and,
on a Palm, all you need.

> 	The hardware specs are impressive: 66Mhz, 16M flash, 8M RAM, 8M ROM
> etc..... for the price its a nice, powerful (enough) unit.

This is much more powerful than a Palms but the Palms still run faster!
What matters is not raw specs but the actual running speed and
efficiency of the OS and applications.  This is why I wonder about
people who want to put Linux onto a handheld as anything more than a
cool hack.  Why not use an operating system that has been designed from
the ground up to work on this sort of hardware?  Handhelds are not meant
to be tiny PCs.  Palm knows this which is why they've been so
successful.


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