5 ms·

It's worth noting that PC manufacturers had a variety of 'palmtops' and 'subnotebooks' based on low-power RISC chips & Windows CE, going back to the 1990s. IMO

by flomo 14y ago

It's worth noting that PC manufacturers had a variety of 'palmtops' and 'subnotebooks' based on low-power RISC chips & Windows CE, going back to the 1990s. IMO, this segment was largely a casualty of Microsoft's disinterest in web browser development. If they had something approaching a working browser, these devices might have found their niche. MS also lost interest in CE, which should have been the place to define 'industry standards' for 'managing the power architecture'. When Windows CE was released, it inspired a lot of talk about "Only the paranoid survive" and "MS doesn't want someone to do to them what they did to IBM". Somewhere along the way that was all forgotten.

AmVess 14y ago
The segment was a casualty of the fact that very different elements of design were forced to co-exist in a space where nothing worked in a reasonable, enjoyable or productive manner. Desktop UI on a tiny device? They were always impossible to use and had vastly more tradeoffs than bonuses in actual use. A functional web browser was the last item on a very long list of shortcomings these devices had.
- cma 14y ago
  That makes it sound worse than it was: it wasn't a desktop is with e.g. floating windows. It did have trappings of windows 95 that didn't belong: start menu, task bar, systray But, apps were full screen. The biggest impediment was internet explorer couldn't render standard webpages that the desktop version could. That and resistive touch sucked.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    I had one. It was a fun toy. Did about as much as a Palm Pilot. And that's probably why it failed.
- quanticle 14y ago
  Desktop UI on a tiny device? They were always impossible to use and had vastly more tradeoffs than bonuses in actual use. And Microsoft is making exactly the same mistake again with Metro on Windows 8. Only this time, instead of bringing the desktop UI to mobile, they're bringing the mobile UI to the desktop. How many failures is it going to take before Microsoft realizes that different form factors require different UIs?

by flomo 14y ago

AmVess 14y ago

The segment was a casualty of the fact that very different elements of design were forced to co-exist in a space where nothing worked in a reasonable, enjoyable or productive manner. Desktop UI on a tiny device? They were always impossible to use and had vastly more tradeoffs than bonuses in actual use. A functional web browser was the last item on a very long list of shortcomings these devices had.

cma 14y ago
That makes it sound worse than it was: it wasn't a desktop is with e.g. floating windows. It did have trappings of windows 95 that didn't belong: start menu, task bar, systray But, apps were full screen. The biggest impediment was internet explorer couldn't render standard webpages that the desktop version could. That and resistive touch sucked.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  I had one. It was a fun toy. Did about as much as a Palm Pilot. And that's probably why it failed.
quanticle 14y ago
Desktop UI on a tiny device? They were always impossible to use and had vastly more tradeoffs than bonuses in actual use. And Microsoft is making exactly the same mistake again with Metro on Windows 8. Only this time, instead of bringing the desktop UI to mobile, they're bringing the mobile UI to the desktop. How many failures is it going to take before Microsoft realizes that different form factors require different UIs?