Better than Pocket Office?

Steve · 11-11-2002, 10:09 AM

Better than Pocket Office? One thing we've learned here at Brighthand is that nothing beats seeing for yourself. That's why we continue to do our own hands-on testing before passing judgment on any product.

Take the word processing and spreadsheet software that comes with your typical handheld computer, for instance. Most people assume that Pocket Word and Pocket Excel on a Pocket PC handles Microsoft Word and Excel documents better than a third-party application, such as DataViz's Documents To Go, on a Palm Powered handheld. After all, Microsoft makes both products so naturally it should be more consistent, and more compatible. But in a recent hands-on study conducted by Brighthand, we found that a Palm handheld with Documents To Go does a significantly better job of handling Word and Excel documents than does a Pocket PC using Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. Surprised? So were we.

How we tested

For our testing, we created two documents (see images below) using Office 2000: a Word document with a variety of different features, including headers, footers, footnotes, tables, and imbedded graphics, and an Excel document, with features such as formulas, imbedded graphics and charts. We synchronized these documents to a Palm Tungsten T handheld, which comes bundled with DataViz Documents To Go Professional Edition (which is comprised of Word To Go and Sheet To Go), and a Compaq iPAQ 3970 Pocket PC, which includes Pocket Word and Pocket Excel, and observed how the documents appeared on each handheld. Next, we made a minor change to the documents and synchronized them back to the desktop PC.

Before we go any further, we should state that neither Documents To Go nor Pocket Office perfectly emulates the desktop experience of Microsoft Office. For one thing, neither product supports all of the features of Word and Excel. For example, Documents To Go does not include Spell Checking or Word Count in Word To Go, while Pocket Word does not support Tables or Footnotes. However, after an extensive features comparison of Word To Go with Pocket Word, we found that Word To Go supports more of the commonly used Word features than does Pocket Word. We also compared Sheet To Go with Pocket Excel and found them to be relatively equal in their support of standard Excel functions.

But the most significant portion of our testing involved observing what happens when a change is introduced to a document and it is uploaded back to a desktop computer. This is a commonplace event that is germane to using handheld computers in a corporate environment. For example, you are on the road and receive a Word document attached to an email for your review. You modify a sentence in the document and email it back. Are you sure that's all that's changed? The same can be said about an Excel spreadsheet where you alter the value in a single cell. Will it be properly reflected in the original document? That's exactly what we were looking to determine.

Results of our testing

Our testing revealed that Documents To Go does a significantly better job of retaining the formatting of the original documents than does Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. For example, after adding a single line of text to a Word document using Pocket Word and uploading it back to the desktop PC, it lost the header, footer, footnote, images (both .jpg and .bmp), line drawing, superscript, subscript, and colored text background (see picture, below left). It also changed all text fonts to Tahoma and modified the table to a series of tabbed text fields. Meanwhile, Documents To Go retained all formatting (see picture, below right).

The results were similar with Documents To Go and Pocket Excel. After changing the value in a single cell, Pocket Excel lost the imbedded image and the chart (see picture, below left), while Documents To Go retained all formatting and the changed value was reflected in the chart (see picture, below right).

Summary

Handheld computers are no longer simply electronic replacements for paper-based calendars and address books. For many handheld users, especially those in the corporate arena, access to Microsoft Office documents is just as important. To address this, handheld makers have begun to include software that enables users to download, view, and even edit standard Office documents. For example, Microsoft includes its Pocket Office suite, which includes Pocket Word and Pocket Excel, in its Pocket PC platform, while Palm includes a third-party application, DataViz's Documents To Go, along with its handhelds.

While neither product perfectly emulates the desktop experience of Microsoft Office, our testing revealed that Documents To Go running on a Palm handheld supports more features and does a better job at maintaining the integrity and accuracy of an Office document than does Pocket Word or Pocket Excel running on a Pocket PC. Also, Documents To Go includes Slideshow To Go, which supports Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, something Microsoft does not offer in its Pocket Office suite. Finally, Pocket PC does not support computers running the Mac OS, while Palm and Documents To Go does.

slot_machine · 11-11-2002, 10:54 AM

LOL!! How embarrassing. I hope Palm, PalmSource and DataViz make hay with this before Microsoft fixes the problems.

imported_argent · 11-11-2002, 11:55 AM

The problems with syncing data back from Pocket Word to the desktop have been well known for the past two years. Pocket Excel is pretty good, but Pocket Word is a toy if you really need to work with Word documents on your Pocket PC.

Jeff Kirvin had an article about the shortcomings of Pocket Word back in November 2000, and there's been general gritching about the unnecessary "simplification" of Pocket Word ever since.

Luckily there's finally a new Pocket PC word processor coming down the pipe. I don't recall the name but there was an article on it here a few weeks ago... let's see...

oh yes, Textmaker.

I predict that we'll start seeing this bundled with at least some manufacturers devices next year.

Ed Hardy · 11-11-2002, 01:07 PM

At the last Mobius, some people complained to the Microsoft people about the limitations in Pocket Word. I was very surprised that the response was, basically, if you aren't happy with Pocket Word, buy one of the the third party word processors available. Essentially, they told us Pocket Word does what most people need and anyone who wants more should look elsewhere.

I was very surprised, as that has never been Microsoft's attitude about anything. Can you imagine hearing Bill Gates saying, "Windows meets most people's needs. If you want something more advanced, check out Linux." I find this very interesting because this has long been Palm's/PalmSource's attitude about its built-in applications and one of the things its critics like to complain about.

imported_argent · 11-11-2002, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ed
I was very surprised, as that has never been Microsoft's attitude about anything. Can you imagine hearing Bill Gates saying, "Windows meets most people's needs. If you want something more advanced, check out Linux." I find this very interesting because this has long been Palm's/PalmSource's attitude about its built-in applications and one of the things its critics like to complain about.

I think some time in 1999 Microsoft had a look at the sales figures and decided that they weren't really sure *what* palm was doing that kept giving them a black eye in the market, and decided to do everything that Palm was doing, without trying to second-guess them.

Jeff's "Open Letter" referenced above echoes a lot of the gripes some of us have with the Pocket PC. It's really a much better "pocket PC" than it is a Palm on steroids, and we'd much rather Microsoft spent their efforts on making it the best pocket PC they could, instead of trying to make it into a better Palm. Especially now that Palm's making that "better palm"... oh, the Tungsten is a little disappointing, but the product line is young yet. It'll get better and cheaper units before long.

For almost two years after release the Pocket PC market share stayed at or lower than the peak market share of the Palmsized PC. It only jumped back up when prices dropped, first when HP unloaded their leftover Jornada 540s, and then again when the price of the newer Pocket PCs finally dropped into the top end of Palm's territory.

So I don't think there was anything wrong with the Palmsized PC that Microsoft really needed to fix. Its problem was that it simply required far too much CPU and RAM for the time, which made it too expensive, and... until it got to 100+ MHz CPUs... too slow. It was Moore's Law, not the Pocket PC makeover, that pulled their sales out of the doldrums. Oh, sure, the improved apps are helping... but the improved apps are only possible because of the improved hardware, and could have been shipped with an updated Palmsized PC just as easily.

I wish they'd catch on, and put back some of the Palmsized PC and Handheld PC functionality, like a more complete Pocket Word and little details like the "close" button and a multi-level Start menu. Oh, and a real file requester for apps like Pocket Word that doesn't ape Palm's categories so blindly... that "feature" really annoys me.

Getting back to Pocket Word, back in 2000 they were saying the same thing. They were providing enough power for most people, and if you needed more get a third party product. The problem was that Pocket Word was close enough to "good enough" that there's not been a lot of incentive for third parties to get into the act... so people who need more than a "word viewer" are stuck.

What they should have done, I think was put a real "word viewer" application in the Pocket PC... one that handled tables and nested lists properly... and a Notepad clone that let you edit and sync plain text files. That would still satisfy 80% of the users without discouraging third parties from producing a product that would support the power users.

Which product, despite their argument that people should use third-party tools, is still only "almost there".

imported_CSimpson · 11-11-2002, 03:00 PM

Dataviz has really taken their products a long way over the last year. I have heard that spellcheck/thesarus is being beta tested, and should be in the next release. Their Inbox To Go program looks promising-- receive emails with real Word or Excel files attached, view/edit them with DTG on your Palm, then email them t others whoreceive a real Word or Excel file in return. However, I don't like their current structuring where you license an account for a year at a time and have the conversions done on their servers and forwarded to your device on demand.
As a long-time ThinkDb user, I was also happy to see them buy this product and give the installer a much-needed overhaul.

imported_felixdd · 11-11-2002, 05:08 PM

I thought it was already widely known that pocket word/excel does a poor job and DataViz did a better job. Oh well -- in any case that isn't the point.

For PPC (and my HPC) the two essential programs are SpreadCE and TextMaker. SpreadCE retains most of Excel's formatting (including charts) AND you can create your own charts in it. As for TextMaker -- it's pretty famous right now so I don't think I need to talk too much about that.

It's sad though, I've been downloading their beta releases since day 1 (I think at least a year ago) and was definitely going to buy -- but the $60 price tag seemed kinda steep.

Lucan · 11-11-2002, 07:02 PM

I can't believe you didn't show shots of the 2 documents on the handhelds. Bummer!

Lucan

jmpage2 · 11-12-2002, 01:39 AM

The office capabilities on the Palm device with Docs2go are great. As a long time PPC user I was as surprised as anyone to see how much better docs2go was compared to the "Microsoft solution".

Another thing worth pointing out is that Docs2go's use of zooming allows you to really use the maximum resolution of the new hi-res palm screens. I can view a spreadsheet at a much higher resolution on the Palm then I ever could on the PPC.

The Palm might not be a great mp3 player or gameboy substitute but it does the major things right... PIM is excellent, email and office apps are good too.

SoftMaker · 11-12-2002, 03:01 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by felixdd
For PPC (and my HPC) the two essential programs are SpreadCE and TextMaker. SpreadCE retains most of Excel's formatting (including charts) AND you can create your own charts in it. As for TextMaker -- it's pretty famous right now so I don't think I need to talk too much about that.

It's sad though, I've been downloading their beta releases since day 1 (I think at least a year ago) and was definitely going to buy -- but the $60 price tag seemed kinda steep.

Time warp....?

Beta 1 for Pocket PCs was released on September 30, 2002 which was six weeks ago. Beta 3 will be released today, and the final release is set for December 2002.

Also, the price is $49.95, not $60.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH