>The CE has a much bigger screen, partly because its character recognition/keyboard segment at the bottom is actually part of the screen rather than a separate panel and you can hide it for more screen real estate.

Or just use Transcriber and use the whole screen as the CR area, with the app still fully visible.

>I've been looking at development tools myself. PalmOS still wins hands down for rapid app development;

Huh? Unless one considers C++ to be a RAD dev environment, I can't see how writing PPC apps in VB can be less rapid than coding Palm apps in CodeWarrior.

> there are MS tools for CE but they require a horribly familiar "service pack" sort of preparation, updating and re-registering OS files. IMHO it feels like another round of dll Hell.

Hmm, we may be looking at different dev environments. With the current 3.0 version of the embedded tools, it's relatively painless to create in install package. Are you evaluating the CE toolkit for VS, or the current, dedicated embedded toolkit?

>Results so far: if I were spending my own money on 8 December 2000, I'd definitely buy a Handspring. Either a Platinum or a Visor.

I was a Palm user since the first version. I eventually found it to be limiting in comparison to the CE/PPC. They're great if one just needs an electronic organizer, and if size and battery life are overriding concerns. For my use, the more rich feature set of the PPC is more suitable. Depends on what you're looking for, I suppose.

> If I were buying a CE, it would be a Compaq iPAQ. However, people who want a CE with wireless should consider that the Compaq comes with no proper "slots", you need to add an expansion pack which turns the slinky little iPAQ into a big heavy thing.

The lack of slots is what kept me away from an iPaq. I wanted a CF slot to store MP3s, maps for Pocket Streets, and Audible.com files. Since I use it to listen to something to and from work on a lot of days, I'd be using something that's as big as my current Casio, so why not just buy the Casio?

> Unlike the Handspring.

If one is concerned about size, a PPC isn't what you want anyway.

Disclaimer: no, Microsoft didn't buy my PPC. I coughed up the US$600 on my own. :-)