Although the handheld computer industry seems to lurch from year to year, with vendors and products coming and going, the market has generated enough business to foster continued development of the technology.
Today, the concept of handheld has expanded from the original personal digital assistants, or PDAs, which would fit in the palm of your hand, to miniature notebooks, which are slightly more than a handful but still comfortably small.
The demand for these devices continues despite a history of buggy products because, for truly mobile workers, notebook computers just may not cut it. Users can carry notebooks from one place to another but cannot actually use them while on the move.
Take, for example, the Marine Corps, which has started giving computers to some of its officers in the field. "They've got to be small, and they've got to be light," said Maj. James Cummiskey, technical adviser to the commanding officer, Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity, Camp Pendleton, Calif. "If a device is too heavy, a Marine is just going to throw it in the mud and walk away."
Apple Computer Inc. shook up the industry last spring by pulling the plug on its handheld device, the Newton. But the market in general has improved somewhat in the past year, particularly with Microsoft Corp.'s introduction of the Windows CE operating system, which is designed specifically for the handheld and other untraditional computing devices, and with a general effort across industry to improve overall functionality.
Design by Function
The design and capabilities of handheld computers are shaped by conflicting requirements: Color is useful but uses more power, more power can be provided by adding weight, weight can be reduced by removing mass storage capabilities and so on through a bewildering variety of permutations.
The configuration ultimately depends on how vendors are positioning their systems to be used. PDAs, the first popular handheld devices, tended to provide a narrow range of functions, supporting specialized applications.
For example, a PDA generally does not have a keyboard comparable to that of a PC but provides only a limited keypad and a pen-driven interface, in which a pen-like stylus is used to check boxes, click on icons or enter information by writing on the screen.
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