.KEYWORD nino
.FLYINGHEAD HARDWARE SHOOTOUT
.TITLE Nino 300 vs. the Palm III organizer: the hardware
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Whenever Microsoft enters an established market, everyone notices. Well, Microsoft has plopped it’s 300-pound gorilla smack dead center in the middle of Palm’s handheld computer market by introducing their design for the Palm-sized PC and licensing the design and software to computer makers. One of the first such licensees is Philips, with the Nino 300. We wanted to know how the Nino compares to the Palm platform devices. In this very objective, no-holds-barred review, Jason Perlow compares the hardware of the two devices. You may be surprised by the results.
.AUTHOR Jason Perlow
Alrighty then. So you’re probably wondering why in the name of all that is sacred that we’re opening up the potential for religious wars this month in PalmPower. We all love our PalmPilot devices and our Palm III organizers and our WorkPads, and even thinking about the evil goons at Microsoft gives us the willies. Who cares? End of story! Right?
Well, it’s not that simple. Up until recently, the Palm computing platform was the only game in town if you wanted an easy-to-use, well-supported electronic organizer that fit in your shirt pocket and synchronized with all of your favorite applications. Now that Windows CE is in its second generation with the Palm-sized PC, many of you might be curious as to how Microsoft’s come-lately contender stacks up to our favorite gadget. This month, we put the latest and greatest of the Palm-sized PCs, the Philips Nino 300, as shown in Figure A, against the Palm III, strictly from a hardware perspective. You may be surprised by the results.
.FIGPAIR A This is the new Philips Nino 300.
.H1 Speeds and feeds
The reigning champion, weighing in at six ounces and 4.7 inches tall, is the Palm III device. Powered by twin AAA alkaline batteries with no backup, the Palm III runs on the Motorola MC68328 Dragonball processor. This is a 32-bit 16Mhz energy-efficient CPU based on the venerable but aging 68000, which can address up to 4GB of theoretical physical memory. The Palm III device has 2MB of flash memory for holding the 1.2MB Palm OS version 3, plus 2MB of SRAM for running and storing Palm OS applications and user data. There are no expansion slots for additional memory; the entire bank of system memory plus the Flash RAM has to be replaced if you want more SRAM, which is currently only offered through a single vendor, TRG. Additional peripherals such as modems and GPS units can be attached via the Palm III’s HotSync port at the base.
The contender, weighing in at nearly eight ounces and towering over the Palm III at 5.3 inches, is the European-engineered Philips Nino 300. The Nino is powered by either an included rechargeable Nickel-Metal Hydride battery, or by two AA alkaline batteries. The Nino has a backup 5-year lithium cell which saves the state of the system configuration and memory should the unit lose power. The Nino runs on a 75Mhz Philips-designed PR31700 RISC CPU based on the SGI/MIPS R3000A, which can address up to 4GB of physical memory. The Nino 300 has 4MB of Flash ROM for storing the bulging Windows CE OS, plus 4MB or 8MB of RAM for running and storing Windows CE applications and user data. The Nino has a industry-standard CompactFlash slot for memory expansion cards, which are available from several vendors, and CompactFlash peripherals such as wireless modems, pager cards and Ethernet cards. The PR31700 has a built-in 19.2KBPS software modem, which is used through a modem adapter module, sold separately.
.H1 Bells, whistles and beams
The Palm III has a 160 x 160 black and white LCD backlit pressure-sensitive display, which is fine for text but terrible for viewing graphics on web pages. On the other hand, the Philips Nino has a 320 x 240 4 gray scale pressure-sensitive LCD, which can display rendered fonts and web graphics with relative ease. The Palm III has a simple piezoelectric speaker which produces simple beeps, buzzes, and digitized sounds with low sampling rates. The Nino boasts impressive 16-bit sound processing, with a loud integrated speaker that allows the playing of 22KHz sampled .WAV files, and has the ability to record voice memos through an integrated microphone using a built-in voice recorder application. For sound, the Palm III device is no match for the Nino.
The Palm III organizer has its own proprietary infared port, which allows other Palm III devices and upgraded PalmPilot organizers to exchange data and applications, but cannot print to IRDN equipped printers or communicate with other IRDA standard devices. The Nino has a standard Windows CE IR port, which can communicate with any Windows CE device. Nino owners can also print documents to printers equipped with IRDN ports, like the HP Laserjet 5.
.H1 Styli
