Palm vs. Pocket PC

Organize Your Life

Best Casio Cassiopeia EM-500, Compaq IPaq H3600

Worst RIM BlackBerry 957

Despite all the extra roles PDAs are taking on, information management remains their primary purpose. For this task, Pocket PCs once again pull ahead of the others. The Palm offers lots of power and flexibility, but the IPaq and Casio are just as useful overall and superior in some areas. Where Pocket PCs really shine, however, is in their interface. Their bright screens, shortcut menus, and handy pick lists simplify adding and viewing appointments, tasks, and contact information, making them more fun to use than any other organizer we tried.

To help you keep track of all the people in your life, Pocket PCs include the powerful Contacts application, which provides over 40 fields for information. The Calendar application turns the IPaq and Casio into great appointment books. Day, week, month, and year views let you see and fine-tune the busiest of schedules. And it's easy to find open spots and add and reschedule appointments, recurring meetings, and all-day events.

With their meeting invitation feature for Schedule+ and Outlook, Pocket PC PDAs make the best palmtop choice for corporate users who need to stay in the loop. They do come up short in one major area, however: task and appointment integration. Palms excel at melding these important components of a busy schedule, providing several ways to look at them together.

The chunkier Jornada matches Pocket PCs feature for feature and displays a larger part of your contacts list and schedule at once, including a separate window for tasks. The Diamond Mako offers users a mixed bag. People who need complete control over their address books might like its Contacts application, which lets you relabel and rearrange every one of its 23 fields--even name, address, and phone number. But we found the quirky Agenda application difficult to use.

The little RIM BlackBerry handles PIM basics--just. Minimalists might like the stark screens--the calendar's week view consists of two labeled axes--but most will want a more informative interface.