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Smaller may not be beautiful
Katherine Cavanaugh, 10.05.98, 12:00 AM ET

You're away from the office with nothing but a lightweight, handheld computer and you desperately need to look up those detailed driving instructions on your client's web site. No problem. Just find a phone, dial up, and browse away using your PDA (personal digital assistant).

A number of companies are betting that PDAs, such as the PalmPilot and Windows CE devices, equipped with web browsers will be in great demand by people on the move. Among them are HandWeb from Smartcode Software, Inc., ProxiWeb from ProxiNet, Inc. (in beta with official release expected later this year), the AvantGo browser from AvantGo and Pocket Internet Explorer and MobileChannels from Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people).

The theory may be getting ahead of the practice, however, as many individual users and handheld enthusiasts say that the new web-based browsers have a long way to go before they become truly useful as web access tools. "Most web sites are in color with lots of graphics and GIFs (file formats for web-based images) that are not appropriate for viewing in the handheld medium," complains Ashish Shah, managing director of equities arbitrage at Bankers Trust Company.

"It's not the greatest interface for browsing the web," admits David Blumenstein, sales director at WaySecure Networks in New York. "I tried it for a couple of months, but handhelds are not designed for prolonged visual use. If I'm going to connect with the Internet, I'm going to take out my notebook computer."

The minute size that makes pocket computers so attractive is also their Achilles' heel when it comes to displaying a screen of data. Small screens and sluggish modem speeds present the biggest problems for users. "I am a frequent PalmPilot user and have the corresponding modem, but I do not use it for web access or even E-mail access," says Emily Davidow, founder of New York City web design firm Digital Elements, who is an enthusiastic user of the Pilot's organizer functions.

The technology behind web-friendly PDAs isnt new, just smaller. The browser software works in concert with modem devices designed specifically for handheld computers, including Novatel's Minstrel wireless modem and 3Com's snap-on modem for its PalmPilot. Because of the memory constraints of handhelds, the browsers offer various approaches to the Internet that fall far short of their desktop computing big brothers from Netscape and Microsoft. For example, HandWeb offers text-only access to the web; AvantGo and MobileChannel offer offline access only; while text and image access to the web are offered by the ProxiNet browser.

Despite a cult-like following, even diehard enthusiasts recognize PDAs' current limitations as web access tools, typically citing the fact that virtually all web sites are designed for a minimum 14-inch screen size. The realities of the high cost and slower speeds of wireless modems only compound the difficulties. In general, many users see their new PDAs as handy when they need to check web-based information on the fly: a phone number, a stock quot, driving instructions or half-remembered trivia. Beyond these simple tasks, the product falls down.

Edward Keyes--a celebrity of sorts in the PalmPilot online community because of his work as developer of HackMaster, a popular shareware program that lets users customize their PalmPilot--admits that web browsing on PDAs is very "utilitarian." "It's not the sort of platform conducive to just surfing around. But if you need to look up something now and you have a wireless modem, it can be very handy," he says.

PDA users who have checked out and compared the new small screen browsers have drawn the following conclusions:

Keyes says he prefers the ProxiWeb browser and its shareware predecessor, Top Gun Wingman. He explains that these are the only online browsers which can display both web graphics and text. ProxiWeb has this capability because of an efficient, two-step connection process.

Instead of connecting directly to the web, the ProxiWeb browser interfaces with a proxy server that streamlines web pages for display on a PDA. Keyes notes that since we live in a world where web pages are most often designed for color-enabled, desktop computers that are Internet Explorer 4.0 compliant, the fast proxy server solution can be a nice web access solution for PDAs and their color limitations.

Josh Forman, a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Techology's PDA User Group, favors ProxiWeb for its SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encrypted connectivity and the fact that it can display web sites with both cookies and frames. ProxiNet reports that the official release of its browser for both the PalmPilot and Windows CE devices will occur sometime later this winter.

Mike McGuire of Dataquest praises AvantGo's offline PDA browser for the PalmPilot and Windows CE, which downloads and updates the web pages you may wish to view from your desktop and compresses them into a format that can be readily viewed offline on a handheld computer. Keeping in mind the restrictions of the PDA screen, the AvantGo web site lists 250 web sites that are PDA-friendly. Ultimately, the company aims to target the corporate enterprise market.

However, Ashish Shah of Bankers Trust Company is a PDA user only interested in access to real-time stock quots when he is away from his office. As a result, he has opted for Aether Technologies PDA browser and its Reuters MarketClip news service for PalmPilot, Hewlett-Packard and the Novatel Contact PDA. It uses CDPD or cellular phone technology to transmit real-time stock quots directly from an Internet server.

"It frees me up to feel comfortable about leaving the office and attending outside meetings," Shah says, adding that access to real-time stock quots anytime, anywhere has made him very popular at parties. For now, he is pleased with the service after testing it for two months.

Analysts and consultants are gearing up for expansion in the PDA market, which has seen impressive growth. At present, 3Com's (nasdaq: COMS - news - people) PalmPilot device, introduced only two years ago, can claim 70% of the market for handheld computers, and Dataquest reports that the market for handheld computers at large will grow from approximately 2.4 million devices shipped in 1997 to 8 or 9 million in 2002.

As a result, mobile computing consultant Steven Warshaw of the Warshaw Jacobson Group in New York says he is getting work on large corporate projects in what he terms "the upstream mode." This involves collecting information and sending it back to the corporate Intranet, rather than getting information from the Internet. He says users such as doctors, nurses and inspectors are increasingly employing handheld computers in the context of recording data on the spot--bedside, at the gas meter--and then transmitting or synchronizing it back to a central server where it can be parsed, stored and analyzed.

Mike McGuire, senior industry analyst for mobile computing at Stamford, Conn.-based market research firm Dataquest, says that users should realize that web use via a PDA is not necessarily the "full two-way experience" they have become accustomed to on a desktop or laptop. Handheld, portable browers won't become widely deployed, he thinks, until they allow consumers to simplify "mundane stuff" such as moving money out of a bank and other kinds of real-time transactions.

Other analysts see things differently and project a fragmentation in the ultra-portable computer world. James Purdy, of Mountain View, Calif.-based Mobile Insights, projects that handhelds will continue to serve users seeking snippets of text from the web, but full-blown web interaction will increasingly be the preserve of the new "companion PC"--lightweight, keyboard-equipped devices that Microsoft is expected to introduce in the fourth quarter of this year.

Rob Enderle, director of mobile computing research at consultancy, Giga Information Group of Santa Clara, Calif., however, says one of the biggest battles in the months ahead will be the PDA versus the cell phone for accessing or inputting basic web information. Which one will mobile professionals favor? Recently, Qualcomm, Inc. (nasdaq: QCOM - news - people) announced the launch of the pdQ, a combination PalmPilot and digital wireless phone, to be widely available sometime next year.

"Ideally we will all carry a single device that will be both a cell phone and a PDA," says Enderle.

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