Back when Windows Mobile was Windows CE (Windows Mobile is actually a shell on top of the previous Windows CE 5 generation), the Handheld PC was referred to as a PC Companion. Celio’s RedFly turns the tables on this old concept by looking like a mini-notebook PC but is actually an unintelligent companion to your Windows Mobile smartphone. At $499 it was much more expensive than your subsidized Windows Mobile smartphone. But, with a price drop to $399, oh wait, it is still much more expensive than your subsidized smartphone. And, what do you get for $399 (plus shipping and maybe tax)? A bigger screen and QWERTY keyboard, basically. Yes, WiMo’s Internet Explorer is no longer a pinhole view of the web. But, it is still can’t deal with AJAX or other complex Javascript-ed sites. It still renders many non-AJAX sites incorrectly. It is still basically Internet Explorer 4 with a few tweaks.<\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong, though! Conceptually, I think the RedFly is a good idea. I just think it is way overpriced when I can buy full-blown netbook like the Acer Aspire One for $379 get gigabytes more of storage, multicard reader, and full-blown versions of apps like the Firefox and OpenOffice. And, if I move from a WiMo phone to a Nokia, Apple iPhone, or one of the Google Android boxes, I haven’t wasted $399.<\/p>\n
If the RedFly were priced somewhere in the $175 to $225 price range, I think it would be interesting to me as a possible purchase. At $399? Well, let’s just say I’m ordering an Acer Aspire One later today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back when Windows Mobile was Windows CE (Windows Mobile is actually a shell on top of the previous Windows CE 5 generation), the Handheld PC was referred to as a PC Companion. Celio’s RedFly turns the tables on this old concept by looking like a mini-notebook PC but is actually an unintelligent companion to your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,10,12,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile-devices","category-pocket-pcphone-edition","category-smartphone","category-windows-mobile"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppKRG-eT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}