Multitasking on Windows Mobile

...is probably very useful if you take active advantage of it. Perhaps it's just me and it's a throwback to having used palm devices and having been used to not being able to do it but I rarely use it. I'll be on one application and then will switch to the Today screen to access something else and then need to go back to the other app...instead of hitting the running tasks button to access it again quickly, which you can do on windows mobile device easily, I always end up searching through the menus to find it to open it again. Always.

I know that Windows Mobile enthusiasts always like to cite this mutitasking ability as one of the big reasons why they prefer that platform but its not one I would quote...not because I don't see it as a big advantage, in many respects it is, but rather because I don't utilise it enough. To be honest, I never found the lacvk of multitasking on palm devices to be a hardship as I rarely flitted between programmes. Once I moved from one to the other I was generally finished with the open one anyway.

Comments

[Rui Castro aka Danceman]

I think in the mobile OS, multitasking is being viewed the wrong way. Ever time I use a Windows Mobile or a Eseries phone i find the OS sloguish, its trying to do to much.

Look at apps like Card Reader for the PalmOS, this app is for connecting to your PC or MAC using your card as a file drive. If I copy a big 500 Mb file for example and If I go out of the app, it alerts me if I want to cancel the copy file (so multitasking won't drain my battery which I see many times in other OSs), cancel and go back to the app (for does times I press by accident) or keep do it in the background (Multitasking) and do other things. And by the way it also has auto mode, if I receive any call, it goes into multitasking.

For me these is the way, not the damn stupid Windows Mobile way, putting every thing in multitasking and then we forget about it, the battery drains and we don't know why or its starts to get real slow and we have to close all the apps or it gives up and crashes. Once in a Eseries a app crashed and it stayed in multitasking mode, doing who knows what, socking my battery.

People keep on saying that Palm Garnet asn't multitasking but still theres apps like Card Reader, Pocket Tunes, Verichat, Versamail, etc... Ok technically it may not be true multitasking but for us humans it is. And thats why Palm is fast and easy on what it does.

What Palms needs to do is build multitasking into the system (which some say its already in it but not easily accessed) and make it easier, so more coders can do what Card Reader is doing. Ok the next version of the PalmOS: Linux, is a multitasking OS but please keep it to just the apps that need it, not every single one.