Palm chief slams Microsoft PDAs

Palm has hit back at Microsoft's bid to take over the PDA market, claiming that even by stealing their ideas they still can't get it right.

Mike Weatherley, vice president EMEA, said: "Microsoft is trying very hard to improve the user experience. They've grafted a lot of apps from Palm."

But the new Pocket PCs are clunky and difficult to use, he said. "It's very definitely more PC than Pocket, in terms of what I have seen."

He pointed to some of new features on Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system, launched last week, which originally appeared on Palm devices.

It includes dialing on a phone direct from an address book, flash-upgradable ROM and support for Palm's Graffiti handwriting recognition system.

Palm devices still integrate better with Microsoft Office programs than Microsoft's Pocket PC devices, Weatherley claimed.

However, he was not able to say whether current Palm products support Office XP documents.

He was also unable to comment on whether Palm supported an OS-native VPN client, a security feature Microsoft recently introduced to improve the security of handhelds and make them more attractive to corporate users.