It's really during this pre-launch preparation phase that we begin to meet the product's community. We get the chance to talk with enthusiastic users, with developers who've invested their sweat into producing cool add-on products, and with the key people at the market maker's company. It's at this time that we really start to get a feel for the people behind the products.

When it comes to the Windows CE community, our publishing of PalmPower Magazine has given us some great advantages and generated some important questions. One advantage, of course, is that with the leading publication for the Palm organizer, we've got the credibility necessary to move into new markets and platforms. Plus, we've got the experience in dealing with a small-computer market and the special issues involved in making that work.

I've also been asked some questions. Here's an example, written by Microsoft Windows CE MVP Frank McPherson, who's also got an article in this issue:

When I read your editorials at PalmPower, I get the sense that you are a Palm user and that you like the platform. There isn't a sense that you are just reporting on the Palm Computing platform, but that you have personal stake in it. If you are going to be writing the editorial column for Windows CE Power I think you have to address the question of how well you support Windows CE. Do you use Windows CE? I think people are going to want more than just the fact that the target audience has grown to the point where it justifies a publication. They will want to feel connected to the writers. That will bring people back to the publication.

It's a very fair question.

Honestly, I've used so many computers on so many platforms that I just don't have much of what you'd call a religious bias to any of them. On my desk at the office I have Macs, Windows 98 machines, Windows NT and Linux boxes and I jump between them without blinking. I've used everything from punch cards to paper tape to Jaz drives. I've gone from the classic Altair 8800 that I built myself (and hand-wired all the S-100 bus leads, wire-by-wire and hand toggled in the boot program), to VAXen, to old Data General Novas up through Crays. It just doesn't matter to me from a "this is better than that basis". Without question, there are cool aspects of the Palm platform and similarly cool aspects of the Windows CE platform. Likewise, there are problematic aspects. My job is to be impartial and reflect reader concerns and needs.

When it comes to handhelds, I really haven't had that much of a religious bias, again because I've used so many. I had one of the original TI-59 programmable calculators. At the time, it was amazingly cool because it had a magnetic card reader (with "cards" about the height and width of your pinky). You could mount the TI-59 on a special printer platform and it would print (in very thin strips). You could program it to do almost anything as long as you didn't mind a one-line bright-red LED display. I had the original Sharp Wizard as well as later Wizard models. I also owned the original, nasty, Doonsbury-pickin'-on Newton, and then finally the way cool, but highly under-rated MessagePad 2000 (MP2K) and, of course, the Palm devices.