Well, they both have cool things you can do with them, I guess it comes down to comparing the features and picking what you want most. The Palm has Kanji Gym which is the offical RTK software, so that might be a good selling point. I use my Palm with PADict in the classroom because it's really easy and fast to find words in the dictionary by taping it in from the hiragana grid on the screen, plus it has hand written Kanji recognition that words really well, plus other cool things like Stroke Order Diagrams.
But I have been using JWPce and JFC (A Japanese word processer and a very good flash card application) on my desktop computer for quite awhile and I always make my flashcards in this format, which is really easy when you use both programs, you can just look the word up in the dictionary in JWPce and insert the entry into the file and save it in JFC format. So I can just transfer the flashcard files to my handheld and use them with JFC. You could download JWPCe and JFC versions for PC and have a go and see if that does all you want it to. For my needs, Palm is better to use in the classroom where I have to look lots of things up quickly, but the CE machine is better for reviewing and doing other things like word processing in Japanese. Getting a portable keyboard for a CE machine would make text processing and word lookups with JWPce much faster.
Here's an article about turning a Palm Pilot into dictionary: http://www.peterrivard.com/Pages/SuperDictionary.html
As for transfering data, there's Palm Pilot sync software for Mac OS, Linux and Windows - I have mine setup on my Mac and my Linux machine, you use that program to sync all your datafiles, plus for installing new software on your palm, etc. But I just take the SD card out of my CE machine and put it into my reader to transfer things onto and off it.
But I have been using JWPce and JFC (A Japanese word processer and a very good flash card application) on my desktop computer for quite awhile and I always make my flashcards in this format, which is really easy when you use both programs, you can just look the word up in the dictionary in JWPce and insert the entry into the file and save it in JFC format. So I can just transfer the flashcard files to my handheld and use them with JFC. You could download JWPCe and JFC versions for PC and have a go and see if that does all you want it to. For my needs, Palm is better to use in the classroom where I have to look lots of things up quickly, but the CE machine is better for reviewing and doing other things like word processing in Japanese. Getting a portable keyboard for a CE machine would make text processing and word lookups with JWPce much faster.
Here's an article about turning a Palm Pilot into dictionary: http://www.peterrivard.com/Pages/SuperDictionary.html
As for transfering data, there's Palm Pilot sync software for Mac OS, Linux and Windows - I have mine setup on my Mac and my Linux machine, you use that program to sync all your datafiles, plus for installing new software on your palm, etc. But I just take the SD card out of my CE machine and put it into my reader to transfer things onto and off it.
Edited: 2006-08-17, 6:05 am