It has taken Microsoft three years to get serious about pocket computers -- because it took Microsoft that long to work out what to copy.

It started out copying Windows, and the Psion Series 5; and the result was a disaster. Then it tried putting the same Windows idiom onto an imitation Palm Pilot, and the result was little better. But now, it has come in with something that really does try to do what the Palm did well, and I think that at last, it is worth taking the Pocket PC seriously. Well, it will be, whenever the machines actually show up -- but they are delayed in Europe.

Yesterday, (Wednesday 19th) in London, we saw the launch of three main-stream brands of Pocket PC -- Casio, Hewlett-Packard, and Compaq. There were also hints of other versions -- one from Symbol (rugged, wireless based) and one from Asci in Taiwan -- cheaper. And for the first time, I've seen a Microsoft personal digital assistant that I would not want to throw away if you gave it to me as a gift.

That's not to say that I'd throw my Handspring Visor away for one of these -- indeed, I wouldn't. But as Craig Peacock will explain when he launches his pocket PC Help site on Monday 24th "now is the time to take Microsoft's designs seriously."

What the standard PalmOS machines from Palm Computing and Handspring do best, they still do superlatively well. They're cheaper, better engineered, better designed, and most significantly, they still have software on their side. And the battery life battle is a massacre; none of the Microsoft designs can match the Palm OS machines. So my vote still goes to Palm OS.

But it's no longer a complete "no-brain-needed" decision. You'll have a few pros and cons to weigh up.

Two features which stand out on the new Microsoft designs are the ClearType font technology, and the new handwriting recognition software. And besides that, there is the advantage of Pocket Excel, a spreadsheet; and finally, a Web browser which allows you to take your Web sites off your PC and download them onto the toy in your pocket.

As far as how good these features actually are, you're going to have to wait before you know, because none of the products are available yet. There were a few samples at the launch, shared between a couple of hundred press delegates, firmly nailed to the demonstration benches and guarded by their vendors with Rottweiler ferocity.

We saw a demonstration of Pocket Excel in the presentations; but the hands-on demo area seemed to have machines without this software. Is it any good? I can't tell you. And there was one design -- the Compaq iPaq -- which had some clever wrap-around hardware to enhance the basic PDA with other features... will it fit in your pocket? I can't say. Not until some review samples show up in magazine offices and in retail stores will people be able to judge. And the same goes for the handwriting recognition software; the vendors say it is wonderful, but they would, and I haven't been able to test it myself.

The Cleartype font technology does make a real difference. Letters that are really very small indeed, remain surprisingly legible even in poor light. Against that, the widespread use of colour displays meant that it was all backlit most of the time, giving awful battery life.

So: what's actually on the market?

Short answer: wait till May 2nd, when Hewlett-Packard's Journada launches. The 540 series has been tested by various reviewers, and their reaction has been surprised, because for the first time, they found themselves testing something which was reliable, easy to use, and useful. But "useful" comes at a price of around £350 (inc VAT) so you wouldn't be as excited as you might otherwise be to discover that you get a USB cradle as well as a serial cable for data cross-synch to a PC, and you'll probably expect to get a "full suite" of Pocket PC applications. Against this one, reviewers say it is pretty heavy and clunky, and the battery life isn't spectacular.

Next out the block will be the Casio machines; mid May is the expected date. Again, they're heavy, battery life isn't exciting, and the price rises to nearly £400. Calling the design "award-winning" won't make many people think it's pretty; it isn't. The Casio site, perversely, acutally lists several machines which the company didn't announce last night

Compaq will not let its slimline iPAQ design onto the market until July. It's the thinnest, but irritatingly, it's also the most limited, requiring the "Jacket" to expand it to normal specifications. There's a "straight" jacket (ho, ho ho) which just protects it and makes it unslim. There's an expansion jacket that holds a PCMCIA card (and its own rechargeable battery, inevitably) which makes it VERY unslim indeed. And there will be other Jacket designs, and they'll be cheap, says Compaq. I gather it is aiming to keep a Jacket price under £80, and most around half that.

As far as I could tell, all these devices will have games -- I saw a Pac-Man clone, for example -- and MP3 playback abilities. And all the builders are talking about the ability to drive GSM phones, which is very good news.

There is nothing wrong with copying a good idea, as long as you don't breach patents; and Microsoft is the world's best chameleon. After all, Dos was a copy of CP/M; Windows was an imitation of the Macintosh; and even Microsoft's latest -- Windows 2000 -- is really nothing more than the best of the Macintosh coupled with the best of Novell networking design.

But if you are going to copy something, best to make it at least as good as the original; and up till now, Microsoft has somehow managed to avoid this. Its original CE machines were obviously based on the Psion, but were horrible. When it started imitation the Palm Pilot, it managed to miss out the two crucial features which made Palm Computing the market leader: ease of data cross-synch, and handwriting entry. Just to make sure it wouldn't sell, the early designs were also unstable and buggy. And as if that wasn't enough, Microsoft obviously regarded the untested designs as a cash cow, refusing to run advertising, and insisting that anybody who build one must contribute large sums to the promotion budget, without any contribution from Microsoft itself. The result was that Windows CE managed to achieve something like 10% of the world PDA market.

With the disappearance of the obsession with "Windows" and a switch to functionality, all Microsoft really needs to do is actually promote these things, and make sure they work. Signs are that this range -- which was originally scheduled for launch nine months ago! -- has profited by the delay, and is at least stable; while Microsoft has decided to pull the stops out, and start helping the manufacturers with sales promotion.

My own feeling is that they still aren't doing enough. The launch really should have been held back till products were ready to ship -- or at the very least, until there were review machines available for shops and for analysts. The amounts of money spent on promotion may be better than before, but it's still a trivial amount compared with what is needed.

In a couple of years, Microsoft may well offer the Palm OS some real competition. If Palm Computing sit on its corporate laurels, there could be trouble. But not this year. The Pocket PC is a reasonable copycat Palm, but not quite good enough to threaten it, even with ClearType and handwriting recognition.

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