PDA
[tech]
posted by catherine / June 22, 2005 / 
in my continuing quest to become a plugged-in, organized new media guru, i have decided that i want to purchase a PDA. given that i have no idea what PDA actually even stands for, or the capabilities that certain PDAs may have, i need some help on making a decision. things i need: web browsing capabilities, email capabilities, RSS reading capabilities and, uh, a puppy screensaver. i don't know what else. tommy says there are PDAs out there that you can hook up collapsible keyboards to, to turn them into portable computers, so that'd be pretty sweet. anyway, blogosphere hivemind, i turn to you in your infinite wisdom. what PDA should i buy?
Comments
Here is what I discovered about PDAs, especially Palm Pilot 5s: when you don't charge it for 3 months, it will lose all it's information. And then you will never use it again; nor will you even know where it is. Although your best guess will be under the couch in your basement.
from what I hear, the Axim is the best bang for your buck. There are nicer PDAs, but not ones that also cost less than $300.
Donno about RSS reading, but I'm sure someone's written up something along those lines. And you can get collapsible keyboards for pretty much any PDA these days.
If you can do without internet access and color, you can get a good PDA organizer for real cheap, tho.
Yes. In my experience, it goes like this: use it all the time for one week, use it every other day the second week, forget to carry it around the third week, start to be annoyed by it and its outdated information the fourth week.
If you actually want to use it (see the other comments for why this is a relevant question) you should consider a PDA/phone--because, at least for me, that's the only way I would have it with me all the time. And if you're not going to take it everywhere it will prove to be of limited use. I think.
that's a good idea. any recommendations on one of those?
Everyone seems to like Treos--if you like the Palm OS, I'd go for that. Otherwise, I'm not sure--I know there are windows OS smartphones as well as some linux smartphones, but I don't know much about what's good and what's not. It does seem like there are a lot of new ones coming out in the next year, especially windows-based ones, so I presume there is going to be a lot of competition in that area.
The thing is that the smartphones are pretty expensive, and aside from the treo, pretty big. I know you've come to accept my sidekick as an almost-reasonable size, but really, Windows Mobile smartphones make it look petite (the treo is tiny & sexy, though). With a few exceptions, they don't have wifi (there's a hack for the treo, but you probably wouldn't want it). And their monthly service plans are pretty expensive.
I looked seriously at a treo when my color sidekick died, but it just cost too much. As a new customer you could buy a sidekick 2 ($200) and an refurb axim (~$250) for about the price of a treo, then pay half as much monthly as you otherwise would for monthly service.
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