Educate me about PDAs

In My Humble Opinion
1

We need a new computer at home, the old one is almost six years old and just doesn’t cope with our word processing and internet browsing demands.

Probably the cheapest way to get a new computer is to use an old one. That is, I’ve decided it might be best to use my not-so-old laptop as the home computer (hooked up to the monitor and keyboard/mouse) and get myself a PDA for when I go away with work.

So, I need to know what PDAs can do.

Is there some version of Microsoft office or equivalent? I know many of them have wireless internet capability, do any come with a dial-up modem either built in or as a plug in accessory?

In general, what are their pros and cons compared to a laptop? What types are there, and what are the pros and cons of each?

If it matters, my laptop is running Windows XP, and my most used programs are Excel, Outlook, Opera, Microsoft Money, and MSN Messenger.

2

I have a Palm TX.

The one thing I thought was going to be a big hindrance was entering text. While it’s certainly not as easy as a laptop, it’s not too bad. I use both graffiti and the onscreen keyboard depending on my mood.

The wireless/web functionality is nice to have and works ok if you’re in a pinch but squeezing the typical web page onto a tiny screen means lots of scrolling and figuring out the new layout.

I have a 1 gb SD Card that I store music and photos on.

Documents To Go takes care of shuttling word and excel docs back and forth.

I could go on, but my girls need the computer. Hopefully I’ll be able to join the discussion later.

3

BTW the Palm is just a sketchpad. I’d never consider it as a laptop substitute sort of thing.

4

I have a new Palm 700 with Windows mobile. It has mobile Word, Excel, etc. State of the art machine.

For glancing at incoming email & deleting the garbage and making <10-word replies to the easy ones, it’s great.

For viewing a couple of simple websites it’s also tolerable.

For anything else, including use as a cellphone, it’s a total peice of crap. Not that it doesn’t work as a device, just that it doesn’t work as a concept.

What use is MS Word when you can only see 2 sentences on the screen? What use is MS Excel when the screen shows you cells A1 throuh B5 and that’s it without scrolling?

What use is the keyboard when you can only type 1 character per 2 seconds with a 10% error rate?

Having it synced to my work calendar, email & contacts list is very very valuable. I always know what I’m doing next & if I need to call someone I have their contact data available.

But it would be utterly wrong to think of it as a computer replacement. It’s just a portable email terminal good for 95% receive & 5% transmit.

In my job I get a hundred non-spam emails a day. Probably 50 are read-and-pitch, 30 need 1-sentence answers, and 20 take some real writing. I can dispose of the 80 on my PDA while otherwise wasting time in meetings, or at home or … but I would never attempt to do anything about the last 20 using the PDA.

The problem is not the software or the idea or the speed of the processor. It’s just that with a tiny keyboard & tiny screen it just isn’t usable enough.

In 10 years when a tiny laser in my eyeglass frame can paint an image equivalent to a current 21" LCD screen directly onto my retina and the device takes spoken input naturally, well then we’ll have a PDA that us usable as a general purpose computer. Until then …

5

Yeah, a PDA is useful in a bunch of situations where you wouldn’t want to lug a laptop around, but it can’t really do as much as a laptop can or as quickly in side-by-side comparisons.

Myself, I’m a big fan of PDAs with miniature keyboards instead of using graffiti, but there don’t seem to be as many of them around anymore.

microsoft office versions - pocket PCs have pocket office, made by microsoft, which is really pretty good. Palms have a few different versions of office software - DocumentsToGo, quickOffice, at least one other suite that I can’t remember. pocket PCs are probably the best about interacting with MS outlook - they’re helpless without it in fact.

I think that there are PDA modem accessories or ethernet cards available for some models, never really tried using them. You don’t need them so much though - syncing with your host computer is the primary communication method used.

Hope that helps, if you have other specific questions I’ll chime in again.

6

just to clarify something Chrisk said. Palms come in two flavors. One runs palmOS with “windows compatible” application software. The other flavor runs true MS brand Windows OS and genuine Windows Mobile Office software.

Also, any modern PDA IS a cellular modem.

7

Aren’t BlackBerries the be-all of portable computing?

8

I have a folding keyboard for my PDA, and if you have lots of text to enter it is very easy. Compared to a laptop there are some drawbacks, but some benefits to a PDA + Keyboard, all and all I think it’s a wash, though at certain times you would rather have one then another.
In general a PDA + keyboard will be faster, take up less room, much longer battery life while a laptop will be be more comfortable, more likely to have the file you need, and will have better compatibility (full versions of the program).
I think all Palm and Windows PDA’s have programs that will allow you to open & edit MS Office docs.

Modem attachments are available at least some PDA’s. Though it may use the same port as the keyboard, so you can’t use both at the same time.

9

Not true, I have one that is for a landline, it’s a standard 56K modem that snaps onto the back.

10

I’m not at all sure how to interpret that… a modem in that it allows other devices to communicate by encoding digital/analog signals? Cellular in the sense of working on a cell phone network??

I know of a lot of modern PDAs that are neither.

11

Any modern PDA phone. A standard PDA has no cellular hardware, and thus, no way to be a cellular modem.

I use a HTC Wizard, which is sold in the US as the T-Mobile MDA and Cingular 8125 (now superceded by the Cingular 8525). It has a slide-out keyboard that’s very usable and a moderately sized screen, a little larger than a Treo’s. It runs Windows Mobile 5, which includes slimmed-down versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It’s capable of accessing the Internet over the cellular network or the built-in WiFi, and comes with an e-mail app and Pocket IE, though better e-mail clients and browsers, like Opera, are available. Overall, it’s replaced my laptop for most daily uses.

Standard Windows Mobile PDAs do all the above, but don’t have a cellular connection. They tend to be faster and have larger screens. Built-in keyboards are mostly found on PDA phones, though almost all PDAs can use an external keyboard.

12

Thanks everyone, I’m in the middle of a trip with work at the moment, so I’ll reply properly sometime this weekend when I get home.

BTW, I left my own laptop at home for this trip and forgot to take the work laptop. I’m discovering that I don’t need it for much at all.