In the past few days, I’ve done a little research and made a decision to leap across the technologically-geeky divide. I’m taking on two other offices at work, and this sticky note method I have isn’t going to work anymore if I’m floating between three offices. So, I hauled off and bought an HP Jornada 567.
I did a little digging on the boards and saw a thread or two that helped, but I did have a few questions:
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[li]Do I have to match programs to my PDAs operating system? Kinda like back in the day, when you had to run DOS programs on IBM machines, Apple programs on an Apple, Mac on Mac, etc. . . Furthermore, what kinda programs and files can I download onto it, anything?[/li][li]Theoretically, should my PDA work with different versions of Windows on two different computers? My home computer has Windows 98, my jobby-job computer uses Windows 2k. Is this going to cause problems?[/li][li]How did you like yours? I guess it’s a little late now, but what did you think of yours? Any problems I should be aware of?[/li][/list=1]
I swear, the Army should do a study on me. With all the other toys I own, I’ve just completed my own Land Warrior for all of about $2500 bucks.
I really have no idea what PDAs do, so…how much would I have to pay to get one that can read either text or word documents? I don’t even need to alter them, just read them. If I could buy a machine I could carry around with me for not much $ and be able to read friends’ stories, it might be worth my looking into these mysterous machines.
You made a good choice, Tripler. The Jornada 567 would be my choice in PDAs. I work in inbound sales at MobilePlanet, and I deal in PocketPCs day in and day out, so I can answer your questions:
Yes. You need to find programs that are compatible with the PocketPC 2002 OS. This link should help you in finding programs.
Yes. You need to install Activesync on the computers in question in order to sync, but Activesync works on Windows 9x, 2000, ME, and XP.
I don’t own one, but I’m constantly being trained on the latest products.
I read full books on my Palm V, which is several years old now. I have some free software I use to do it, but if you had to, you could just copy stuff into your memo pad.
IOW, the cheapest one out there should do the job just fine.
Aw sweet, that’s the one thing that did concern me. I haven’t played around with too many, but I saw one on display in an Office Max and then checked out the HP website. I’m glad I did - I saved $50!
RealityChuck, you raise the point of ASCII text pages into PDA format. Won’t a text document work fine as a simple text document, or do I have to convert it?
Maybe I should just wait for it to get here, and then start playing with it.
Yeah, great. Can this PDA also automatically run a spell check for me?
Tripler
Ironically, the next line in the song is * “I don’t know how to read but I got a lot of toys. . .”*
Tripler, Reality Chuck is referring to a program for the Palm OS. You have a PocketPC, which already comes with Pocket Word. When you transfer .doc or .txt files from your computer to your PDA, Activesync will automatically convert those files into Pocket Word format.
Yes. Check out PocketWord and look in the Tools menu of the program.
"Can this PDA also automatically run a spell check for me? "
I don’t know about Pocket PC software programs, but I just bought a Sony Clie and it has Documents To Go on it, which means I have a mid-point interface that allows me to use Word files- so all the functionality of Word, then ship it to your PDA.
Other than that, there are a bunch of text readers, and they each have ttheir ups and downs. But they have to be in their format- which you can get converters for like Doc to go, but it sucks when trying to download things off of the net from different places. www.memoware.com has documents to download, and an FAQ which has this to say for Pocket PC readers:
• AportisDoc Mobile comes in a PocketPC/WindowsCE flavor as well.
• MobiPocket also offers a DOC publisher program as well. Note that MobiPocket Publisher is not 100% DOC-compliant, so if you use that program to create a DOC file, the resulting DOC file will include some "junk" that will be visible to those PDA users that use a DOC reader other than MobiPocket.
• peekabook also handles standard Text files
• Starbuck also handles Text, HTML, and bReady files
As for how I like mine- I love it! I use it everyday to keep organized, read stuff and play games when bored. Handy things, definitely.
