I’m assuming you are thinking Palm OS instead of Pocket PC, so if not you candisregard all below.
If you don’t need all the fancy bells and whistles, I’d recommend looking at the intro models of the Sony Clie or the Palm Tungsten E.
Sony has a little more variety at the into-end, so you can get a good one for about $150.
I bought a Palm Tungsten E to replace my old Visor at the beginning of this year and I love it so far. Got it at Amazon for $189. It has a great hi-res screen, 32MB of memory plus a slot for an SD card so I can add 256MB more if I want to drop the cash. It plays MP3s (you need the SD card for this), which I don’t really care about, and it comes standard with Documents to Go (so you can work with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files on your handlheld), which I do care about. In fact, the free Docs to Go what what sold me on the Palm.
If you want to keep lists and stuff, whichever PDA you get make sure you hightail it over to Palmgear and download Handyshopper. The single best piece of software out there for lists, and it’s absolutely free.
Why? Because it’s cheap. It has a high-resolution color display. Its case design is functional and sturdy.
And it has an MP3 player built in. That plays off of Sony memory sticks.
I do all the Palm stuff with it; games, lists, notes, etcetera. And I also have about four albums on it at any given time, in a 256 meg stick, which I can listen to whenever, wherever I want.
It’s an amazingly convenient device. As soon as I show it to anyone, they go out and get one.
For the described requirements, I have been doing quite well with the Tungsten|E. Very good app bundle (the current Docs-to-Go can handle Word/Excel in native format, if you have additional memory on-card). SD cards can be found for reasonable prices.
I got a Tungsten | E for Christmas and while I love the thing (read ebooks on the train in the morning, have one place to write down everything instead of dozens of scraps of paper I never use) and the requisite contact management, it does have a couple of downsides:
Battery live is abysmal. Even with the brightness at the lowest setting, I only get about 3 hours max out of it (two days of commuting and assorted use throughout the day). I called Palm, who recommended that I follow some procedures to enhance the battery life, then suggested I return it. I got a new one, followed the same procedures and gave up. Kept it this time. Supposedly the Autodimmer freeware will help, but I haven’t tried it yet. The screen is quite bright (painful at night) and even at the least-bright (I hesitate to say “dim”) is blinding at night and fine for any other use that’s not direct sunlight.
If you’re looking for mp3 functionality (which you didn’t say you were but…), you’ve got to by a special memory card, which adds to the cost and I can only imagine how accessing the data off of the card will kill your battery.
Aside from that, the only complaint is that the stylus has a mold line around it that will scratch your screen protector unless you hold the stylus in a (for me) funny position. Also, the stitching on the case will scratch the aluminium finish, so you might need to tape it.
Other than that though, the software is great (although I can’t get VersaMail to work and different error messages upon syncing and Reader for PalmOS blows ass).