Pda Q&a

Factual Questions
1

I’m thinking about getting a PDA. My needs are simple. The facts are these… The low-end Palm Zire probably does everything I need. My general theory on things like this is, fine what you like, and then upgrade one or two levels. That being said, I have a few questions…

One of the upgrade options from the Palm Zire is the Sony CLIÉ™ Handheld PDA Brand/Model: SON PEGSJ20 for around $170.00.

Anyway, here are a few questions I hope you guys and gals can help me answer…

  1. How do you pronouce Zire? Is it like ‘Tire’ with a Z? or is it like ‘zeer’?
  2. How do you pronounce CLIÉ? Is it like Clee? Cly? Clee-ay?
  3. Can two palms running the same software (Palm 4.1?) ‘talk’ to each other, even if the hardware is different? i.e. can I beam info from a Sony to a friends Palm?
  4. The specs on these things tout that they can sync with Outlook. Anyone have any experience with this? That’s an important thing to me… being able to sync calendar and to-do lists between the two.
  5. Anyone have any other recommendations? It’s easy to accidentally limit one’s self when they don’t know the full benefits of something. I’d like to stay around the $100 - $200 range.

Thanks for info.

(Mods, this is a combo of specific questions, and opinions. I felt like this was probaby the best forum. As always, if necessary, please move w/ my apologies)

E3

2

**Yes. I have never had any problems talking to another PalmOS device with my Handera 330

The Handera 330 is a very nice unit. It has both SD/MMC and CompactFlash slots, and a virtual graffiti area. I don’t know if they are that cheap yet, I bought mine about 18 months ago for $350 or so. It’s very fast, light, and has a good hi-res screen. Also has a speaker and microphone for voice applications. I haven’t been up on the Palm scene lately, but when it came out the 330 was the best monochrome unit you could buy.

3

I had a palm IIIe until it had an unplanned enccounter with the floor and stopped working :frowning:

[OK, OK, I dropped it! Happy now? :smack: ]

Now I have a Handspring Visor with 8Mb expansion card. I wanted the expansion because I was travelling to Europe and wanted things like some e-books for the plane, subway guides for London and Paris, and the like. The Handspring uses Palm OS, and yes, I can beam to and from Palm devices, even those with a different OS. I was even able to retrieve my synched appointment and address files from the [dead] Palm’s backup files to the Visor.

I chose the Visor because the less-expensive Palms had smaller screens than I was used to, and the Visor had the same screen size as my old IIIe. I have looked at the CLIÉ and like what I see, but never used one so can’t really comment on how well it works.

And the acute accent on CLIÉ would indicate to me that it is pronounced “Clee-ay”. “Zire” always makes me want to say “Zaire”. :confused:

4

I have a nifty little PDA from Hewlett Packard called a Jornada. It runs Windows CE (which I think was a forerunner to PocketPC, but I won’t swear to it.) Now that Dell and HP have become one, Dell offers a PocketPC-based PDA for around $200 that is certainly worth a look. I chose the Jornada because:

  • it had a color display,
  • the basic Windows format was familiar and comforting,
  • it came with Pocket Word and Pocket Excel, so you could edit documents with it (of course, I’ve never used either),and
  • it seemed like there were more e-books available for Microsoft Reader than for Palm. Granted, that was a couple of years ago, so I’m sure that has changed.

I have never had a problem syncing my PDA with Outlook, and none of my co-workers with Palm-based products seemed to have any problems either. I got quite addicted to knowing that my clendar was ALWAYS correct :)I recently switched jobs, though, and now have to use some strange Outlook-like-but-not-quite software, and it looks like my sync-ing days may be over :frowning:

5

I just recently picked up Toshiba’s flavor of the PocketPC. While I have to say as far as software goes those running PalmOS are superior in speed and reliability the Toshiba (e740 for those who care) has the wonderful little addition of integrated wireless (802.11b standard or Wi-Fi) which makes my own life much easier running around the office while trying to simultaneously catch all the service call e-mails that make their way to my desk the moment i step away. It’s a little on the pricey side as far as things go but you can get a refurbished one for less that $400. Thatw as the road I took and it works like a brand new one.
Another good one to look at on the PocketPC side of things is the NEC P300. It’s a little on the heavy side since the body is aluminum but its also designed for industrial envirnments (meaning unintentional contact with the floor won’t mess it up too much).

6
  1. Clee-ay, like SavageNarce said. I have a PEG SJ-30, which sells for about $250. Color screen, 16 MB memory.
  2. As others have stated, yes. I even had luck beaming an address book entry into my husband’s Pocket PC, though I haven’t had similar luck in my Clié receiving info from his Pocket PC.
  3. Works great, I’ve had no trouble. A Palm Desktop application will come with the software that you get with the unit; it’s provided in case you don’t have or don’t want to use Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc.

I’d recommend sticking with the Palm OS, personally, over the Pocket PC and other types of OSs - it’s the most popular one out there, and there’s a ton of software for it.

Other things to think about:

  • Plastic slipcovers for the screen. You can buy these at stores that sell PDA accessories, I got mine at the Best Buy where I bought the PDA. They’re sized to fit the model you’re using, and keep the glass on the screen from getting scratched.
  • Case for the PDA. Probably not a bad idea, and helps keep it from getting beat up.
7

Just a little extra info to add. You are wise to not go for the Zire and instead go up a level or two. The Zire is marketed at first-time PDA users and will run all the standard Palm apps just as well as the pricier models, but it has a woefully small memory (only 2 MB) that you would fill up very quickly with just one or two decent additional software applications.

For just a slight upgrade (from $99 to about $125) you could get a Palm m125 that has the more standard 8 MB. Even if you don’t think you would expand your use of a PDA beyond the basics, more memory is always better than less.

I have a Visor Neo (compares almost exactly to the Palm m125, except it is a little bigger – a plus if the Palm screens seem too small) that I got for just over $100 at Target about a year ago. My model is discontinued now (I think) but it still does everything I need and more. I synch up with all my Outlook files – to do list, calendar, address book, and all my email messages at work – and it is fantastic.

Plus I use a bunch of third party software that has made my life easier, including HandyShopper for my grocery shopping lists, Pocket Quicken (which synchs up with Quicken on my home PC), etc.

I’d like to upgrade to a model with a color screen, but I can’t really justify it yet because I haven’t come close to maxing out what I can do with my Neo yet. But I am tempted – I was just in Target tonight and they have the Palm m130 color for only $199.

8

Since I don’t know a lot about these things, I thought I’d throw in a couple of questions here.

Ferret Herder, you mention Lotus Notes. Does a Palm sync with Notes mail? (I have that at work.) Can it do text files or some sort of text database as well? What about long threads from SDMB?

9

Bottle of Smoke - yes, the Neo is discontinued now. I think the only model that Handspring is making right now is the Treo. I got a Neo for Christmas 2001, and it suddenly failed to turn on at all this past November. Fortunately, a 2 year replacement plan had come with it, so I just traded it in and got the full purchase price towards a new PDA. (PDAs are one of the few items that I like replacement plans/extended warranties for.)

It’s noteworthy that the data copied over easily between the two Palm types - I just moved all the backup data from the Handspring directory to the Sony directory, synched, and presto, new PDA up and running. You may need to reinstall any 3rd party apps, but those can be found in the Addons folder in the old PDA’s directory, if you haven’t deleted them.

rjk - the software that comes with a Palm unit will allow you to sync with Lotus Organizer (and a couple of other apps I think). We use Notes at work though, so my work paid for a copy of the Intellisync program for me to use. I can’t remember the manufacturer offhand, but searching on that name ought to bring up the info. It will sync Notes mail too. I’m not sure about the other things, though perhaps 3rd party apps would do that. I have the Documents to Go program that lets me sync MS Word/Excel files.

10

:smack: Forgot to mention a few things.

Bottle of Smoke - I love HandyShopper too. It’s free, and it helps me keep all the stuff in mind that I need to get while shopping. Plus once you have the item listed in the program’s database, it’ll stay there for retrieval later. I know this makes me more likely to note the item when I think of it, as I don’t have to write out the whole name - just scroll down the list, and click the box to choose it. You can also make other lists by just creating new databases - I find it a lot nicer than the included To Do program for making to-do lists with recurring items, like things I do regularly at work, and so on.

About my comment earlier regarding the plastic “slipcovers” - to clarify, these are actually adhesive, removable thin pieces of plastic. You peel off the backing and use an included stiff card to smooth out air bubbles as you place it onto the screen. When it gets too beat up, just peel to remove, and the screen doesn’t have any sticky residue on it. Then put a new cover on.

Another thing to ask about is the battery. Is it removable, rechargeable, replaceable? My Neo used 2 disposable AAA batteries, and with my usage level then I think I had to replace them every 1-2 weeks. (There’s an internal battery that saves everything as-is for about a minute while you swap batteries.) My Clié has an internal rechargeable, non-removable (non-replaceable) battery. It recharges through the sync cradle, and fairly rapidly, but the salesperson warned me that if/when the battery fails, it basically can’t be replaced - technically, it’s not worth the cost of sending it in to replace it. So, I got the unit replacement plan again. My husband’s Pocket PC has a rechargeable, and replaceable battery, rather like a cell phone. It recharges through its sync cradle. He bought a spare battery in case he doesn’t have time to recharge right then. He and I only have to recharge our handhelds every few days, though constant use would mean that they’d need recharging at the end of a day.

I first got a PDA for similar reasons to the OP, plus I knew I would actually use a small handheld gadget rather than a larger paper organizer - I’d tried various ones like the DayRunner and plain calendars, and just sucked at staying updated, but I like electronic “toys”.

I play games on it during my long train commute to work. I installed a better scientific calculator so I can use that at work, along with a metric conversion app. Plus I have a Rand McNally program installed called Street Finder and their map for the city of Chicago, so I can figure out where places are when I have to travel around in the city.

I would second Bottle of Smoke’s recommendation about looking at a better Palm model. For just a little more money, you get more flexibility and memory. Once I got my first Palm PDA, I was surprised at how much more I wanted to do with it than what I expected I would.

11

E-mail: My office uses Novell GroupWise for e-mail and scheduling, so they bought me IntelliSync to allow me to sync my Visor with GroupWise. This is third-party (Puma) software that allows you to sync with a wide variety of non-standard software (including Lotus Notes).

Batteries: As I said before, I frequently travel to Europe with my Handspring. I like to travel light, so I prefer a PDA that uses replaceable AAA batteries, rather than packing a charger, plug adapter and/or power converter. A set of replacement batteries will keep me going for a month or so, and AAA batteries are available virtually everywhere.

Memory: Just as there’s no such thing as being too rich, there is no such thing as too much PDA memory. Does the Zire allow you to expand memory with a card? If not, I’d say you should avoid it and look a little higher on the PDA evolutionary ladder. Also, there is usually a difference between the way the PDA views built-in “native” memory and add-on expansion memory. Expanded memory is not always available for immediate use, but requires that applications and data be shuffled back and forth with a Memory Manager. Therefore, a PDA with 8Mb of native memory will be preferable to one with 2Mb of built-in memory and an 8Mb expansion card.

12

If you’d prefer using alkaline vs. rechargable batteries, take a look at the Palm m105. It’s a black and white screen, but it’s got solid memory, uses the replaceable batteries and is on the lower end of the cost spectrum.

13

I actually wandered in thinking you’d be answering questions about Public Displays of Affection. Seriously.

:smack:

mmm…