So, I used to have an old monochrome Sony Clie palm-based PDA which had various nice features, the big one I liked being a “Jog wheel” on the left edge near the top which you could use with your thumb to scroll through documents and eBooks.
Sony, sadly, no longer makes these, and I have yet to encounter another PDA that has this little feature (my current PDA, a Palm Zire 72, instead has a voice recorder button that I never use, and scrolling has to be done with the navigational 5-way button.)
Does anyone know of a modern PDA that has such a thing?
I got a Blackberry 8100 a.k.a Pearl and I use it to read eBooks. The screen is quite nice and unlike other blackberries it has a pretty unique scroll wheel. It’s not really a scroll wheel, but rather a… glowing dry hardrened clitoris that acts as a trackball in two dimensions. The best scrolling apparatus I have seen on a portable device today if you can get over the Freudian implications of it.
Heh… wow, I really want to have that phone at some point. Althought it looks like the trackball thingy is on the front, and I was more looking for something with the scrolly-device on the side. Though, the trackball does look to be much better located on the Pearl than the nav button is on my Palm (kinda akward to hold the palm in one hand while using my thumb to manipulate a button near the bottom edge, yaknow?).
Yeah I know, I am a side-scroll fanatic as well. For instance, I do not own an iPod first and foremost because the interface seems backwards to me. If you’re going to make a wheel like that, put the wheel on top and the screen at the bottom - what kind of thumb dexterity do they expect me to have? But I tried the Pearl and I instantly fell in love with the scroll ball - when sitting in my hand it is exactly thumb level - not too high and not too low. I suggest you drop by a store and play with one.
I got mine for $50 + 2 years of my soul to T-Mobile from Amazon.com before Christmas. I don’t know if that is available in your area or if the sale is still going on. Unlimited data was $19.99 a month on top of the plan which comes in handy since I finally found a smartphone where I can enter in a four page e-mail without tiring out my hand (full key mini-qwerty must die). I guess to be honest I can do that with Graffiti but that seems to be kept out of the Treo line.
Hm… does it have WiFi and Bluetooth? I’m looking at the Palm TX because of those two combined features (Bluetooth is of course great if you happen to own a bluetooth keyboard like I do, Wi-Fi great because Bluetooth isn’t good for much other than using a wireless keyboard and an earset.)
It has bluetooth, and it’s a 2.5G cell phone (EDGE ~ 256Kbps). It does not have Wi-Fi, and I am not 100% sure it would work with a bluetooth keyboard (although, why not?) It does support bluetooth GPS and can do live google maps and such if you have a data plan and a GPS receiver. It is much smaller than the Palm, so it might be in a different category for you (i.e. too small for regular PDA use). It’s just right for me though:
Palm TX: 3.08" W x 4.76" H x .61" D 149 grams with a 320 x 480 touchscreen
Pearl: 2.00" W x 4.20" H x 0.57" D 90 grams with a 240 x 260 screen + trackball/keyboard
As far as software there is several office and PIM packages for it, it syncs to Outlook, supports Outlook push (if you have access to a BES server) otherwise it supports e-mail push over regular data plan (My gmail hits my blackberry before it hits my actual gmail inbox). For eBooks there are several viewers including PDF and MobiPocket.