I am ignorant about PDAs so forgive me if I ask a few questions about their capabilities. What I want to do is read the files I have saved on my flash drive on a small screen that I can lay back and read. Reading massive amounts of text sitting upright in front of a computer screen is very uncomfortable for me.
What I have saved on my flash drive is mainly the saved text from web pages, stored as “HTML only” so I have the word content of web pages but no pictures. So I want to plug my FD into a PDA and read the text from my stored web page articles and essays.
Can I do this and if so what kind PDA would you recommend?
PDAs are kind of small for reading, but you might consider the Sony Reader, which is a new electronic book product and which can support Memory Sticks or SD cards.
I’m not aware of any PDA that can accecpt a normal, USB flash drive. The reason being that PDAs aren’t capable (or, at least, aren’t programmed to be capable) of being a USB host.
However, most of them accept some kind of smaller memory card, usually SD or micro SD (though any Sony branded one will use Sony Memory Stick.)
Not entirely true. There is a more recent Windows Mobile 5 device (can’t recall which one) that has a USB host and a single Mini-A USB port built-in. There is also a product for the Dell Axim X50-series PDAs that gives you a single USB port plus USB host that can be used to conect up to 4 devices, including Flash drive. The only problem is that it uses the CF port and you can only use one flash drive at a time. Not that this is a serious problem.
Personally I find the Dell Axim X50v and X51v a good PDA for reading. It’s a VGA device with a 3.7" TFT screen and can employ ClearType font smoothing to provide nice-looking text. It’s also great for movies.
Many PDAs that accept SD cards and so on can be used as a flashdrive / card reader either natively or via software. I use a program called Cardreader on my Palm for just that reason. Sit the PDA on its cradle, run the app, tap the connect button and it comes up as a drive. Then I just drag and drop whatever files I want - .mp3, .avi, ebooks and what have you.
PDAs are fine for reading on and it’s nice to be able to read in the dark because of the backlight. Can’t really recommend a specific model for you, but get one with a decent sized screen. If you want a PalmOS device, that would be the TX or Lifedrive. Don’t know much about Win Mobile devices, bar the fact that I want an Axim X51v.
