It’s my birthday and my SO offered to buy me a PDA. I am not convinced that I need one, and would hate for him to spend the money if I won’t use it much. I am attending college full time. I know I can store addresses and such with a PDA, but I have a day planner that does the same thing. I suppose I can keep track of assignments, but again the day planner (and my brain) do a pretty good job of that. I love electronic gadgets, so having another sounds like fun, but do I really need one? And what other things can I do with one, besides keeping track of stuff? Play games?
If I do decide to get one, I’ll probably get a Sony so I can use my memory sticks. I really don’t need a phone or camera PDA, but wireless sounds nice since I have a wifi network here at home. Any other advice?
The Evil Empire™ (my employer) just gave me a Blackberry 7510 - it’s a Nextel Phone, PDA, Calculator, Bread Machine, and Internet Device. I’ve had it for a couple of months, and the novelty has worn off, so I’m sort of in the same boat you are. Except I’ve already got the thing. I’ve started plugging in reminders, calender events, and compulsively adding new contacts. I’m sure this new interest will wear off eventually, or once I’ve become completely reliant upon the device my employer will take it away from me.
Either way, it’s just another technological brick.
I used mine to play solitaire. And that’s pretty much it. I don’t really have anything to keep track of. (Thursday night - drink. Start time: 8pm End time: 2am). I guess I should have sold mine while it still had some value (I have an old Palm V, and an Ipaq).
I absolutely live and die with my Treo 270. It is my phone, my gameboy, all addresses and phone numbers, I often us it as an alarm clock, it keeps my appointments, tracks my business expenses, and maintains random notes on just about any topic. It tracks multiple time zones so I don’t annoy friends and family by calling at inappropriate times. The only thing I would add to it is an MP3 player.
When my last Treo died after some severe abuse, I didn’t think about it for a second to purchase an upgraded model.
I would be lost with my PDA (Dell PocketPC), but that’s mostly because I rely on it extensively in my business. My partner and I photograph virtual tours for real estate agents. We typically schedule 4-7 photoshoots everyday. We use it to keep track of all our scheduled appointments and to keep contact info for all of the real estate agents we deal with. I know we could do the same thing with an old-fashioned day planner, but what I love about my PDA is that it gives us the ability to move things around on our calendar as appointments get cancelled and/or rescheduled. To do that with a day planner would mean lots of erasing and rewriting of information, and that to me seems to be a waste of time and effort.
The other thing I love about using the PDA is that it gives me the ability to download information from a mileage tracking application we have on it into an Access database we use to track our business related vehicle mileage for tax purposes. Sure, all of these things could be accomplished with nothing more than paper and pen, but then so can most things we use computers for.
We just recently upgraded from a Palm III-C to the PocketPC, so I haven’t had a chance to see what other goodies will come in handy. But I’m intrigued by the possibilities of using Pocket Word and Pocket Excel to keep track of other stuff.
I understandyour hesitation, however i would find it hard to function without mine. I use mine to sync/store all the usual appointments and contacts etc and since my job requires me to travel a lot and this is a big help.
I have loads of MP3s loaded in and can kill a long delay in the airport lounge. I also have tons of eBooks loaded, so I never worry about lugging a book with me. (Since it is backlit can also read in the dark!)
I don’t really play any games on mine, however if you like card games like solitaire you will love a PDA.
Finally, if you are studying, there are some applications out there for taking notes during lectures and suchlike which sound pretty useful…
I bought a portable keyboard for about $70 and have been taking class notes on it for over two years. I type much faster than I write, and I get the impression that most of the SDMB is in the same boat, so this was a real boon for me - I didn’t have to shell out a grand and a half for a laptop.
I use mine to collect samples for my dust collection.
Seriously, my employer issued me one almost three years ago, and it’s been sitting in its “cradle” on my desk for about 99.999% of that time. I can’t get into using it, especially since I like to leave my job at the office.
I use my Personal Display of Affection for those times when I’m feeling particularly randy and…oh? PDA…, the computer thingy. Oh yeah. I use that for games and an Excel spreadsheet linked to my home pc. It keeps track of all the sheetmusic I have so when I’m scouring used bookstores I don’t buy duplicates.
I have a wireless CF card for mine, and a wireless broadband router on my home network… so I can lie in bed before going to sleep and access the SDMB at broadband speeds…
OMG, how sad am I? :eek:
Seriously though, they are great, and you may find yourself using it for things you didn’t anticipate… my wife is always bugging me to borrow it for shopping lists…
Thanks for all the opinions! So is Blackberry another word for wireless/phone? I am leaning against a phone enabled PDA since I have a Motorola v66 cell phone I love. I can stick it in my front pocket and I don’t even know it’s there - I can take it biking or out to the barn where I keep my horse - I don’t want to drag a PDA those places, my tiny cell phone works well for that. I probably wouldn’t use it to take notes - I’m an awful typist, I bet I max out at 20 words per minute + lots of typos. I don’t much like typing.
I could live without my Palm M105, but I wouldn’t want to. Apart from phone numbers, ToDo lists etc, I use it for keeping a diary and reading eBooks.
I’m a voracious reader and I find it incredibly handy, being able to have a half dozen novels in my jacket pocket. I’ve gotten used to the poor contrast on my B&W LCD screen and I feel it is offset by the portability factor, bookmarks and autoscrolling abilities that an eBook reader offers.
I am also a full-time student. My SO convinced my to buy one (Dell Axim) at the beginning of fall semester and now I’m wondering how I ever got along without it.
It particularly came in handy this year when we were buying our first house and I had to call at least 3 people a day. All the phone numbers were right there, I could make notes on our conversations and check my schedule at the same time.
I write down all my homework assignments. If I’m caught someplace waiting without a book (ha, that rarely happens) I can read some documents I have on my PDA or work on my lists. It’s fantastic.
I use mine for grocery shopping lists (often I remember we need something while on the go, but if I don’t write it down, I’ll forget it), lists of DVDs/CDs I’ve been wanting to buy, and other shopping stuff (like computer gear, brewing supplies). I put appointments in the calendar and phone numbers in the address book. I enter my travel information for my business trips so that I’ll have confirmation numbers, hotel phone numbers, and the like at my finger tips. I work in research, and use it to note followup appointments for subjects, as well as having a metric conversion application on it so that I can convert things like patient weight into kilograms when they tell me it in pounds. I play games on it while commuting on the train. If you bring it everywhere with you and train yourself to write something in it each time the opportunity arises, then it will be a huge help. I had no luck in doing this with a paper-based planner, but I like tech toys, and so I liked having my PDA with me and using it often.
I got a Palm Pilot about three years ago as part of a severance package from a layoff. I never used it ONCE while I was at the job.
But then I found a handy little program designed for shopping – I use it ALL the time for that since I always forget to pick up things at the store.
But the biggest use has been for my current job where I have to keep track of billable time with different clients. I found a freeware program that acts as a punch clock. All I have to do is tap which job I’m working on and it keeps track throughout the day. At the end of the week, when it’s time to enter hours into the corporate timekeeper all I have to do is look at a summary sheet and plug in the numbers. I used to have to go back through handwritten notes and tally up the numbers by hand. It ROCKS.
I use it extensively as a cooking timer.
One final, more fun use is a digital picture frame. It’s a simple matter to upload pictures to it and run a slideshow. It’s nice having unlimited pictures in my cube.
My PDA is a:[ul][li]Appointment calendar[/li][li]Address book[/li][li]Notepad[/li][li]Scratchpad (for drawings)[/li][li]Calculator[/li][li]MP3 player[/li][li]Video/movie player[/li][li]Digital voice recorder[/li][li]Photo album[/li][li]Word and Excel editor[/li][li]Star chart (which doubles as a solar compass)[/li][li]Expenses manager (a la Quicken or MS Money)[/li][li]Encyclopedia (you can also get Wikipedia for freeif you wished, though it takes a bit of work)[/li][li]Dictionary and thesaurus[/li][li]Shopping list (or any other list, actually)[/li][li]Unit converter[/li][li]Alarm clock, stopwatch, and count-down timer[/li][li]First-aid kit[/li][li]Cookbook[/li][li]Ruler[/li][li]WiFi web browser (though it’s not really very good at it)[/li][/ul]
Essentially, PDAs are now powerful enough to be small computers.
