I’v been using a freebie hand-me-down four year old m100, and I must say it has been handier than I thought it could be! So I’ve been wondering, what exactly is a PDA “conduit” and why the need for a new term? Do other computer peripherals such as digital cameras and mp3 players have “conduits” as well? If not, why not?
PDA Conduit is a trademarked term. Click here for the companies website. It looks like its just a software solution for connecting your PDA to company information.
For Palm PDAs, a “conduit” is a utility installed on the host PC and performs data conversion and synchronization. The Palm comes with standard conduits for transferring address, memo, ToDo and appointment data. If you install third party software on your Palm, you may need additional conduits. These are often included with those Palm software. That is, when you download a third party Palm software it may have two parts to it: the program you install on the PDA, and the conduit you install on the host PC.
Some of these conduits can be quite sophisticated. For example, I use AvantGo. This conduit accessees a pre-selected list of web pages, downloads the contents and converts them so you can read it on the Palm. I also used to use a currency conversion program whose conduit automatically downloaded the latest exchange rates from a server.
I think “conduit” is a Palm-specific term. I haven’t seen it used for other PDAs, let alone other types of peripherals.