I have a Palm m125. The cradle plugs into my computer’s USB port. I’m looking to upgrade my Palm and a feature I’d sure like is being able to plug a USB device into the PDA. While I like Palm, I’d not say no to a Pocket PC. I’d like to plug my USB GPS into the PDA (AOK?)
Don’t think there’s actually any PDA out there that will let you do this; it would require drivers for the device to run under PalmOS or WinCE - neither of which woould be available.
I think the closest you’re going to get to doing something like this is on one of those really small devices that is still actually a proper PC; something like the OQO or a subnotebook PC like the Toshiba Libretto.
Otherwise, you might find a linux PDA that has USB; some of the devices on this page seem to.
I haven’t seen a PDA that supports USB peripherals, but the current batch of Palms (including the T3, T5, Lifedrive, Treo 650/700, E2, and T/X) support a pretty wide range of bluetooth peripherals. I’ve seen headsets, keyboards, and GPS navigators, to name a few.
AFAIK there are no PDAs that support USB devices. Each usually have their own hardware devices, usually Compact Flash (for many WinCE machines) or SDIO (for everything else) devices. There are a number of SDIO-based GPS units that I am aware of that are available for either WinCE or Palm.
Your alternative would be to buy a Garmin iQue. It is primarily a GPS navigation device but it runs on PalmOS, and thus has all of the features therein.