Sorry folks, technological dingbat checking in here.
What’s a PDA?
Is this the same thing I’ve heard called a “palm pilot”?
Can someone link me to a site with one please.
I googled it, and saw some palm pilots. I think they were palm pilots.
I’ve been thinking of getting a palm pilot, but now I think I oughta get a PDA for some reason.
FWIW, I would like to organize appointments, write notes, and record (construction) field measurements. Is a CAD function too much to ask?
Sorry for the hijack, but I’ve just started seeing this “PDA” acronym bandied about a bit lately.
PDA = personal digital assistant.
Palm Pilots are one type of PDAs.
BTW, PDAs come in many, many levels of price and complexity, depending on what you need. Since I’m only interested in reading/writing plain text I have no need for a color screen or sound capabilities or wireless internet or built in telephone or camera etc, etc. So I’m perfectly happy with a Palm3xe that I bought refurbished for about $50.
If you DO need all the bells and whistles you might be talking ten times that. There are two main schools of thought on buying PDAs:
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Figure out what you need, and don’t waste money buying features you don’t. Your PDA will eventually need replacing (broken, lost, your needs change) and THEN you can buy the added capacity for probably less than buying it now.
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Buy top of the line to start with. You won’t have a good idea of what you need until you discover what you can do when you own one. If you’re going to want that built in interenet capabilities, better to pony up $400 now instead of buying a $200 one and then replacing it with a $400 one in a few months.
Nope.
But it is a pretty neat gadget.
I like mine - and I’m so disorganized, post-it notes would be several steps up (daytimers? get real). I don’t need it, I can live with out it, (I’d miss it) but I really do like it.
My boss lost his PDA the other week. Gone. Put it in his bag, and… well, there it went. Thanks to the magic of synchronization, his replacement picked up his old settings and phone numbers. Boom, done.
That’s one reason. One BIG reason.
They also let you play video games and read books while you’re in meetings and still look like working.
Also, I keep my RPG stuff on it. Die roller, Player’s Handbook, DM’s Guide, Monster Manual, Character Sheet generator.
You know, I really wanted a PDA, and then a friend who was upgrading GAVE me his old one.
I have found absolutely no use for it whatsoever. I could see it being useful if I travelled often, but I don’t.
Seriously, Johnny, if you can think of a good reason to use one, you can HAVE mine. It’s a 3Com Palm 3 – I have no clue how powerful it is, but it came with a keyboard to plug into, the manuals and some software.
Thank you very much StarvingButStrong.
I can see uses for one in my career.
Johnny, I’m convinced, if that matters to you. I’m going to get one.
A generous offer, Boyo Jim; but I still don’t see that I need one. I can see that they are useful, and if I were given one for free I can see if it’s useful to me. But I’d hate to accept a gift and then just have it gather dust. Thanks, though! 
Thank you Violet.
That’s the boat I’m in. I didn’t ask for it, it just ahowed up out of the blue in the mail, and I haven’t found a single practical thing to do with it. Actually, I haven’t even found any really impractical things to do with it either, as I have too many other toys to play with. These days, I’m pacticing docking my remote control blimp to the living room lamp.
I’m sure I’ll find a practical use for THAT. 
E-books.
You changed your location, Johnny. 'Zat mean you don’t like water nommore?
I’m one of those who wants a PDA. But I’m not going to be surfing the 'Net or checking e-mail on it, or playing games. I’m slightly interested in e-books, but not a whole lot. Heck, I don’t even want a color PDA.
What I do want a PDA for is to keep track of:
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The names, birthdates, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of my friends and family.
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My food and household item shopping list, and the list of books I want to check out at bookstores, libraries, or used bookstores. Around the holidays or for other special events, the lists of gifts I’ve given to and received from others comes in handy.
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Random notes, and various reminders to check out software prices, to get birthday cards, to pay the rent, to call my parents, etc.
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The addresses and hours of the places my roomie and I hang out and the theaters we’ve been to. We’ve been to a dozen different theaters in the last year, and it’d be nice to keep track of each one’s address and phone number, what chain it belongs to, what movies we’ve seen there (so we can remember if the theater sucks or not), and so on.
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My online account usernames, passwords, and what info I’ve supplied each company with. I have accounts with tons of online companies, and I’ve been using index cards to track them. But index cards get lost, or put out of order, and show signs of age and wear.
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[tmi] My menstrual cycle. I’ve never tracked it before, and considering I’m no 28-day-er, I’d like to know what pattern, if any, it follows.
It’s not that it’s not easier to grab a piece of paper to write these things down, or that I can’t memorize numbers. It’s just that there are a lot of things I want to keep track of, and I’d like them to all be located in one location. Sometimes a pen or piece of paper isn’t handy. And sometimes the thing I want to remember isn’t something I bothered to memorize because I never needed it until then.
I actually have a paper organizer, and I’ve had it for 10 years now. I love it. For me, it’s not so much that I’m a paper organizer or a gadget organizer. I just figure that as long as I’m going to be carrying an organizer around anyway, I’d rather have the lighter one that’s more likely to stay organized. And that’d be the PDA.
The biggest benefit I have found to having a PDA over other organizing things (daytimers, calendars on the fridge, bulletin boards, address books, etc.) is that the PDA is very portable and lightweight.
Personally, I like the alarm functions the best. I can set my PDA to alert me five days before my friends’ birthdays, but I don’t have to write in a separate entry on two calendar pages - I merely note the birthdate then tell the PDA to alert me five days prior, then I can get a card into the mail. Plus, I do not have to copy dates year to year - I just set them to repeat themselves.
For the address book function, I can easily change the information without scratching out the old info - when someone gets a new phone number, I can enter it, neat and tidy.
I also like that it has a “look up” function - I enter my doctor’s name and I get not only his phone number, but a list of appointments I have with him, the prescriptions he’s issued me and my insurance information.
I like having an “everything” organizer that slips into my pocket, AND gives me Bejeweled or Spellbound to play with while I’m in waiting rooms.
This is in no way an endorsement of PDAs (really, if you aren’t sure you need one, then you probably don’t), but I just have to say that I don’t know how I got along so long without one.
The biggest reason I got one was that my office does all scheduling via Outlook, so getting a PDA seemed like the easiest way to keep my schedule, meetings, assigned tasks, etc. all organized when I’m not at my desk. I didn’t go top of the line or anything. I picked up Visor Neo at Target for $100 (about a year and a half ago). Nothing fancy.
What I found, though, was that this thing had a jillion uses that I kept discovering. The main things I use it for are:[ul][li]Synching up with Outlook in the office. Pretty basic. The only reason I bought the thing really.[/li][li]Pocket Quicken. I don’t know how I managed without this. I keep track of all my bank stuff on it. I never even use my check book register anymore. And it all synchs up with the Quicken on my home computer with the touch of a button.[/li][li]Keeping personal and family information. So easy with this thing. Never again will I be filling out a form at the doctors office and not have that one piece of information. I have everything in my Visor. Kids’ vaccination records, allergies, doctors’ names, social security numbers, insurance numbers. Relatives’ birthdates. Clothing sizes. Every login name and password for the bazillion different computer systems and web sites I use at work or home. [/li][li]Address book. All my family and friends, every single telephone extension for eveyone in my company, directions to people’s houses, etc.[/li][li]Notes that I may (or may not) need some day. I use the note feature like crazy. I have note files on everything from video game hints to movies I want to rent to school information to work information I don’t want to forget.[/li][li]Shopping list. I use Handyshopper (it’s free!) to do all my grocery shopping, Xmas lists, etc. and it is always with me so if I find myself in Target I can whip out my Visor and see that, oh yeah, I need to buy dishwasher detergent.[/ul]Plus there is all the other non-essential stuff that is just kinda cool to have. Games, kids’ pictures, alarm clock, calculator, measures converter (need to convert temperatures, distances, ounces to grams? piece o’ cake).[/li]
Best hundred bucks I have ever spent.
Well, aside from the obvious neat and tidy address book\calendar record-keeping, I use my iPaq for the following:
Meeting notes: I use a Stowaway keyboard to take notes at meetings, which is much faster (and easier on the hands) than the on-screen keyboard, Graffiti, etc. When I’m done, all I need to do to share them with my team is pop the iPaq in its cradle and pretty the notes up in Word. 5 minutes later, everyone has a copy.
Listening to music: With my 256MB compact flash card, I can listen to hours of music. My iPaq reproduces 48kbps WMA files really well, so I can put up to 10 hours of music on the card. And with the iPaq’s screen turned off, I can listen for around 14 hours on a single charge.
Watch TV\Movies: My PC has an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder card, which includes an TV tuner. With the enclosed software, I can set it to record TV shows, which I can encode via batch file to a WMV format my iPaq likes. Sure, it’s not as good as watching A DVD on a laptop, but then again, my PDA fits in my jacket pocket which a laptop simply cannot do.
Watch TV (part2): scr4 mentioned AvantGo, which I use as well. But MS has a new feature for PocketPCs called Sync and Go, which is similar to AvantGo but is video and audio based. I put my iPaq in its cradle and the latest MSNBC newscast, NPR newscast and Daily Show highlights are downloaded to my PDA.
Pocket Streets: Kind of a resource hog and not really “fast” enough to be useful whilst driving, but is nevertheless handy if you’re visiting cities for business. It’s not like maps of Somerset, KY or Linwood, NJ are available at every convenience store in Charlotte.
Playing Games: I have the original Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, Dig Dug and other (legal) ROMs (from the MS Enterpainment Pack) on my iPaq. You’d be amazed at how often you have just enough time to kill that these games come in really handy.
Oh, I still like water. I just change my Location from time to time, usually putting in a non sequitur. Or not.
I just remembered… I got an electronic address book back in the late-1980s (I think). I dutifully transcribed all of the important addresses from my paper address book into it. Then I never used it again. It was quicker just to grab the notebook one. My notebook address book has pockets where I can stuff notes, my motorcycle registration and insurance certificates (in case I get pulled over), bills I need to pay, etc.
You know, if you had a PDA, you could jot down location field ideas whenever one struck you. You wouldn’t have to make mental note of it and risk forgetting it. You could just whip out your stylus and list whole bunches of them at a time.
Well, let me describe the various ways my precious (PDA, I meant) has benefited me -
o An neverending notebook with readability text. For someone with ugly handwriting like me, it is a boon to be able to take notes with perfect handwriting for once (no matter how slow). With practise you can write on the PDA quite fast, slightly slower than you could with a pen and paper. Also, unlike paper notebook, you won’t have to deal with running out of paper.
o Semi-Permanent Record. How many times have I searched for a phone number in an address book saying “It’s here! It’s here!” only to realise it is in another address book?
o Cool stuff to bring with you. I have a dice-roller (the type used to play D&D) on my PDA, some games (to kill time), a calculator, a Bible on my PDA. Helps to minisme space and you never know when you need a D20
o Image. As an IT professional, the PDA helps the reinforce the image that I am IT-savvy, high-tech and ready to take on your computer woes ;-D
I still prefer my notebook. No, not notebook computer, mine is made of paper with lines on it. I make it into an agenda, one week per page, and make notes throughout. The organizational system is perfect for me: as time progresses, notes that are still relevant (‘to-do list’ items that haven’t been done, for instance) are moved up. I never have trouble finding anything. But I feel that if I had something electronic, I would forever be trying to remember where I had filed something or how I had named it. I find it much easier to just flip through pages (remembering ‘Oh, I wrote it in red pen’ or ‘it was around the time of that conference on snails’ or ‘she had that party at the end of February, so I wrote the directions to her house on that page’ or whatever).
Just my preference. Also I prefer reading things from paper than from screens, it’s easier on my eyes, and handwriting provides a nice variety from Times New Roman.