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PDA's: A Contrarian OpinionNov 14 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Sometimes the best PDA is no PDA. I've owned several, starting with a Palm Pilot Personal (back in '95, when Palm was owned by U.S. Robotics), then a Windows CE unit (a B-Com unit under the Uniden brand name), and finally a Palm III, which I ended up selling some four months after I bought it. The long and short of it is that I simply didn't find myself busy enough, or having lots of contact and other crucial information to justify owning a PDA. After all, I was largely deskbound at work, and most of the numbers I needed to remember I could carry in my head. Anything else I could look up in the phone book. I also found that it was a lot of work constantly synchronizing the unit to transfer data between the PDA and my PC. So was entering data using handwriting recognition or the on-screen keyboard. They were interesting little toys, to be sure, but ultimately of little value in my circumstances. In my estimation, a PDA makes sense if you have a really busy social or professional life, or are working in a job (like sales) where you are mobile and need to have all of your contacts and crucial product info, notes, etc. literally at your fingertips. Should you buy a PDA? Maybe this short series of questions will help you decide. 1. Are you very mobile in your job (eg. in route sales, traveling sales, IT sector?) 2. Do you need to carry more than 25 contacts (eg. names, phone numbers, addresses) with you at all times (or most of the time) and need to access them very easily and often? 3. Do you call more than ten of these contacts more than once per week? 4. Do you need to carry lots of notes and bits of information with you and find that they are too numerous/voluminous to be manageable with a paper-type organizer? 5. Do you have a very busy schedule (eg. have more than 3 appointments/things to do in any given day)? 6. Do you need some spreadsheet/database capability but find a laptop is too much for managing these tasks? 7. Are you likely to need to make notes or reminders more than three times per day, or covering more than three events per day? If you answered 'yes' to more than three of the above questions, a PDA is probably a good purchase. Caveat: Many PDA's require purchase of add-on accessories (eg, wireless e-mail interfaces, MP3 players, Compact Flash adaptors). These are often expensive and can push the total price of a PDA to something approaching a good used/budget laptop. Accordingly, scale your PDA purchase to what you need to do. If all you need is contact/scheduler/calculator/light note-taking functions and limited storage, a Palm M100 should suffice. For a device that requires a colour screen (probably good to have in sales), serious audio capability or near- laptop capability, any one of the newer 'Pocket PC' devices should do. For wireless e-mail and a limited number of PIM functions, the RIM 957 handheld looks like a good bet.  |
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