PDA's: A Contrarian Opinion
Nov 14 '00
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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Epinions.com ID:
desyner
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Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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