Features
Top 10 Reasons to Buy a PDA
According to the Chicken Littles out there, the sky has fallen
on the PDA market and it's dead.
As usual, Chicken Little is wrong. PDAs are alive and
well. Admittedly not as well as we'd like and not as well as this
marvelous category of tremendously useful little computers deserves,
but alive and well nonetheless. Many millions of Palms and Pocket
PCs are being sold every year. It's not the 60 or 80 million a
year that was once predicted, but it's still well over ten million,
depending on what definition of "PDA" one uses. That's a lot of
PDAs. Neither has the industry abandoned PDAs. Last year, Hewlett
Packard introduced more new Pocket PCs than ever before. The world's
#1 notebook seller, Dell, also introduced a number of interesting
new models. Palm continues to offer a good variety and low and
high end models, and with the LifeDrive introduced the first-ever
PDA with an internal hard drive. So here are, in descending order,
the Top Ten reasons to buy a PDA:
10.
BIG screens!
Original
PDAs like the Apple Newton MessagePad had massive screens measuring
5-1/2 inches diagonally. The MessagePad 2100 even had a 6-inch
display! Since today's PDAs are a lot smaller than those early
models, their displays are smaller, too. However, most still measure
3.5 inches diagonally, and some -- like that of the HP iPAQ 4700 -- are
a full 4 inches. Compare that with the displays of an average
cellphone! The screen on my Motorola flip phone is a minuscule
1.5 inches, barely larger than a postage stamp. In addition, almost
all PDA screens use "transflective" displays. That means they
combine the best of a "transmissive" indoor screen (transmissive,
because the LCD screen lets the light from the backlight through)
and a "reflective" outdoor screen (reflective, because it reflects
the sunlight and gives the screen great contrast). The tiny screens
on most cellphones, in contrast, are only transmissive, and some
still use ancient passive matrix technology. Finally, the latest
PDAs have high resolution 480 x 640 displays, which means almost
200 dots per inch. That's almost twice as many as in most notebook
displays!
9.
Carry your data with you
PDAs can easily synchronize with your desktop or notebook computer.
And this synchronization goes beyond just your calendar and contacts.
A modern PDA has enough storage to accommodate whatever documents
you want to carry with you, be they wordprocessing, spreadsheets,
presentations, pictures, or even video clips. I always carry a
number of my reference and personal documents with me, things
that I may need to look up when I am traveling, or stuff that
I simply like to have closeby. I also carry several dozen of my
favorite pictures on my PDA. Sure, you can stick a couple of your
favorite pics into your wallet, but there they get wrinkled and
damaged.
8.
Edit your documents
Few people will ever attempt to write The Great American Novel
on a PDA, though theoretically that's possible. However, lots
of people may want to proofread, change, or otherwise edit documents
on their PDAs, and that can easily be done. Both Palms and Pocket
PCs let you edit Word or Excel files. It's not as convenient as
doing it on a notebook, but it is possible. And the mere fact
that you can actually do useful work on a long flight, while sitting
in a waiting room, or just about anywhere else can do wonders
for your productivity. I've found that the only time I am truly
uninterrupted is when I am sitting in an airplane. And thanks
to my PDA, I've spent many productive hours proofing and editing
documents. Try that on a cellphone.
7.
Travel light
You can now buy very light and very thin notebooks, but with notebooks
it's always a trade-off. The trends towards ever larger screens
has offset the ability to travel as light as possible. There's
simply no way to make a 15 or 17-inch notebook that is not large
and bulky. And the very small and light ones often have cramped
keyboards, suffer from terrible battery life, get scorching hot,
or don't have some of the stuff you really need, like a DVD drive.
PDAs, on the other hand, are small enough to fit anywhere. Even
top-of-the-line models like the Palm LifeDrive or the HP iPAQ
4700 easily slip into any pocket. Which means they are simply
handier than a notebook. I've made many trips with just my PDA.
Sure I missed all the functionality of a notebook every now and
then, but I definitely didn't miss the bulk and weight!
6.
Entertain yourself
In
addition to being "Personal Digital Assistants" with useful business
functions, PDAs have always had their lighter side as well. Even
the original Newton had a many great games, and today's PDAs are
veritable mobile entertainment devices. You have your choice between
computer games that often rival (or exceed) dedicated console
games, high quality music, and even whole movies. While a PDA
is not meant to compete with iPods and portable DVD players, you
can easily store hundreds of songs and listen to them in very
high quality, and if you have a large enough storage card (or
a hard drive like in the Palm LifeDrive) you can watch video.
And I haven't even mentioned audio or e-books yet.
5.
Take notes wherever you are
Having
a PDA with you means never having to hunt for a scrap of paper
and a pen when inspiration strikes. And most PDAs let you record
notes in various ways. You can use them as voice recorders, usually
by just pushing a button. You can use electronic ink to scribble
something down. If you'd rather have your notes in text, you can
either use the onscreen keyboard or the PDA's character or handwriting
recognition. The latter doesn't work well for everyone, at least
not right off the bat, but once you get used to it it can be a
terrific productivity tool. I routinely take notes using handwriting
recognition on my PDA during meetings or even interviews. I'll
have to fix the mistakes later, but that's no worse (and usually
a lot quicker) than having to transcribe from a pad of paper or
a tape. I often find I can piece together all the notes I take
during, say, a tradeshow, which means I am halfway there to a
full report once I upload the notes to a laptop.
4.
Browse the web -- anywhere
The promise of being able to do web browsing on a PDA has been
there for years, but it was always a compromise. Perhaps you had
to use some special service that pre-processed web content, which
meant it wasn't really web browsing. Or you had to put up with
deadly slow downloads that taxed your patience. Or the browser
just wasn't up to the job of loading a modern webpage. Most of
those limitations are gone now. Web browsing on a PDA will never
be like browsing on a desktop or large notebook, but it's perfectly
acceptable now thanks to the larger VGA screens, faster processors,
more powerful browsers, and speedier wireless connections.
3.
GPS!
PDAs
make terrific mapping devices. Instead of spending thousands for
an in-car system or almost as much for a dedicated GPS/mapping
system, you can now simply get a PDA with either a built-in GPS
receiver or an external GPS puck that communicates with the PDA
via a Bluetooth (and sometimes a USB) connection. This way you
can take advantage of the latest mapping technologies while still
having a device that can do all the regular PDA stuff. Garmin
makes GPS-enabled PDAs based on both the Palm and the 
Pocket
PC platform. Many other vendors sell either GPS-PDAs or GPS packages
containing a receiver, PDA mounting hardware, mapping software,
and often a car charger.
2.
Use your PDA as a phone
Why get a smartphone when you can get a PDA with a phone? Terrific
combinations of PDA and phone functionality are available for
all major operating system platforms (Palm, Pocket PC, Symbian,
Linux, etc.). Unlike smartphones, PDA phones offer full PDA functionality
and they are usually premium phones as well. And the PDA and phone
sides are seamlessly integrated so that the phone, address book,
schedule and calendar all work together.
1.
Get your email on the road
Being able to get email wherever and whenever is doubtlessly the
greatest asset of a modern PDA. The mail clients have become very
sophisticated and most can easily handle even complicated mail
tasks (attachments, pictures, rules, multiple forwards, etc.).
If you have a PDA with built-in wireless data and WiFi, you can
get your email virtually anywhere, and it's no longer deadly slow.
-- HHC
staff
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