![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
At the risk of having you all do what Cam did and stare at me seriously and then ask "Alright, what have you done with the real Sophie?", I'm thinking of buying a pda, probably this one. But since I've never owned one before, and Cam just had a dodgy Palm ages ago, do any of you past-or-present pda purchasers have any advice?
It's mainly to hold text files with all the procedures for work (since there's a lot, many of which aren't written down anywhere and change constantly), lists of things to buy and do, contact details, bus and train timetables, and writing down my Brilliant Ideas as I have them. I'd have gone for this one but you can't organise your files into folders, and labelling them into categories just isn't the same. Also, no downloading things off the internet, where's the fun in that?
And now, work.
It's mainly to hold text files with all the procedures for work (since there's a lot, many of which aren't written down anywhere and change constantly), lists of things to buy and do, contact details, bus and train timetables, and writing down my Brilliant Ideas as I have them. I'd have gone for this one but you can't organise your files into folders, and labelling them into categories just isn't the same. Also, no downloading things off the internet, where's the fun in that?
And now, work.
Tags:
no subject
HP PDA
Just a warning. My current employer just bought 20 hp hx2490b pda's. After they had bought them and given them to IT to test we found out they had a problem, that when the sd card was put in the slot the pda's would not power up and the battery would drain quickly. HP have a hotfix out for the problem but I would advise asking about it when you buy the PDA, because some of the newer models have the hotfix already installed. Apparently it is caused by Windows Mobile 5.0 and affects a wide range of PDA's, just not HP's. Besides that little glitch the HP PDA's have been very easy to use and reliable.
Michael Schenberg
Re: HP PDA
no subject
no subject
no subject
- The amount of internal memory turned out to be irrelevant - when a 1GB SD card is AU$60, there's essentially no difference between 16MB onboard and 128MB onboard.
- On Palm you can only read PDFs which have been converted on a PC first. I don't know about the Windows based PDAs. Just copying to the handheld doesn't cut it. Acrobat for Palm only has 2 zoom levels (zoomed or not zoomed), so most bus timetables are a pain to use.
- Not having the ability to open the handheld's memory as a removable drive, or to organise files in that memory in folders was very annoying (I was used to being able to do so with WinCE). Once I bought an SD card and a card reader that became mostly no longer a problem (although some thing expect their documents to be copied across as part of a sync, rather than just put on the memory card - see PDF comment above).
- Battery life is really really important. The T3's sucks.
- I can no longer function without having my schedule on me all the time.
- 98% of my use is contacts, schedule, a Swedish-English dictionary, writing myself quick notes (very handy for copying recipes) and (before the headphone jack broke) listening to music. (I used to also read ebooks on the bus, 320x480 is a perfectly good resolution to do that.) With this use it doesn't matter how good the processor is.
- The T3 has a slider, so it's either a square 320x320 screen (write anywhere on the screen) or, if opened out a 320x480 with the bottom 1/3 either a dedicated writing area or just extra screen space. I almost never bother opening it, 320x320 is enough the majority of the time.
- I do have a folding keyboard like that described by
- For me a hard case is absolutely vital. I carry my PDA in my pocket everywhere, I managed to crack the screen of my last PDA (for which I didn't have a cover) doing so. I've had the current one for 2 years and the only damage is some scratches on the case, nothing on the PDA.
- Screen protectors (that is to say a clear plastic sticker over the screen) are my friend. Looking at how scratched up my protectors get just from the stylus, I don't want to think about what the screen would look like by now.
- I did have plans for keeping my email synchronised on my PDA so I'd always have easy access to it. Doing this over bluetooth turns out to be a pain in the neck, so I don't bother. With WiFi it would be much easier.
no subject