pda - hand held thingies????

travelling_light

:snow_laug Can anyone give me advice. Have never owned such a thing but know my luvlie hubbie wd like one...am trying not to be 2 obvious so can anyone advise what to look for what to pay and where to source best deal?? :santa2:

brummybloke

well it is difficult unless you tell us what you want to use it for.

if it is for sat nav then the medion pocket pc is good value for money, it has sat nav software included and internal antena. it isnt the best pda but for the money and what you get with it it is very good.
i have seen it for about £230 somewhere on this board.
it obviously plays mp3 and movies and all other pda things also.

however it isnt very fast compaired to the latest things.

charlieheard

I've had four of them over the past 8 years - 2 palmpilots and 2 SonyEricsson ones combined into a phone (P800 & P910). The reason I originally bought one was to to use it to manage my diary, todo lists and contacts without a paper version, though I did use the odd game like Patience or Sokoban to while away the time on the train.

And to be honest, that's how I use my latest one most of the time, too. Having the address book as part of my phone is very useful, and it saves carrying round two pieces of electronics. It also acts as a backup if my home PC crashes and I lose Outlook. Having a camera, MP3 player, video player and all the other things are fun, but I don't find I ever use them regularly.

There's a format war out there with 3 main groups:

• Palm - the most technologically elegant for many years
• PocketPC - Micro$oft's version which is less elegant and needs more power, but is closer to a PC
• Symbian - grew out of Psion organisers and is now heavily owned by Nokia. It may be a future solution, but is not heavily used yet.

You could spends several hundred pounds and find that he never uses half the features. I would suggest going for a basic one for under £100. Once he's used it for a while and seen if it suits him, he can upgrade in a couple of years to one that will do all he wants.

travelling_light

thanks. it is really for a diary and notes etc...you know not for sat nav but I,ve seed palm zire i think and such like will explore these thank you

gustav

While we're on the subject (excuse me for hijacking the thread), but which is the best handheld toy for using excel spreadsheets?

nads

How about getting a phone with these features?

Or if you want to see how addicted to them he becomes, try a Palm Z1 as a basic ish one.

charlieheard

gustav wrote:

While we're on the subject (excuse me for hijacking the thread), but which is the best handheld toy for using excel spreadsheets?

The short answer is: none of them, AFAIK.

The long answer is: most PDAs now have software for viewing Excel spreadsheets, and many allow you to edit them, too. Due to memory considerations, the program won't be able to do everything you can do on the PC, which is why most people just use them for viewing. Another issue is the screen size of a PDA, which means that you can only see a few cells legibly (imagine working with a PC set to smaller than 640x480). So you can do it, but would you really want to?

gizmoleeds

I used to have one of those nice Psions with the fold out keyboards like this:



They don't seem to make them like that any more though, only the ones with just a screen and no real keyboard . The old ones were far nicer and easier to use.

nightswimmer

gizmoleeds wrote:

I used to have one of those nice Psions with the fold out keyboards like this:

They don't seem to make them like that any more though, only the ones with just a screen and no real keyboard . The old ones were far nicer and easier to use.

That's what really frustrates me. I have a Psion 3mx and it's keyboard is great, and the screen, although not colour, is big. The modern PDAs might be tiny in comparrison, and have colour screens, but when it comes to inputting text, they are so awkward. I have a Palm Tungsten E, and don't use it as much as I should (I thought it would replace the 3mx), simply because of how annoying it is to input a lot of text.

I notice that some of the more recent phone PDAs are beginning to go back to having a keyboard. This IMHO is a good thing.

charlieheard

If you want a keyboard, you can get PCs which are now the size of a Psion 3. You still have the problem of not having much screen real estate, and people want something they can carry around in their pocket instead of their briefcase, so fewer and fewer people buy them. You can get portable keyboards for most handhelds, but they are really only for lightweight road warriors

PDAs are now more popular as they can easily be carried everywhere: it's the market talking - if nobody buys them, people won't build them. I'm sure that they'll make a comeback in a few years with electronic paper and increases in processing power.

nightswimmer

charlieheard wrote:

If you want a keyboard, you can get PCs which are now the size of a Psion 3.

Yeah, the trouble is, they are expensive. So not really an option for the casual/non business user.

PDAs are now more popular as they can easily be carried everywhere: it's the market talking - if nobody buys them, people won't build them.

That's the thing though, they aren't as popular as they were, and sales haven't lived up to long term expectation. Sony has already pulled out of the PDA market, as have other companies, and Palm is building Microsoft based machines. IMHO part of the reason for this is people have been turned off by the input methods used.

I'm sure that they'll make a comeback in a few years with electronic paper and increases in processing power.

Hope so.