PDA help

[amiabilita]

Hi,
I'm thinking of getting a PDA or PALm or anything of that sort.
for one,
Any suggestions?

[caribiner23]

It depends on what you want to do with it and how much you are willing to spend.

I've been using Palm organizers for about five years. I switched after using a (paper) DayTimer for a long time.

I like the Palms because they are inexpensive, intuitive, and very simple to use. In my opinion, a PDA should be as simple as possible.

I use Outlook at work, and if I wanted to sync with it the software for doing that is included. I actually prefer the Palm Desktop software, which you load on your PC.

I have no need to listen to MP3s, watch movies, look at graphical images, or anything elaborate, so this suits me fine.

The fact that I have 5 years' worth of stuff on a Palm and I am not to keen on retyping everything is also a factor. :)

My latest Palm is an m105, which cost me something like $65 after rebates at Office Depot.

[amiabilita]

my budget.. i guess that's somthing prettyflexible
is there one where you don't have to learn to write the specific caligraphy for PDAs?

my main purpose is to use it as a daily reminder .. monthly calandar .. but it'd be nice to have other extras..
maybe I should find out more about these things,
where on line could i read about the popular ones nowadays?

[Tommy Boomfiger]

Originally posted by amiabilita
my budget.. i guess that's somthing prettyflexible
is there one where you don't have to learn to write the specific caligraphy for PDAs?

my main purpose is to use it as a daily reminder .. monthly calandar .. but it'd be nice to have other extras..
maybe I should find out more about these things,
where on line could i read about the popular ones nowadays? the special language for palm os handhelds is called Graffiti. its very similar to english letters except for a few letters and its not very hard to learn at all. my dad tried it a few days ago and learned it fairly well in a few minutes.

now before i start with my suggestions i should tell you i use a sony clie (palm os), but i dont feel that i am biased toward it.

as for which pda to get if you are only going to do scheduling and keeping phone numbers and addresses go for a palm os handheld. i suggest sony as they have models in almost every price range which have the best options. the only downside to sony is that they only use thier proprietary memory stick format. so if you use cf, sd or some other type of expansion card regularly (such as with a camera, mp3 player or something) you might want to look at other options. sony handheld range in price from $150 to 600

now if you want to do more things like word processing and excel spreadsheets you might want to look into a pocket pc handheld. they usually have better integration with windows os's and they use handwriting recognition instead of graffiti. to some they are more difficult to use so you might want to try one out at a store before buying it. if you are going for wireless internet, IMO ppc handhelds are better in this area right now. the next implementation of palm os should fix that.

generally ppc are bigger than palm os handhelds while palm os trumps it in battery life. ppc color screens are usually better with the exception of most sony screens. ppc's usually start at around $400 but there are always deals to be found, some good ones can be found under 200 bucks.

there are more things to look at, but you need to tell us more details on what you are looking to do with the things.

[caribiner23]

and its not very hard to learn at all

I'll second that. The key to graffiti it that you have to remember certain letters are different. And it helps to write big.

Here (http://users.zipworld.com.au/~rmills/images/graffiti.jpg) is a guide. It's a lot easier than it appears here.

:cool: