How Do I Test Them?

Dervy Details the PDA Testing Routine

I

will admit, getting my hands on the PDAs that I’ve reviewed for www.pda.dervman.com hasn’t always been easy. First, I had to convince Charlie that it was a sensible idea for me to acquire another device. Then I had to acquire it, and because most of them were bought, they had to be paid for. And of course, try as I might, even I cannot justify having eighteen Palms dotted around the house. Well, six, or is that seven, at once – a bit excessive, even for me!

Mind you, hiding the devices about my office with an alarm set and watching everybody panic, now that was fun with seven of them!

Almost all tests are going to be biased in some form or another. An example is battery uptime tests by using an application, or a test bench in a laboratory somewhere - this will give you a rather clinical battery uptime measurement. At the time of writing, all of the devices I’ve had the opportunity of reviewing have had an effective battery endurance that can be measured in days. Admittedly, days of my use, of course, and although I typically use my primary device for two or three hours a day, it can vary. However, my tests are as real as it gets, and if you use your PDA as I use mine, you should get a similar battery life.

Because of this, when I set about to review a particular PDA, I need to live with it for several weeks as my primary PDA to see how I get along with it.

Although first impressions of a PDA do count for something – how many users bought their Palm V on account that it was cute and small? – I’m more interested with how well the device fits into my life. Sometimes a device that, on first impression is excellent, doesn’t live up to the true potential - or vice-versa.

The PalmOS devices are all synchronised with my regular machine (once a desktop and now a notebook), either via serial, USB or, for some devices, via Bluetooth. They’re all used for my usual daily PDA duties - taking notes, writing email, establishing tasks, work load prioritising, so on and so forth. The review of the device is usually entirely written on that particular machine, too - even if it is usually formatted on the desktop.

So far, I’ve always been able to get a new device to synchronise with a desktop computer. And because I always keep at least one other device as a backup unit, just in case, I’ve never had to actually rely on the backup unit with the exception of the primary unit running out of power (which has occasionally happened, especially with the Palm m130).

With regard to screen protectors, where possible I’ll use one, and at the very least I’ll use some transparent tape over the Graffiti (or text entry) area. This is primarily because if I’m taking a lot of notes, I’ll often enter over 10,000 characters in a single day! This is why, on occasion, photographs of the devices may show a dodgy looking, scratched and scuffed Graffiti area. This isn’t by design!