PDA
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lthough my daily use of a PDA
varies, it is almost always at least thirty minutes a day, and usually closer
to a two hours, spread over a number of different environments. I don’t like to have to think about my PDA’s
battery level during the working week - but instead I would rather simply use
it from Monday through Friday, as much as I want, and then worry about charging
it up or replacing the batteries at the weekend.
Of course, this doesn’t always
work quite as planned. Most modern PDAs
with internal rechargeable batteries are reputed to be designed for frequent
charges, i.e. you keep the transformer plugged in to the cradle so every time
you synchronise the device, you’re also topping the battery up. This is great for when you have the
opportunity to synchronise your device, but in DervMan Headquarters, power
sockets are at a premium and so if a device isn’t needed, it’s unplugged. This means that it’s highly likely that I
have to plan to plug in a certain charger, and unplug something else.
Over the five years that I’ve used
PDAs, I’ve come to the conclusion that I start to struggle with any PDA that
has a battery life of a 
comfortable ten hours.
Once battery uptime gets below six hours or so, I start to get
frustrated with the device. Enter the Tungsten T3, an otherwise excellent device.
With this kind of battery
performance, I can use my PDA as my only computer for that day and it’s still
going in the evening.
My PDA use tends to flatter those
devices with transflective screens, i.e those that do not require the backlight
to be producing a stronger light than ambient, including almost all monochrome
devices (with the exception of a few Sony Clié devices). The majority of my use of the PDA at the
office is under fluorescent tube lighting, precisely the conditions where
transflective screens can dispense with the backlight.