PDA Protection

O

kay, so you’ve bought yourself a new PDA - be it off eBay or brand new in a shop. You get it home, you fiddle about with it, you synchronise it with the desktop, and then you put it in your bag or pocket and take it everywhere with you.

But what about protecting your investment?

Some PDAs do appear to be rather more designed for living than others. The beautiful Palm m515 and Palm Vx have very sleek, small cases with relatively large screens, and to be frank they look superb. However, these “executive” PDAs are also rather more vulnerable compared to the likes of the Palm m130, which appears to be designed to survive everyday life. I suppose this is simply because the rather more upmarket PDAs are designed to spend their lives tucked away in a leather pouch, in a briefcase, whereas the m130 can be literally tossed into a bag or stuffed into a pocket.

The stylus that came with your PDA is going to be soft enough to not scratch the screen and if you use it without any form of protection, it’ll always be a little bit of grit or dust on the tip of the stylus that will scratch your screen. Study any used PDA with a writing area that has not had any protection and you’ll likely notice that it has a few tiny little scratches on this spot. These are unlikely to be to the detriment of the unit’s working, but they’re “aesthetically challenging.” They make the PDA look used!

Finally, most PDAs have at least a rudimentary password protection system designed to stop unauthorised users from accessing your data. It’s also true that the standard security of PDAs is rather limited - if somebody is determined enough to access your data, they will - so there’s a strong case for bolstering the standard security.

The Case for a Case

There are two main types of case - a hard case and a soft case. As you might expect, hard cases provide rather more physical protection whereas soft cases are less protective. Some hard cases do not allow the device to be used whilst in the case whereas most do.

The classiest soft cases are made of genuine leather and include space for business or memory cards, with cut outs for connectors, infrared ports and the stylus.

Some PDAs don’t really need a case; they have a protective flap for the screen and buttons and a tough plastic or metal case. Examples of devices that come with adequate protection for many users include the Compaq iPAQ H3950 and H3970 and the Palm m130.

Screen Protectors

At the very least, I always protect the writing area of any PDA I’m going to review. This seemingly obsessive behaviour simply stems from my experience with the Palm IIIxe, whereby I managed to scuff and scratch the Graffiti area in a remarkably short space of time.

For the more valuable devices, I buy a dedicated screen protector. Although using one of these does tend to blunt the screen image and can perhaps make it somewhat fuzzy, it does mean that I don’t have to meticulously ensure that my stylus is clean and free from dust before applying it to the screen anywhere.

Screen protectors are usually held in place by static rather than glue. Many are washable and reusable, so if you don’t get it on properly the first time you can always wash off the dust and grit that accumulates and try again. There is an art to getting the screen protectors on without getting bubbles under the darned thing, but sadly I don’t quite have the knack and it usually takes a few attempts to get it on. Once it’s on, I don’t care if it’s washable or not, it’s staying put!

Password Protection

All of my devices have the very basic operating system password, which to be fair is only going to stop the most rudimentary attempt to gain access to the data. At this juncture, I’m currently testing a number of security applications. However, with regard to security, prevention is always better than cure, and the most basic form is to simply prevent the bad guy from getting access to your device.