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core PDA requirements have remained the same over the years; I need a device
that can help me organise my work, my website and my writing. It needs to be portable enough such that I
take it pretty much everywhere I go and it needs to have a decent battery
performance, so that it works when I have it with me. You can read how I organise my life using my
PDA here.
Size and Weight
In
order for a PDA to be used, it needs to be portable - and this means it needs
to fit into pockets, handbags and hands relatively easily. It isn’t that I have my own handbag but
Charlie does and it’s a great way of keeping the device safe! If the PDA isn’t small enough, it will likely
get left behind and thus defeats the point of owning it! It needs to be light enough such that I don’t
feel it dragging me down, too.
The
best compromise I have is for a device to be “shirt pocket friendly.” A few devices are small and light enough to be
carried about in a shirt top pocket such as the Palm Vx and the m515.
Many modern PDAs are either too heavy or
too large to be truly comfortable in this pocket.
The
larger devices are perhaps suit pocket friendly, which is intrinsically less
portable.
Once
you have a small enough PDA to take with you everywhere, it also needs to have
sufficient battery uptime so as to keep working for as long as you need
it.
Functionality
Finally,
once you have a compact enough device with sufficient battery power, it needs
to be functional! This means that the
screen must be legible, the device should be easy to operate, it must be stable,
reliable and there must be an easy means of getting the information off the
device and into the desktop computer.
Wireless Email Connectivity
This
isn’t yet a requirement for my own private device because my work-sponsored
unit, well it isn’t mine, I merely use it...
The Compromises
Of
course, there are compromises involved with the three above - what is to one person
an acceptable battery performance may be unacceptable to another! Some people only require the more basic
functionality whereas other individuals require all of the bells and whistles. Some of more dedicated geeks amongst us will
put up with a chunky PDA if is has a certain “must have” feature.
To
a point, the smaller and thinner the device the better. Of course, the smaller the device, the more
compromises that creep into the design - if the device is too small, the screen
becomes tiny and difficult to use. Also,
whilst smaller devices use smaller screens with lower power requirements their
case designs can only fit smaller batteries.