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PDA's Do You Have One, and Which One Do You Have?

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NFS4: i was looking to get one (one trip to CompUSA and about 20min of play time and i was hooked 😛, where did you buy yours? Wherever I look on the net they are either "out of stock" or charge a retail price or higher for it $499+ :| which i absolutly refuse to pay
 
Palm IIIxe. Thought I lost it last night, that would have sucked. It's the only way I remember to do anything anymore.
 
i bought a Psion Revo a month or so ago at $360. Epoc operatin system, lovely screen, lovely keyboard, and lovely form. Im sick of talking about the differences and whether palm or Revo is better. (so none of that here) I chose the Revo with my own circumstances in mind and i like it. in fact i luve it. Too bad the screen cracked and its away for repair right now. boohoo!

does anyone else in anandtech forums have a Revo or Psion 5MX?

Id like to figure out how to attach a palm portable keyboard to the serial port. (has any one opened up the connector compartment of a palm portable keyboard?)
 
Blue Handspring Visor Deluxe.

Very nice except the screen is a bit hard to read and I HATE, HATE, HATE the Expense deal. All it does is import to Excel and it doesn't even transfer all the fields, like cash/credit, merachant, etc. Really lame.

Anyone know a freeware or cheap shareware app that can import Expense info into M$ Money 2000?
 


<< NFS4: i was looking to get one (one trip to CompUSA and about 20min of play time and i was hooked , where did you buy yours? Wherever I look on the net they are either &quot;out of stock&quot; or charge a retail price or higher for it $499+ which i absolutly refuse to pay >>


I ordered mine from Buy.com on Friday for $499 + $11.09 2nd day shipping. It will ship the last week in October or the first week in November.
 
Let's see...First, I had a palm IIIe but needed more memory so i went for a IIIXE. This was cool but saw a good deal on a handspring visor deluxe so i grabbed this one insted. I messed around with this for a little awhile and then got a killer deal for a Palm VX so i got this. perfect size and fits in the pocket good😛
 


<< Why not go the PocketPC route? It's a far superior and more capable platform Not to mention mucho faster >>



NFS4 likes voicing opinions. I have a Visor Deluxe and prefer it much more than any pocket PC I tried. The new color Visor's look sweet. I tad expensive though.

 
I think most people don't need to play streaming video and mp3s on their PDAs. That's why Palm has the large chunk of the market share and PocketPCs appeal to the &quot;alpha-geeks.&quot;

When I can get a true color display, fast processor and large flash storage for $200 that's when I will buy into &quot;do-everything&quot; PDA market. However, it looks like that is a long ways off.
 


<< NFS4 likes voicing opinions. I have a Visor Deluxe and prefer it much more than any pocket PC I tried. The new color Visor's look sweet. I tad expensive though. >>


Technically, PocketPC is FAR superior to any other PDA's on the market.

I use my PDA to playback MP3's, watch MPEG's, connect to the internet with my 56k CF modem, VNC into my desktop through the modem, contacts, scheduling, email, games, etc. I relied heavily on my PocketPC for sending and receiving email, browsing the web, Telnet and FTP'ing into my campus account to send files back and forth, and wrote short essay for my Political Science class using MS Pocket Word.

Hook up a 1GB micro drive and I'm set. Who needs a laptop when you have a PocketPC? 😉
 
Aren't those IBM microdrives $500 or something? That's a lot of money...but having 1GB on a PDA is sure awfully nice. 🙂

Plus, buy.com is really good with back orders...I ordered a Logitech Mouseman Optical from them when they didn't have it in stock....they upgraded the shipping to Overnight for free once they had some in. 🙂
 
Visor Deluxe of course.

Anyways, I would definitely recommend against any PDA if you plan on using it as a full laptop replacement (obviously). The PocketPC machines are nice and can do very well on their own, but if you ever plan on using real application software, you need a laptop. That may seem like a stupid comment, but you'd be amazed how little people know about these things. I personally believe the better buy in terms of support and full usability vs. cost is a Palm OS based system +/- a laptop (depending on one's needs). But then again, I'm biased. 🙂 For some people however, PocketPC does provide a reasonable in-between machine and is better for their needs.

I don't buy MP3 as a valid argument however. Same applies to MPEGs. The way I encode my MP3s, anything under 100 MB is virtually useless, since 100 MB would only hold about 20 songs for me. Plus, that's not even including space for application software. But again, that's just me, because many people ARE happy with 64 MB Rios.

Everything else you mentioned can be done on a Palm PDA, although the screen is smaller.

I would be interested in your experiences re: OS stability. I haven't used a PocketPC that much in all honesty since all of my friends now own a Palm OS PDA, so I don't know how stable it is. However, I do know that in comparison to Palm OS, the Windows CE machines crashed up the wazoo. (In fact, that's why many of my friends are now Palm and Visor owners. They used to own Windows CE machines. 😉) The Palm OS machines can also crash too, however, so on either platform you have to be careful not to install every crappy shareware program in existence.

NFS4, I know you weren't completely serious, but for everyone, just remember that an average PocketPC with a small (ie. not 1 Gig) IBM Microdrive is gonna cost $1000. 😛
 
Of course I was joking about the 1GB microdrive and a full laptop replacement 😉 You can find a 540MB rather &quot;cheap&quot; though.

My PDA serves as an excellent communications/multimedia platform when away from home, and has only locked up on about 1 or 2 occasions that I can think of in all my time using it. And PocketPC (actually WinCE 3.0) is far superior in speed and stability than WinCE 2.0 ever was. I also love my beautiful 16bit color screen. And the 12 hour battery life of my PDA is nothing to scoff at. It's not like I don't have an AC connection wherever I go (which I do😉).

But me using a Palm or Visor wouldn't make sense...it just doesn't do enough things for me, let alone where would I hook up my CF modem and CF cards?
 
Heheh, it's funny you should mention that. There is now unofficial CompactFlash support for the Visor. I suspect the IBM Microdrive would kill a Visor's batteries in no time, though. 😉 (Not sure if it would work, but CF memory cards definitely do work fine.) There isn't any CF peripheral support otherwise however, but there are several Springboard modules available.

But if you really wanted full CF support, you could always just buy a TRGPro. Nice machine. Expensive for Palm PDA, but still a lot cheaper than a PocketPC.
 
Ahh, but with the iPaq that I just ordered, I can use PCMCIA cards including wireless networking cards😉
 
Not to nitpick NFS4, but doesn't the iPaq have a 12-bit screen (ie-4096 displayable colors?). I was just curious because I am probably going to get one for Christmas and in the reviews I've read, it seems that that is the max color depth. I did play with one at Staples here in town though and they are SSSSSSSWWWWWWEEEEEEEETTTT!!! little machines.
 
Yes it is...I played with one too and I couldn't tell the difference between the 12bit screen of the iPaq and the 16bit screen of my Aero.
 
I didn't think the difference would be that noticeable anyway. Anyhow, I have thought about getting a wireless PC Card NIC with a wireless LAN setup and using it for here at work. We do a lot of work tickets, etc. that utilize an intranet page for documentation and it would be awesome to closet tickets, e-mail etc. from anywhere in the building.
 
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