Okay, so I need a PDA to help me keep track of work stuff. The number of individual things I need to remember and keep track of has eclipsed the (admittedly small) limit of my memory, and my highly sophisticated system of little slips of paper tucked into my back pocket has also proven less than ideal under vigorous stress testing (although I recently read an article stating that it was the “new big thing”). Other features I’m looking for are GPS/map software, and wireless access.
What’s the best thing out there? What do you use? What do you wish you had? Why?
I just recieved a new Dell X50 and it is the nicest PDA I have had… and I have tried many. I have been using it for a few days and already love it, to compare apples to apples… I had an HP h5150 and find the dell to be faster, and mroe reliable than the HP. It also works with more of the programs I like to use than the HP did, Dell cooperates with my Polar HRMs better, the wireless conection and bluetooth are more relaible and seem to get better reception. I also like that the Dell is smaller.
I ahve played with XMAP (delorme) for Pocket PC using Delorme Topo Maps and Aerial Photos and it seems to work well, but I still prefere paper for my purposes. I do plan on trying one of the super-cool blue tooth GPS recievers avalible, but I am still researching what one is right for me… It will probably be the Garmin GPS 10 since I have 4 Garmin GPS recievers and have had nothing but good luck with each.
If you are going to carry it with you every day, get a belt clip… back pockets and PDAs don’t mix. I’ll also add, that I tried a number of smartphones and found that I prefer having a seperate phone and PDA. It makes taking notes and pulling up info while on the phone so much easier.
We’re on the Palm OS system here at Bikesport for rudimentary applications such as scheduling and contacts. I just bought a Treo 650 PDA/Smartphone to hot sync/IR sync with the store PDA’s for fit appointments, price lists and vendor phone contacts along with wireless Internet access.
They (Palm OS PDA’s) seem to work OK. The workhorse here is an old, beat up Palm Vx and a couple of those plastic Palms that were aimed at the student market. They do the job with few issues. Remember though, garbage in, garbage out…
Tom - Let us know what you think of the 650. I have a Tungsten T3 which I was considering trading in for a 650 but have had mixed reports on the 650 and I am still on the fence.
The Garmin iQue is a Palm based PDA with built in GPS. They also have a pocket PC model. They are pricy though.
I use a Palm Tungsten E which was $199. It’s the bottom of their “business” line but I am about as dedicated a PDA user as you’ll find and there are no features I need that it lacks. I stick to the lower priced models since I have become so dependent on having a PDA that I can’t afford to have one which I can not replace in less than 3 hours if I lose or break it. I don’t miss lack of wireless access. I have a Blackberry for e-mail and if I am on the road for more than a day I bring a laptop.
If you really do stuff your pockets with notes you’ll love a PDA. (If you can fill it, it means you are seriously obsessive/compulsive and you should seek treatment immediately.) It is truly amazing what you can do with them. Mine currently has 268 seperate notes - everything from todays to do list to my bike specs and measurements, my Quicken register for all my accounts, several spreadsheets and Word docs including my workout log on an Excel spreadsheet, today’s New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and local paper, lots of pictures of my kids, not to mention my entire calendar and contact list. I still haven’t come close to filling the thing.
The Garmin iQue is a Palm based PDA with built in GPS. They also have a pocket PC model. They are pricy though.
Yeah, I was looking at the Garmin iQueM5, but ~$600USD is a pretty hefty price tag - especially for a midrange processor model with only 64MB of RAM and without wireless! I guess the other way to look at it is that any halfway decent PDA + a GPS unit + mapping software would run me at least that much, but also require me to carry two things. Is there an advantage to breaking them apart? Maybe I need to reconsider how much I “need” the extras…
There must be some other people out in Slowtwitchia that use PDA’s…