Red Shirt Volunteer 0 Posted February 21, 2004 (edited) Hi All, I'm thinking about getting a PDA. Does anyone have one or have experience with them? I have a few questions if you do: 1. How much of a pain is it to input data? 2. How long do the batteries last? 3. Which company has the best reputation? I can tell you right now that due to a number of bad experiences with their stuff, there is absolutely no chance I will buy any Sony product. I consider Toshiba and Sharp to be much more reliable names, though I'm open to other suggestions. 4. How long do batteries last? 5. Is there anything I need to know about that I probably wouldn't expect based on experience with a PC? Just to help anyone who's in the know, I'll be using it as a scheduler mostly, just so that I don't forget stuff I need to do, and to record important information instead of scribbling it into a notebook. Cheers, Red Shirt Volunteer Edited February 21, 2004 by Red Shirt Volunteer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Captain Jean-Luc Picard 1 Posted February 21, 2004 I'd like to get one if they weren't so expensive. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
t'mir 0 Posted February 21, 2004 I have a rather old one, the palm m100. It's really cool, it was actually a gift and now you can get them for probably like $40 on ebay or less. You would probably want a newer one though... mine's cool because I just use it for notes, poems (because I can password-lock it from my siblings), and a few games like tetris, solitaire, and my RPG Kyle's Quest. It's great for long plane rides... Hope this helps you any... btw I think it stores 2000k of memory. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hangon 3 Posted February 21, 2004 Nope i dont, but i dont think i need one i can do enough with my mobile phone,half the things it can do i dont know how to use... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
shadowfigment 0 Posted February 21, 2004 Nah... I was going to get a PDA, but decided against it. Mabye if I were a person who needed an agenda of my daily activites, I would get one. But I dont think them a necessity. :cool: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Red Shirt Volunteer 0 Posted February 22, 2004 I have a rather old one, the palm m100. It's really cool, it was actually a gift and now you can get them for probably like $40 on ebay or less. You would probably want a newer one though... mine's cool because I just use it for notes, poems (because I can password-lock it from my siblings), and a few games like tetris, solitaire, and my RPG Kyle's Quest. It's great for long plane rides... Hope this helps you any... btw I think it stores 2000k of memory. Hi t'mir I've never actually seen one in action, except as a bilingual dictionary, and a pen had to be used to type in words, which took a long time. I have a cell phone that can probably do a lot of the same stuff, but I'd like a little more freedom with the number of characters and stuff I can use; also, using the phone keypad to input data can be more than a little irritating. It sounds like your pretty happy with it, but do you ever get frustrated using the thing? I'll probably get one anyway just to see what they're like. I guess I better go and ask for a demo of their functions to really find out. Cheers, Red Shirt Volunteer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
t'mir 0 Posted February 22, 2004 No, I never really get frustrated... it does its job well! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Red Shirt Volunteer 0 Posted February 23, 2004 (edited) The newer, horizontally oriented models have the shape of a small rectangular laptop computer and a larger keyboard than the vertical ones, but the keyboard is still ultra-small. Is it even feasible to type using one of these things or is it better just to use the stylus? I saw some today and started rethinking my earlier comment on Sony, which is still a company I don't trust, because they have decent camera built in to even some cheaper models. Then again, it's a Sony, which means it'll probably break within a year. Oh yeah, this is somewhat amusing. I went into a shop today to look at some PDAs. I live in Japan so all the instructions and on-screen stuff's in Japanese. I can generally understand it but still make mistakes or have to guess at times. I picked up a PDA to see how it worked and started pressing buttons as you do in these situations. While I was goofing around an alarm started screaming through the shop and I jumped up wondering "Just what button did I hit?" I soon realised it was just a fire alarm and settled down until I realised it was a fire alarm, which is usually a good sign that something bad is happening. At this I sauntered over to one of the staff and said "There's no problem, right?" and she said "Ummm, probably not." So I went back and played around a bit more until the noise of the alarm got just a bit too irritating and I decided to continue my research online. Edited February 23, 2004 by Red Shirt Volunteer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites