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tugrikEarlier I'd posted that I really disliked PDAs, Palms in particular. One of my roomates asked me why and I had to think about it a moment.
Primarily it has to do with the fact that I cannot write, as far as the physical task of pen on paper. Well, okay, I can but I'm terrible at it. As a young'n I always had problems with the written word. Reading was fine, but writing was a challenge. It wasn't until I learned how to type from my mom's Century 21 Typing Manual in 3rd grade that I started getting good with putting down ideas; the act of pushing keys helped me straighten things out. Looking back on it, I think this means I was in some way quite dyslexic, and my key to getting around it was to put a mechanical layer between myself and the output.
This is still true today. I can type insanely fast (as my friends put it), but I've got the handwriting of a doctor who's been on a 30-hour shift. Thank goodness for drafting class in high school -- I'm often saved by the acceptable cheat of using printed characters with the same odd 'always uppercase, just change size' methods the draftsmen use.
Now, take this and try to get me to do Grafitti on a Palm, or Jot on a WinCE device. *Bzzt* Thanks for playing! Next contestant please... Next, add in the fact that I'm pretty 'anti-carry-stuff'. I'm just forgetful enough that I can really only remember the Three Basics when moving place to place: wallet, keys, phone. Keys in left pocket, wallet in right, phone on belt. It's now a habit to check for all three each time I stand up or leave a place, and I no longer lose them. Adding a fourth device that doesn't clip on or fit in a jeans-pocket is just not good. I'll either lose it or simply forget to take it in the morning.
This leaves me with two options: doing without a PDA, or combining the PDA and phone in a form factor that I can carry clipped to the belt and not forget. Had the 9000 series not won me over, I'd probably have ended up with one of those silly Treo things and finally given in to the Cult of Palm. They're just such an ugly form factor... too big to fit into a pocket safely, and too square-like to hang from a belt. They do have a thumb-board and phone integration, however.
I'm a laptop/computer junkie. I've had laptops ever since the ancient Sharp 4-line LCD typewriter lookalike that used bubble memory. At work, at home, and in some cases while at play, I have computers sitting at the ready. I want my real keyboards, darn it, and real computing abilities. While I can appreciate what most palm-like devices do, they simply don't float my boat when it comes to how much real work can be done on them. So what do I need? Well, mostly just a place to store names and numbers and take the occasional quick note since I have terrible short-term number memory. Most modern celphones do that already, as they have address books. One just has to put up with using 10-key to input the names.
The 9000 series caught my eye because it had a much nicer contact system that was truely integrated with the phone. Instead of having to get out a Palm, look up a number, get out the phone, type in the number, and call... you just point at a number in the contact card and press 'dial'. Done. If someone calls in the caller ID links to their contact card and it pops up with all relevant info right there. The fact it also does email, faxes, SMS (short message system) and basic internet stuff like Telnet and web-browsing just rounds out the package. That's more than enough, and I'm all happy. Now the rest of the PDA's abilites -- spreadsheets, games, silly shareware, you name it -- are all just extra goodies piled on top. I don't need them and will most likely not use many of them... but hey, they're there and fun to fiddle with.
Most will find this phone too big and too clunky compared to the tiny celphones they're used to. However, compared to a tiny phone plus a Palm (or handspring or CE device) together... this is smaller, lighter, easier to use, easier to carry, and most importantly much better integrated. Time will tell if this is the 'right way' and the rest of the market follows, or if we're going to end up with a suite of little buzzing and whirring devices all over our clothing that talk Bluetooth to each other or whatnot. Already in going from the 9000 of a few years ago to the 9290 of today... it's gotten smaller, faster, lighter, easier to read, and much more powerful. Gotta love technology.
At the end of the day I just want something that makes keeping in communication with work, friends and family as easy as possible. The fact that now my phone plays TMBG's song "Minimum Wage" whenever my boss calls is just a bonus.
Primarily it has to do with the fact that I cannot write, as far as the physical task of pen on paper. Well, okay, I can but I'm terrible at it. As a young'n I always had problems with the written word. Reading was fine, but writing was a challenge. It wasn't until I learned how to type from my mom's Century 21 Typing Manual in 3rd grade that I started getting good with putting down ideas; the act of pushing keys helped me straighten things out. Looking back on it, I think this means I was in some way quite dyslexic, and my key to getting around it was to put a mechanical layer between myself and the output.
This is still true today. I can type insanely fast (as my friends put it), but I've got the handwriting of a doctor who's been on a 30-hour shift. Thank goodness for drafting class in high school -- I'm often saved by the acceptable cheat of using printed characters with the same odd 'always uppercase, just change size' methods the draftsmen use.
Now, take this and try to get me to do Grafitti on a Palm, or Jot on a WinCE device. *Bzzt* Thanks for playing! Next contestant please... Next, add in the fact that I'm pretty 'anti-carry-stuff'. I'm just forgetful enough that I can really only remember the Three Basics when moving place to place: wallet, keys, phone. Keys in left pocket, wallet in right, phone on belt. It's now a habit to check for all three each time I stand up or leave a place, and I no longer lose them. Adding a fourth device that doesn't clip on or fit in a jeans-pocket is just not good. I'll either lose it or simply forget to take it in the morning.
This leaves me with two options: doing without a PDA, or combining the PDA and phone in a form factor that I can carry clipped to the belt and not forget. Had the 9000 series not won me over, I'd probably have ended up with one of those silly Treo things and finally given in to the Cult of Palm. They're just such an ugly form factor... too big to fit into a pocket safely, and too square-like to hang from a belt. They do have a thumb-board and phone integration, however.
I'm a laptop/computer junkie. I've had laptops ever since the ancient Sharp 4-line LCD typewriter lookalike that used bubble memory. At work, at home, and in some cases while at play, I have computers sitting at the ready. I want my real keyboards, darn it, and real computing abilities. While I can appreciate what most palm-like devices do, they simply don't float my boat when it comes to how much real work can be done on them. So what do I need? Well, mostly just a place to store names and numbers and take the occasional quick note since I have terrible short-term number memory. Most modern celphones do that already, as they have address books. One just has to put up with using 10-key to input the names.
The 9000 series caught my eye because it had a much nicer contact system that was truely integrated with the phone. Instead of having to get out a Palm, look up a number, get out the phone, type in the number, and call... you just point at a number in the contact card and press 'dial'. Done. If someone calls in the caller ID links to their contact card and it pops up with all relevant info right there. The fact it also does email, faxes, SMS (short message system) and basic internet stuff like Telnet and web-browsing just rounds out the package. That's more than enough, and I'm all happy. Now the rest of the PDA's abilites -- spreadsheets, games, silly shareware, you name it -- are all just extra goodies piled on top. I don't need them and will most likely not use many of them... but hey, they're there and fun to fiddle with.
Most will find this phone too big and too clunky compared to the tiny celphones they're used to. However, compared to a tiny phone plus a Palm (or handspring or CE device) together... this is smaller, lighter, easier to use, easier to carry, and most importantly much better integrated. Time will tell if this is the 'right way' and the rest of the market follows, or if we're going to end up with a suite of little buzzing and whirring devices all over our clothing that talk Bluetooth to each other or whatnot. Already in going from the 9000 of a few years ago to the 9290 of today... it's gotten smaller, faster, lighter, easier to read, and much more powerful. Gotta love technology.
At the end of the day I just want something that makes keeping in communication with work, friends and family as easy as possible. The fact that now my phone plays TMBG's song "Minimum Wage" whenever my boss calls is just a bonus.
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no subject
Date: 2002-06-05 07:57 am (UTC)And I can understand about not liking Graffiti. When I'm trying to compose thoughts I don't wanna be distracted by letters coming out askew. After fifteen years of online chats and email and such, I've gotten used to brain-to-keyboard flow. I also don't carry my Palm with me. I had a Handspring Visor a year ago, till I dropped it while fumbling with stuff after going thru an airport security checkpoint, shattering the screen, and balking at the $85 charge to fix it (since the Visor price came down enough that it was just a little bit more to get a new one... and Croc ended up giving me his old Palm in exchange for ... I forget what). I used to carry a tote bag with me and toss my old datebook in there, but the Palm is bigger. And whereas the date book could slip in my back pocket and I wouldn't have to worry about breaking it by sitting on it, forget it with a palm.
I'd been hesitant to get a new PDA because Flint suggested a year ago that "soon the PDA and phone would merge". I'm waiting for the price to come down s'more. Oh, and I hate that the original palms aren't rechargable. That would make sense -- dock it in the cradle, recharge the batteries. In 1998 when I worked at the Universal Studios IT department, I must've ordered Palms for the whole project staff, as well as continually stocking up on batteries. Yay.
I'm stuck with my Cingular service and Nokia 5190 under contract till next month. Even Cingular acknowleges that the 5190 is a piece of crap, and poor Croc also has one (with an older firmware that won't allow him to add custom ring tones -- my phone now plays "Hard day's night" -- 'cuz I've been working like a dog!), but at least he's no longer bound by his Cingular contract. Service has been awful, sometimes the phones won't even ring. It's gotten such that Croc doesn't even carry his phone anymore. I've checked with some friends, who seem to mostly be satisfied with Verizon's service, so I might go that way. Do you have any suggestions in this wireless tug-of-war? I'm not really looking for something too crazy, though the phone/PDA combo does sound neat.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-05 09:47 am (UTC)The biggest question, of course, is what do you need out of a PDA and/or a phone? What's the minimum set of functions you need? What's the physical limitations of what you'd want/like to carry? Once you've defined that, it's easy to go through a range of possibilities. There's a lot out there, and some new stuff soon to arrive.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-05 10:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-06 08:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-06 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-06 10:04 pm (UTC)My Visor Edge is never far from me when I'm out of the house. I'll leave it at the office when I go down to the liquor store for a fresh bottle of water but that's about it. It is my swap space... I have a half dozen categories of memos to keep idea fragments.
I dropped it on the sidewalk recently and it still works; it's just acquired a couple more scratches in its little metal flip-cover. Yay. It looks well-used nowadays.
-Peggy
no subject
Date: 2002-06-11 12:46 am (UTC)None the Visor
Date: 2002-06-15 01:11 am (UTC)Anyway, I don't blame you for preferring the phone combo. It seems pretty handy, I especially like that speaker on it, and it seems much more powerful and versatile than my Visor. For my purposes, though, the Visor performs invaluably. I recently got a Prism on the want ads at work for $200, which wasn't too bad at all, so I think they're becoming reasonable in price. I also like the folding keyboard you can get with this thing... I never did care for those mini-keyboards, or even scrunched-together laptop keyboards. The folding one collapses to the same size as the Visor, but is full-sized when set up, so I can type notes as fast as people can lecture them... part of the reason I got it was to take notes in classes. All the rest of the neat little things it can do are bonuses... with all the organizational things I've got in here, it's pretty much become a stand-in for the shoddy meat-memory installed in my skull.
Oh, Nerf... about the recharging thing... the Prism has a lithium-ion battery that recharges in the cradle, and lasts quite a long time. I think their new line, Treo, also has the lith-ions. It'll probably be a standard with future PDAs.
I wonder if anyone would be interested in buying a well-loved-but-in-good-shape Visor Platinum.