PDA = Past Digital Assistant?

[adderslj]

I've been using a Palm PDA since 1999, but I'm beginning to question if I really get any value out of it I couldn't get from a mobile phone.

I'm interested to see what other people's thinking about this is. So, a poll!

[Poll #552306]

Comments

[tenzil.livejournal.com]

The reason that I stopped is that all PDAs have games on them, and I would get bored in a meeting and play Solitaire or something rather than pay attention to the meeting. Now I soldier through boring meetings, which, well, kind of sucks, but it beats obsessively playing solitaire.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I got b*llocked by our Director of Finance for playing with my PDA during a very dull meeting. Luckily she thought I was just fiddling with it rather than playing games (which I was).

In my defence, it was a very dull meeting.

[nortysarah.livejournal.com]

I use my PDA as my address book and diary. I'm scared of losing my phone so I have most mobile no's in there too, but I find my phone calendar is difficult to use and difficult to see. I don't generally use my PDA for files or games...

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I've got a Palm Tungsten E and my use of it tends to vary - I've got mp3s and a few games on it, but it's mainly used as a combination diary / address book / note pad (and at work we're using Lotus Notes, which most of the phone-suppliers don't support in terms of synchronisation).

I haven't bothered buying an iPod because I don't care enough about music to have my whole collection with me all the time - the 4+ hours of music I can carry with me on the Palm is usually enough.

I would like it if my phone and Palm were combined, but I'd like to stay with the Palm interface because I'm comfortable with it and I don't really like the Treo. Haven't looked into it a lot though.

[rickj.livejournal.com]

I used to have a Palm m100, but it died after many years of loyal service. Like The Senator, I would fiddle with stuff on it during meetings (didn't have the stones to play solitaire, tho).

I didn't get a new one because I wanted one with more features than I had money for, and I've gotten by fine without it. I miss the calendar feature most of all. My phone has one, but I can't sync it with my outlook calendar at work, so I don't bother using it.

[digitalraven]

Selected the 'phone' option due to my using a Treo 600, which is the nicest synergy of phone and PDA I've come across. And the 650 makes me drool.

I use it because I honestly can't remember when things are going to happen without it's reminders (I need a reminder to eat lunch, I'm that bad), and because having an ebook reader, notepad, digicam, and mail client augmenting my brain means I can work at the speed I'm accustomed to, rather than wasting brainpower remembering things.

[minus9.livejournal.com]

I used to use a Newton (well, I moved up to the 2000 from an earlier one) and after it got stolen I got a Palm V. It was nice to have something smaller, but other than as a searchable phone book I just didn't use it at all. The Newton was outstanding -- a laptop replacement for us (I worked at an IT R&D center at the time).

Now I use a hipster PDA (http://merlin.blogs.com/43folders/2004/09/introducing_the.html) and the "Getting Things Done (http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/getting_started.html)" method by David Allen, with a plain text file for my to do items that I print out duplex/2-up, and synchronize my address info to my phone from Address Book.app. That also allows some nice phone list/etc print outs, particularly now in Tiger, that I keep meaning to play with but haven't yet.

I wouldn't, and don't, use my K700i for PDA functions other than phone numbers -- phones aren't PDAs, and sadly PDAs aren't the Newton. But that's another story, really :-)

R