I have a cheap older CLIE PDA, an iPod and a cell phone.

I use the PDA as a calendar, memo organizer, and address book (email, phone, address etc). I would never use the iPod for this nor the cell phone.

I think that if there was a way to have a touch screen input on an ipod or cell, I would abandon the PDA. I like to be able to put notes into it quickly.

On the other hand.... getting wireless internet access on a PDA (like a blackberry) would be good - if the cost dropped.

On the more expensive side of the PDA market, I have a friend who has a very expensive "WindowsCE" PDA, which acts as a cell phone, can do all mine can do, plus he can use excel on his. However excel stinks on the PDA and is very limited, and while I spent under $200 on mine, he's got an overpriced piece of junk that he spent $1000 on.

Thanks Captain Obvious:

"PDA screens are small. Paper is convenient."

Earth-shattering revelations along with unparalleled clarity of thought. Do they pay you for this?

Grumpy troglodyte that I am, I don't own a cell phone. I do have a cheap ($99) Palm PDA, which I've found quite valuable. It's used for the stuff Vern found PDAs useful, and that's all. Someday, I might get a cell phone, and if it has as clean and simple an interface as the Zire 21 I'm using, it'll be used as a PDA too.

For me a PDA is still worth having for business trips. The main use is for contact info, passwords (poor memory), memo's and pics. While everything is on the PB there are times when the PDA is easier to use. An all in one is out as I travel overseas on business and have a GSM phone with multiple chips.

They did have a good run, though, didn't they?

Your sniping would be much more useful if you weren't so cowardly to post as unknown. Show yourself next time, and maybe we can help you see how ludicrous you are, just for simply being.

What do they pay you for? Trolling other people's careers?

I'm not a close friend of Vern's or anything like that, but I do know that your snippet of a quote, which you already know, isn't at all enough justification for your derision. Unless of course, like I alluded to earlier, that you must snipe from an anonymous distance because your weak ego can't handle face-to-face confrontation.

C'mon, big boy, let's see who you are.

-+vurt

It is not my policy to answer obvious trolls, but there is, not well hidden in your sarcasm, an actual and valid point: Paper is obviously superior to the PDA screen, so why bother with a PDA at all?

The answer to that is not so obvious: As I mention in the article, there is a certain amount of convenience PDAs provide. As any PDA owner will tell you, having contact info close at hand at all times can be a life saver. While paper phonebooks have been around for almost as long as there have been phones, they suffer from one of the big limitations of paper; once data is 'entered', it is hard to change.

PDAs, with their computer syncing, changed all of that. Addresses and personal information change a lot in today's world. Now, your information repository can change with it.

Anyone with friends who've moved a few times will attest to how shabby that person's info appears after being erased several times.

So, as I've alluded to in the article; paper has it's advantages, and so do PDAs. It is just that PDAs can't cover all the bases.

But I guess that was obvious to you too.

Vern Seward

My thought on PDAs as they are now is very similar to my thought on TabletPCs: They have features that will be valuable to a small set of people with particular needs, but probably won't (or won't again) by themselves capture the imagination of a big part of the population.

I had a Handspring a few years ago; I planned to use it to keep track of my contact information, and use it as a sort of "laptop light" to jot down notes or proofread texts, something I could have on me all the time. A few months after the honeymoon, though, it was largely unused. My phone numbers were all in my cel phone anyway; the few times I had to update an address, I'd jot a note or have someone send me an email so I could update at home. I found if I was going to work on something, it was infinitely easier just to bring my laptop with me. It soon reached a point where I didn't touch the PDA for so long the batteries ran out; I didn't feel like resyncing it, so I tossed it in a drawer, and ended up selling it cheap a year or two later.

A PDA will always have appeal and value to some people, but the majority, I think, will either have their needs met by a simple celphone, are power-users enough to carry a laptop around anyway, or just really don't need 'em at all.

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metavurt wrote:
C'mon, big boy, let's see who you are.

My theory is that over time, after using PDA's, people found it was just more efficient to be disorganized.

I have an old A388 Motorola phone that doubles as a quite good PDA. (phone numbers/addresses/etc.) But I have yet to find something these days that is just as easy to use and affordable as my trusty A388. Oh I use my iPod for syncing my calendars- my life isnt as chock full of stuff as a high end executive, so it suits me fine.

I don't have a PDA or a Cell Phone. (Before you chalk me up as an over the hill Luddite you might be interested to know that I've been doing tech support for 17 years. They pay me to support Windows, I OWN Macs). The thing is I don't need either. Personally I thought PDAs were fun to play with for a while then I set them aside. For me a PDA would just be another thing to take care of. I don't really need it's function so why bother with another finicky gadget.

In 1999 Palm Devices became the in thing for the Dept. heads and other brass where I work. I set up and taught quite a few users users how to work with those things. Five years later all but one of my users have gone back to paper calendars.

Reading this article, I have to smile. I happen to be a returned Newton user - no lie. It has replaced pen and paper for me, simply because I can carry around HUGE amounts of past writing. The handwriting recognition is natural and perfect, meaning there are simply no mistakes. Period. (I print rather sloppily, but the machine has learned and I've added expansions and autocorrect which are as reasonable to include as they are in Word, for those who think it's an unfair advantage.)

In addition, the Newton still has software that is incredible. The connection between names, dates, tasks, and notes is wonderful. You know what each person did, when they did it, and so on.

Now, it's also a brick. You can't do these kinds of things on tiny screens (though the interface was designed for many size screens). It's the size of a small pad of paper. But I have it with me all the time, I can create rtf documents on it, I have a spreadsheet and a database on it, it does wireless networking and bluetooth, I run a web server on it to quickly transfer text/dates/names information in and out via my web browser...

The big thing, though, is the concept of an integrated gesture-based OS. The gestures are what make it work. Conceptually, they are brilliant. Scrubbing, highlight-copy-drag-paste, things like that. It's astonishing how you adapt to the idea. It's much worse than writing in Graffiti on your paper (I've done that, too), because you expect these gestures to work in real life.

So the PDA of the future lies in the past. I agree that the concept is dead, for the most part, but my hardware is still working and I have spares for when this unit dies. Dude, you can get them for $50 or less on eBay right now. Newton Messagepad 2100. It's the way to go. Back to the future. Ha.

PDA's suffer from the legacy of being regarded as glorified electronic organisers but the reality is that the market and technology for handheld computing has never been more bouyant or as exciting as it is today.

The enabling technology of wireless connectivity means that finally people are no longer chained to the desk or a lump of technology like a 21st century factory worker. The desktop metaphor is all but dead long live freedom to do our thinking wherever and whenever we want.

The adoption of handheld computers are particularly vital in the schools sector where we'll never be able to give every kid a laptop and nor would we want to. The screen size of a handheld is not a problem if you're a kid - 6 million Nintendo DS users can't be wrong!

There's an interesting non-commercial site regarding this use by educators at:

http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/community/forum/

that as a teacher myself I found fascinating and that I wasn't alone!

I too had a message pad 2100. I worked as a manufacturing engineer for an electronics firm on the East coast. On several occasions I can remember using it more as an ultra lite than a PDA. I used a spread sheet package to compute trends on certain manufacturing equipment. I used it's word processing package to begin the writing of test proceures while on business trips with equipment vendors. I even used it in meeting around the plant to record voice notes that I would later transcribe. It's battery life was far superior to any lap top available at the time. I had bought it in the mid 90's and nothing came close to it in functionality for it's size for at least 4 years. It had a built in dialer and a PCMCIA slot. All you needed is a cell phone on a card and this device would still be relevant today. Although some say it was the wrong size. I thought it was perfect for the myriad of uses it potentially had. Had I not carelessly left it in a motel room in Ft Lauderdale in 9/2000, I'm sure I would still have it today.

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Guest wrote:

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metavurt wrote:
C'mon, big boy, let's see who you are.

You sound tough. I'll stay anonymous, thanks. I wouldn't want you to hurt me or my ego.

This article (yes, I know it's an opinion piece and not reporting) really doesn't say anything. We know water is wet. We know PDAs are on the way out. We know it's easier to write on a piece of paper than a PDA. So why write an article restating the obvious? Give us something new, or a different take on it, or don't bother.

Now don't get me wrong; I like the fact that TMO has actual contributors who create signature content, but this (and some of Mr. Seward's past articles) are really pointless.

Free criticism...take it or leave it.

Oh, and my profession? I'm a writer/editor (really).

-OT (Obvious Troll)

P.S. "ludicrous," "snippet," and "derision." Metavurt, I'm sure you're a really smart guy. You don't need to WANTONLY (see, I can do it too) toss out words you picked up on thesaurus.com to sound smarter.

As a continuing PDA user, I have to disagree with your point about it being difficult to read on a PDA. In fact, that is one of my main uses for my Palm Tungsten. I find the screen is bright and the text is easy to read. I use iSilo to download news stories every morning and they keep me busy on the subway. I also download books from Project Gutenberg all the time and read them on my Palm. The convenience is terrific. FYI, other uses include the basic PDA functions (organizer - essential for me, telephone numbers), passwords, PDF reader, note taking and, in conjunction with my bluetooth phone SMS messaging. They may not be for everybody but I find my Palm indispensible.

My big concern is that Palm is screwing around while their market is being picked off by the MS monster. The whole splitting into software/hardware was a huge and uneccessary distraction. The software side is in complete disarray, OEMs are bailing or being absorbed back into Palm - they have really lost their way. It's a shame really.

DD

I'll stick with my PDA (a Palm Tungsten T2) for now. Although I know that my cellphone (Motorola v710) has some of the Palm features, I use all of the Palm features (calendar, phone list, to-do and note taking) and the cellphone still isn't quite there. Now, one of these Palm-based cellphones may be the answer, but I like to use my stuff until it dies or becomes totally obsolete, and that hasn't happened quite yet.

I bought a Palm Pilot years ago and hated it for exactly the reasons Vern states: Miniscule screen, fragility, the sheer effort it took to use it consistently, day after day -- plus those darn funky special characters you had to input (at least in the old Palm OS).

But it had one feature that I prized: the ability to accept keyboard input for note-taking on the fly, with battery life that seemed near infinite compared to any laptop, even my beloved iBook.

Still, I ended up putting it aside. Just too much work to use when compared to good old foolscap.


Then two years ago, thanks to the New York Times, I discovered the now resurgent Newton and its latest model, the MP2100, with its (relatively) big backlit screen, excellent natural handwriting recognition (the final version of the OS had it almost perfect), and ease of use. Batteries last, oh, forever. Plus you can plug in a keyboard. Web, email, wifi, bluetooth, microdrives, 2 gig flash cards -- all the goodies work on it, which is pretty amazing for a device that went out of production before any such devices existed.

You can use a Newton more like paper and pen (except for the wadding, wetting and burning part) than any other PDA or tablet computer, and it really has few of the annoying PDA limitations Vern and others here have noted. Hack a headphone jack into its expansion bay and you can even sync with iTunes.

The Newton didn't die because it wasn't good enough. It died because it was too damn expensive and because it was John Sculley's baby, just waiting to be throttled when Steve Jobs made his otherwise triumphant return.

I've been a developer in the mobile space ever since the Newton rolled out. Customers usually want one of two things out of their PDA's:

1) A Utility Organizer
This covers the people who 99.9% of the time only use the PDA as a glorified address book or for simple notes. Nothing big. . .just easier than opening a laptop at a phone booth.

2) A Desktop Replacement
A small fraction of the people out there wanted it to do a whole lot more than just addresses and calendars. These types went to great extremes to get 802.11 access on the handheld, email, web, PDF's, VNC, etc. These were the power-user types who were often on the road.

From what I've seen, the Utility Organizer HAS in fact been absorbed by the phone makers (and media players to some extent). One less device to carry and in most cases smaller slicker packaging. There's not much of a future to sell into the Utility Organizer crowd and what is there must be sold at a low price.

The Desktop Replacement crowd to this day still trys to use their PDA to the limits. This has always been a smaller fraction of the population and honestly has gotten even smaller after the Treo and Blackberries became so much more afordable and prolific. The lack of a fast data entry tool made most of the PDA's worthless to this group of people (how fast can you really "type" with a stylus). Very few of this group reamains loyal to anything other than a hybrid device with a keyboard. . however they still remain.

So, is there still a market for PDA's? Yes.

Is the market shrinking and consolidating? Yes.

Do people demand lower cost devices now? Yes.

Do I agree with the author? Yes.

Mathco

... is it is generally infeasible to back up your data. Paper is easy to read, and fairly hardy, but if Bad Things happen to paper, you're completely SOL, compared to the electronic versions of data, which are replicable by design. I was a diehard filofax user back in the late 80s, using it heavily for contact info, notes and calendaring. Until the day my handy little filofax was stolen from right next to me at a crowded bar. After that, I have vowed to never allow my critical information to exist in a format that cannot be backed up relatively easily.

I first went to the Casio BOSS organizers, after paying for the extra serial cable and desktop software that allowed me to back it up on my computer. It was not an easy procedure, and took a good amount of time each time I backed it up, but I loved the sense of security... and when the inevitable Bad Thing happened to the fragile little beastie, I hardly lost any data, after purchasing a new one and dumping the data back in. Naturally, I was first in line for the original Palm Pilot. The synching to a computer was so much easier and faster! Sadly, the glass screens were so fragile I ended up spending a decent amount of money on repairs... but I rarely, if ever, lost any significant amount of data, because "backing up" my critical data was so fast and easy, I actually did it on a regular basis. If a unit died or was lost or destroyed, five minutes upon my return with a replacement, I was 100% back in business, as if nothing had happened. Several generations later, I use a Palm m505 with data on it dating back to information I first entered into that original BOSS, and the original Palm Pilots.

Worth it's weight in gold. My data is safe, backed up onto multiple computers, in addition to the Palm itself. At some point, I'll give in a get a Treo, and once I get accustomed to the itty-bitty keyboard (right back to the BOSS era, IMO) compared to the ease of the Graffiti input system, I suppose I'll be happier than ever.

So what happened to all that contact info I lost in the 80's? Some was lost forever, some I still had, because I had, 6 months prior, taken the time to help myself to the copier at work and had XEROXED the whole dang thing. but I still had to hand-enter all that info into the new system.

Ease of backup. Portability. Redundancy. (Irony...) The PDA may be dead for some, but until a cell phone can match a Palm's feature set for the basics (and IMO, only the Treo comes close), it won't be dead for me until my last Palm-based system dies.

I always thought the PDA a pain for even simple data entry, but for quick access to important Filemaker db's invaluable. However I am not a fan of convergence devices: don't want my toaster making omelets.

Ever try and compose an email on a cell phone, brutal.

A few years ago I bought my wife a Treo 600. She is deaf and the tiny, yet full, keyboard on the Treo makes it easier to send email. The bigger screen when compared to a regular cell phone is also a plus. She also uses the PDA features for work and school, but the primary reason for the purchase was email communication. They are pricey, but at the time Sprint had a real good service and I don't feel that I paid to much the feature. I considered getting her a Blackberry, but I feel that the cell phone and PDA features of the Treo made it a better option.

I am seriously considering a Treo or similar device, the next time I need to purchase a cell phone.

Sidebar. Last year my wife a cochlear implant. It bypasses the damaged inner year and directly stimulates the cochlear/audio nerve. She has regained about 60% of hear hearing and can now use the cell phone, and other phones as well as appreciating music again. Nice device, we can plug the iPod right into a jack on the processor, no head phones required. See http://www.cochlearamericas.com/ for more info.

Have a nice evening.

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jmmejzz wrote:
...I am not a fan of convergence devices: don't want my toaster making omelets.

ALL the books I read – it’s iSilo on my Palm T|T3. In the landscape mode it’s about as wide as a paperback (minus the margins). Also, I keep a constant logs of all my activities (DayNotez, synced to desktop). Activities are planned in LifeBalance. Try doing all that with paper!

Further, I don’t need the keyboard (it sucks), I rarely enter any data except names & phone numbers/emails.

As to phone integration: screw it. I’d be nice to have everything synced transparently with the server, but not in this world – cellular networks of today could never carry that much data. Here, in Moscow, the network is considered the busiest and best-developed in Europe. GPRS? Effectively no such thing. It’s like those 2400bps modems of early 1990s. So I’m staying with my T|T3.

...that Sony was getting out of the PDA market. A shame - Sony made the third PDA that I have owned, (had a black-and-white Handspring and a Palm IIIc beforehand) and it's by far my favorite. I purchased a Clie NR70 as a refurb item from Sony's web site over two years ago, and it's still going strong.

What I'd love to see, however, is a hybrid model. The large screen and folding design of my NR70 is what sold me on it, and the memory stick slot has been useful as I can load a memory card with MP3s or pictures or short videos for playback (yes, I use it more for the Entertainment side rather than the Organizer side, but it's more of a 60-40 split). I wish Sony had thrown a hard drive into one, ala an iPod (which I also own). Something the physical size of the Clie, obviously thicker to accomodate a hard drive, would be killer, IMHO.

I'd love to see Apple come out with an iPod with a big screen that folded and swiveled like the Clie's, that can handle PDA, music, video, and photo functions. An expansion slot for a wireless card to add cellphone capability (I'd envision a headset-only approach rather than trying to hold this ungainly thing to your ear) would let me take one device along instead of three, and I'd be a very happy camper indeed.

Actually, I've had a Palm device of some sort almost as long as Palm has been around.

I've reviewed Palm devices, have owned a Newton, know of folks who still own and use Newtons, Palms, and PocketPC devices, have experimented with the older version of Blackberry, and have even poked at a friend's Linux base PDA.

Believe me when I tell you that I've tried it.

While the screens have gotten better, and you can read docs more comfortably, a 3" to 5" screen is no match for paper.

Also consider the recent demise of e-book readers: A few years ago the market was brimming with them, now they are extremely hard to find. These devices were idea for reading books and periodicals because they had larger screen. Still, they could not compete with regular books for readability and cost.

Vern Seward

I think you've got it exactly wrong, the PDA is only just beginning to come of age. While pundits look at marketshare for Palm and say the PDA is fading away, I think it's all semantics.

If you think about what a PDA is, a Personal Digital Assistant, and what it does at it's very core -- help you do digital things -- it seems clear that this is not going away. While basic PDA's which just handle address book, calendar, etc may be dying off, there is huge demand for devices which help enable your digital life. I don't think the Treo is a phone with PDA functions, it's a PDA with phone functions. Many don't like the PDA/Phones because of the form factor, but I think this is going away as technologies like bluetooth allow you to have a simple headset-type device for the mic/speaker.

Most of my digital day consists of listening to music, reading email, browsing the web, managing my calendar and contacts, and making phone calls. My PDA <i>assists</i> me in these functions. Why should i have to carry 3 devices containing 3 processors, batteries, screens, etc?

As far as convenience vs paper is concerned, i would agree that it's far easier to "enter data" on paper than on a palm pilot, but it's so much harder to keep track of and maintain that data once it's there. You can say a PDA is bulky compared to a piece of paper, but how about 500 pieces of paper?

I think you've got it exactly wrong, the PDA is only just beginning to come of age. While pundits look at marketshare for Palm and say the PDA is fading away, I think it's all semantics.

If you think about what a PDA is, a Personal Digital Assistant, and what it does at it's very core -- help you do digital things -- it seems clear that this is not going away. While basic PDA's which just handle address book, calendar, etc may be dying off, there is huge demand for devices which help enable your digital life. I don't think the Treo is a phone with PDA functions, it's a PDA with phone functions. Many don't like the PDA/Phones because of the form factor, but I think this is going away as technologies like bluetooth allow you to have a simple headset-type device for the mic/speaker.

Most of my digital day consists of listening to music, reading email, browsing the web, managing my calendar and contacts, and making phone calls. My PDA <i>assists</i> me in these functions. Why should i have to carry 3 devices containing 3 processors, batteries, screens, etc?

As far as convenience vs paper is concerned, i would agree that it's far easier to "enter data" on paper than on a palm pilot, but it's so much harder to keep track of and maintain that data once it's there. You can say a PDA is bulky compared to a piece of paper, but how about 500 pieces of paper?

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jmmejzz wrote:
I always thought the PDA a pain for even simple data entry, but for quick access to important Filemaker db's invaluable. However I am not a fan of convergence devices: don't want my toaster making omelets.

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gordboy wrote:
I think you've got it exactly wrong, the PDA is only just beginning to come of age. While pundits look at marketshare for Palm and say the PDA is fading away, I think it's all semantics.

If you think about what a PDA is, a Personal Digital Assistant, and what it does at it's very core -- help you do digital things -- it seems clear that this is not going away. While basic PDA's which just handle address book, calendar, etc may be dying off, there is huge demand for devices which help enable your digital life. I don't think the Treo is a phone with PDA functions, it's a PDA with phone functions. Many don't like the PDA/Phones because of the form factor, but I think this is going away as technologies like bluetooth allow you to have a simple headset-type device for the mic/speaker.

Most of my digital day consists of listening to music, reading email, browsing the web, managing my calendar and contacts, and making phone calls. My PDA <i>assists</i> me in these functions. Why should i have to carry 3 devices containing 3 processors, batteries, screens, etc?

As far as convenience vs paper is concerned, i would agree that it's far easier to "enter data" on paper than on a palm pilot, but it's so much harder to keep track of and maintain that data once it's there. You can say a PDA is bulky compared to a piece of paper, but how about 500 pieces of paper?

I'll give up my Palm Pilot once pen and paper can do all the math for balancing my checking account on it's own.

Plus, I've never ruined my Palm Pilot by putting it through the wash in the pocket of a pair of pants.

And writing on a palm is no harder then writing on a piece of paper. You use the exact same hand mechanics, what's the big deal?