[Shotimes] RE: Not OT, thinking of getting a PDA (well, it really is OT)

[Ron Porter]

Boy, this is a tough one! I say that because I just donated my "stone age"
PDA to the Salvation Army before the end of the year (FWIW, it was the
original Handspring Visor Deluxe with 8MB memory). I'm looking around for
another. I do like Visors (and the whole Visor deal with the company), but
Palms PDAs looking good, also. The Palm operating system is still Boss Dog
in PDAs, Windows Pocket PCs just have not got the market attention and
saturation that PDAs with the Palm OS do.

Do some poking around, you may very well find that the current Palm OS will
do more than you can find for the Pocket PC. Palm PDAs also use compact SD
memory cards. I don't recall any Compaq Flash cards, and if there are any,
they may not become an ongoing standard (IMNSHO Caveat: other than Compaq
servers, their other stuff SUCKS, and is to be avoided).

FWIW, I still haven't decided. We are considering a new Dell laptop for
home, and they have some deals on their Pocket PC PDAs, but I'm still
leaning toward a Palm OS.......

Ron Porter

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Fisher [mailto:ianf@eden.rutgers.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 8:51 PM
To: TechSHO@topica.com
Subject: Not OT, thinking of getting a PDA


My sister got me a PDA for x-mas/birthday. I never though of owning one,
but now that I am, I returned the one she got me so I can get something
better (she understood). I realized tonight that PDA's could be used for
in car programming. Palm OS is probably out of the question, but the
PDA's that are running Windows CE or pocket PC (whatever its called)
might be capable of running the windows based programming utilities.
(might need some work to make them compatible; I am not really familiar
with this concept). Another great idea would be to use the PDA as a code
scanner, but I doubt that Snap on or anyone else is releasing source
code to turn PDA's into code readers. FWIW, I am thinking of getting
something that utilizes Compaq Flash in case I get a digital camera as
well (I am finding that Compaq Flash memory cards are more widely used
than other formats.)..any comments on the in car programming thing? I
doubt its something I'd get into right away, but if the option exists
down the road, it would be nice to have that option to see if I can blow
the motor up.

Ian