Monday 3 September 2007

PDAs

Slightly off topic, I know, but I mentioned in the last post (I think) that I'd killed my PDA. I had the iPAQ hx4700 with the VGA screen which could be rotated to work in landscape rather than portrait mode. It was a big machine and slightly cumbersome but the screen made up for everything else as I could watch full motion videos on the train to work!

But it died as it didn't survive a fall onto a concrete floor. Not the first time this had happened but previously I'd been lucky.

So I needed a new PDA and fast. I was hoping HP had improved upon the 4700 model with something more swish in a smaller design and with that same great screen.

It wasn't to be. All the models are either hybrid phone devices or use the dull QVGA format which I had on an PDA over 5 years ago! I don't want a phone hybrid as I think people look like t****rs when they use them as a phone.

I decided to look further afield and see what other machines were out there. I had previously been a fan of Psion, who made the best PDA/organisers ever (Psion 5mx in case you're asking), but their demise effectively forced me down the iPAQ route. There are other PDA vendors out there but I'd never heard of most of them and I didn't see any good reviews.

In the end I went for the rather dull hx2700 which I received today. It is dull, dull, dull, dull.

It is me or have HP put all their innovation into phone/PDA hybrids? Is this what people expect of a PDA these days? Maybe that's why HP have ignored the non-phone models; the lack of decent competition doesn't help too.

Thank goodness for competition in the storage market or my job would be as boring as my time management!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The Nokia E90 Communicator (Brick) is about as close as you're going to a Psion.

Personally I gave up on the whole PDA malarky years ago and just sync my E95 against Outlook. People send me meeting requests, I accept them, sync with my phone via Bluetooth and at some stage in the future it'll go off 15 minutes before I'm due to be somewhere.

That's about as much time as I'm willing to manage

Chris M Evans said...

Mark, I looked at the Communicators and visited 4 mobile phone shops to have a look at one. I wanted to get the look and feel thing sorted as I'd seen them years ago but never taken the plunge. Unfortunately not one shop had even a dummy model in stock so I decided spending £600 on a device I've never seen before was a little risky. Two days in, I've installed Pocket Informant on my new iPAQ and I'm starting to feel a little better about it!