PDAs? Smart Phones? Which is better?

Blogger's Note: With all the electronic gadgets in the world, simpler things may be sufficient. Read on ... 8-)

Picking the Perfect Pocket Pal
By David Strom
Published Wednesday 23rd November 2005 12:38 GMT
Original URL: http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/23/picking_the_perfect_pocket_pal/

Seemingly overnight, my pockets are overflowing with gear. Part of the problem is we get plenty of stuff here to try out, and I like trying them out. But the issue is that not every device is capable of satisfying every need, and they all have some fatal flaw. Here is a picture of what I am carrying around these days:

You'll notice the one non-electronic thing is my wallet/address book. I used to pride myself on carrying this around and called it my PDA. I would laugh and say that it was "instant on, always available, compatible with all operating systems, and a wallet too." But then I got to look at the new Palm Z22(http://www.mobilityguru.com/2005/10/17/palm_z22_disappoints/index.html). I wasn't all that excited about z22 until after I wrote the review and downloaded Andrew Gregory's Sudoku game (http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew/pdas/palm/myprogs/sudoku/) to run on it.

That got me hooked on carrying that z22 around with me. For those of you that aren't familiar with this game, it is a crossword puzzle with numbers and the surface of the Palm is ideal for it, not to mention saving all those trees by not printing out the puzzles. The more I used the Palm/Sudoku, the more I grew attached to the thing. And having its rechargeable batteries last about four or five days and a big color screen was really nice too.

Then I was trying out a couple of cell phone games from Summus.com. I now was bringing along a second cell in addition to the Motorola that I normally use. These games are much less satisfying than my Sudoko/Palm combo. For one thing, the text is so small that I am going to have to get a new prescription for my glasses: I figure it is roughly 4 point type, or even smaller. For another thing, you have to have the magical combination of right carrier, right phone, and right service plan before you can even get started with downloading anything.

There was that initial attraction and motivation of downloading the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar pictures. But eventually I just left the phone at home as I realized that looking at tiny chix pix wasn't very satisfying. Not to mention that the fees were beginning to add up for all those downloads. Yes, they have other things that you can download to your phone, but those pictures aren't much bigger and certainly not as interesting as the SI girls.

About the best thing that I could find on the phone was a DIY ringtone maker called ToneMaker DJ (http://www.sonicbrandingsolutions.com/products/tonemaker.html). You have a series of controls that allows you to create your own music and save it to your phone. Apart from annoying all my co-workers that morning with my techno compositions, it did have that "you can be your own DJ" satisfaction to it. However, it was a lot of work to get something that sounded right.

While we are talking about ringtones, I should mention coming from the other direction is Xingtone.com's software. This runs on a PC and allows you to clip pieces of any MP3 sound file and then send it to your phone, provided that your phone has the ability to receive Internet-based messages. Probably a good audio editor and using the Active Synch properties of my Motorola phone would work better. It took some skill to zero in on the exact few seconds of music that I was trying to clip for my ring tones, and a true audio editor would have better controls.

The last item in my pocket is X Micro's Video MP3 player (http://www.edistributor.ca/x-micro/videomp3_400.asp). This is competition for Apple's latest Video iPod, but smaller than the Shuffle. With a gigabyte of RAM and a price of about $165, it has plenty of room, but again suffers from the Old Man syndrome of trying to cram too much into too small a space. The X Micro plays videos and MP3s, shows photos, has an FM radio and a voice recorder. But the screen is literally the size of a 37 cent stamp and the menus are also in tiny type. If you need help, the type in its miniscule manual isn't much larger.

While all this innovation around pocket-sized devices is great, sometimes it is better to go back to the basics. My paper diary, while very unexciting, is still compatible with every operating system, doesn't require batteries, and is still instant on.

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