Last year my father had gone to Dubai for a holiday. He called me up and asked, ?Son, what do you want?? I was clueless. I said ?Dad I can?t think of a thing, so please get me whatever you feel like.?
I know I was being stupid but I was sleeping at that point of time, and the result was the shiny chrome Palm Tungsten E PDA.
Before I got the PDA I had never imagined that I would ever require a PDA. I had a diary and cell phone. What else do I need? How wrong I was. The PDA has totally changed the way I organize myself. Now I have so much data on my hand that I don?t need to go looking for it anywhere. I save a helluva lot of time.
I recommend anyone reading this and having some problems with forgetting, inefficient time management etc to get a PDA and work on it for a while and seriously try to use it. It is more than worth the time one spends on it.
My Palm Tungsten E. As I did not have any hand in choosing the model, I was a bit skeptical. I was wondering that will it be of any use at all or not.
I opened the package. There was the Palm itself. There was a CD and a cable to connect to the computer. I had to install the software before I could start to experiment with my shiny new PDA.
The installation was painless and was over in a jiffy. I had the option of choosing what to install, but I chose everything. I then sat down and started to, for the first time look seriously at my new toy. Soon I was so used to it that here is a list of things I do with it.
? It has a touch screen.
? It can be synchronized with MS Outlook, so all the PIM data is automatically transferred to the Palm. Very useful.
? It has an infrared port, through which I could connect to my cell phone and download all my phonebook entries.
? I play mp3 on it.
? I read, write and edit MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in it.
? I use it as a scratchpad.
? I type SMS on it and send it through my cell phone as it is easier to type on this machine.
? I play games on it.
? I read books on it. (It?s as good as reading a normal book; you can download a lot of free classics from the net.
? I also use it for my usual stuff as to-do, reminder, birthday/anniversary reminder etc.
? I sometime use it to read email (if I get a GPRS phone around).
You see this little device has taken over my life. I cannot do without it anymore.
Now I will tell you the specs of the device.
? It has the Intel ARM processor at 100 MHz.
? Palm OS 5.0
? It has a color touch screen TFT display capable of 65000 colors.
? Graffiti software recognizes stylus strokes and you can use it to enter text (troublesome at start but very easy when one gets used to it).
It came with 32 MB inbuilt memeory and a slot for flash RAM , (same memory card as the New Nokia Phone)
Dad got it for around 9000. In India it is available for around 14000 (cheaper in gray).
I have looked at other PDAs too. But this model has the best cost/performance ratio. Pocket PC computers which have MS windows CE do not go well with me as they hang a lot. I have been using this model since last September and its performance has been impeccable. Even now, after a year very few models come close to it in the price/performance ratio.
one warning though -- if you manage to discharge the PDA completely you will lose all the data.