May 6th, 2005
Are Traditional PDAs Like the PalmOne LifeDrive Irrelevant?
So Amazon leaked information on the upcoming PalmOne LifeDrive Mobile Manager, which is a fancy way of saying a there’s new Palm without wireless capability about to hit store shelves (May 18th). Source Engadget.
But let’s take a look at what is going on.
A few days ago, I posted information on the Blackberry topping the Palm and that PDA sales were hitting an all time high. This where I have to pause and consider the facts. PDAs as they were traditionally defined, meant handheld organizers like the Palm or PocketPC devices that offered integration with the PC for calendar, notes, and contacts. An offshoot were the “wired” PDAs that added live email and eventually the Web to the roster of handheld capability. Blackberry kick started that movement and is rightfully at the top today.
What we are seeing right now is a rise in “smart” PDAs and a decline in the standalone PDAs like the upcoming LifeDrive. Yes, you can add in WiFi capability but nothing beats the anywhere anytime ability to communicate with a wired PDA.
So my question is: would you buy a standalone PDA? Is the LifeDrive the last in this dying category. I think so.
David says:
I have no use for a PDA, though being able to do email and such on a Blackberry is appealing to me (though I don’t think I need that either, really). I’d rather have the computing power of a laptop at my disposal, not to mention the input options for PDA’s are severely lacking for people who are used to the speed of touch-typing (though I guess you can get fold-out keyboards).
May 6th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
nels says:
PDA’s are the greatest, part computer, part portable audio/video player, part hand held arcade. What more do you want? Smartphones just don’t have a big enough screen, and if they did they’d be too big to be a nice cell phone size, PDA’s are the way to go. The only other option is the OQO, but let face it, very few of us are in that sort of price bracket.
May 6th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
Don says:
I got a PDA to have my genealogy database at my fingertips…on my second one now, a Palm TX. I use a 2 GB SD card with it and prefer it to a LifeDriive. I don’t want to make phone calls with my PDA. Having a GPS feature to mark the location of a grave site does interest me but not enough to buy a new one. I could add it to the TX if I really wanted that feature.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:55 am