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No thanks, I'll deal with the memory issue easier than I will a slow-ass pda.

• AximSite - Axim X50V
• PocketNow - Axim X50 & X50v
• infoSync - Axim X50v
• infoSync - Axim X50 Advanced
• infoSync - Axim X50 Standard
• PDA Buyers Guide - Axim X50v
• Read - Brighthand - Axim X50v
• CNET - Axim X50v
• Pocket PC Thoughts - Axim X50
• BargainPDA - Axim X50 & X50v
• Geek.com - Axim X50 & X50v

Anything is possible. In fact there are numerous palmtops and PDAs, that can satisfy your needs and desires, already available today.

However, somethings, though possible, are improbable. The likelihood of finding your dream PDA for cheap is one of those things that falls under the heading of highly improbable. If, on the other hand, you consider $300-$1000 cheap then have a look at the Sharp Zaurus, HP iPaq or Dell Axim They are all very nice PDA/palm tops.

Anything is possible. In fact there are numerous palmtops and PDAs, that can satisfy your needs and desires, already available today.

However, somethings, though possible, are improbable. The likelihood of finding your dream PDA for cheap is one of those things that falls under the heading of highly improbable. If, on the other hand, you consider $300-$1000 cheap then have a look at the Sharp Zaurus, HP iPaq or Dell Axim They are all very nice PDA/palm tops.

Anything is possible. In fact there are numerous palmtops and PDAs, that can satisfy your needs and desires, already available today.

However, somethings, though possible, are improbable. The likelihood of finding your dream PDA for cheap is one of those things that falls under the heading of highly improbable. If, on the other hand, you consider $300-$1000 cheap then have a look at the Sharp Zaurus, HP iPaq or Dell Axim They are all very nice PDA/palm tops.

I am a clamshell nut. I must have a clamshell design, and I've been very unhappy with the US PDA market for a long, long time. Is it just me, or do PDA product lines improve at a snail's pace?

Why do I think that? I got an HP100LX about late 1993. For those who don't know, it is a 80186 DOS based palmtop. It came with a great suite of PIM software, and could do some sort of quasi-multitasking with near-dos applications. No backlight, one PCMCIA slot, ran what seemed like forever (30-40 hours+) on two AA batteries. 640x240 resolution.

By about 1998, it disintegrated. I looked for another good PDA, but found nothing. I tried the WinCE based HP 320LX, but it was a piece of garbage. I opted to just buy another 100LX.

Finally, replaced my 2nd 100LX with a Zaurus C860, but not before trying several of PalmOS and WinCE 2.0/2000/2003 handhelds. Yeah, but the C860 is only available in japan. (Technically you can find it in the states.) It runs Linux, though, so slashdot folks should be all over that. WiFi is great, it has CF and SD (SDIO soon). The 640x480 display is stunning brilliant. Oh, and its clamshell/handheld convertable. Running a linux dos emulator on it lets me run all the old apps I ran on the 100LX (including Derive), at a good speed. Battery life is about 7 hours of continuous use with judicious use of WiFi, which is not bad.

I'm not impressed, at all, with this ipaq model. 640x480? I was halfway there a *decade* ago. 640x480 has been out on handheld PCs for at least 3 years now, though maybe not in the US. The processor speed is nice, but I just have to have a clamshell.

I think the C860 is ideal for grad and undergrad college students because of the scientific apps on linux, wifi, clamshell and other reasons I've outlined. I don't want just another toy PDA or PIM system. A PamOS 3.0 device will do basic PIM stuff quite handily. There are some seriously killer linux math apps (similar to mathematica) that run quite well on the C860, too. I just don't think this ipaq is a good geek's PDA because of the native OS and other reasons I've outlined.

I want to see a new PDA here in the US that I can be as excited about as I was the 200LX and and the C860.

More about Zaurus C860

More info on the ancient 100/200lx I lament

For a watch whose big thrill function is that it connects to MSN? I wouldn't pay 72.50 for it.

You could get a kickin PDA for that...hell the New HP only costs 280.00!

Just doesn't seem worth it. Get a nice swiss dress watch, a sweet PDA, and a few grams of blow for the same price.

I had the exact same phone until I dropped it. What a shame, that phone had awesome battery life and great signal stregnth. My past 3 phones had been Sanyo candy-bar style phones and got great reception, but i missed the coolness factor of my old samsung flip-phone (not the reception tho). I decided to replace the broken 4900 with another sanyo, the SCP-8100. This phone is a color flip with camera and vision. The 4 factors for buying this phone were:

1. Vision
2. Use same date cable from 4900
3. Great sanyo reception
4. Flip (yay, I'm r33t now!)

What I didnt take into account was how much battery that thing would suck up. The camera was cool for like a week until I figured how lame the QVGA pics were, but I still post to my moblog just for the hell of it. Anyway, I have to charge this puppy every night and I only talk on it maybe an hour a day, do maybe 10 shortmails (fake SMS), and connect it to the laptop about once a week for email on the go.

What was this thread about again? Oh yeah, PDAs. Um, keeping on topic, if you have a phone and a data cable, you may want to check out bitpim. Its can access your phones calander, phone book, pictures, etc... worth checking out Jeff DeMaagd as its compatible with the 4900.

Now if only sprint would embrace the MS Smartphones, I would love to get a windows mobile phone that could sync with exchange and open word docs. Er, I mean, so I could put linux on it, sync with sendmail, and use vi. right ;)

Give me $600 for this phone.

I mean, c'mon people, the pocket pc is running windows. This virus isn't exactly revolutionary.

At least now I can justify the Zaurus over the 'other guys'!

...and the processor inside my printer/fax/scanner, cell phone and PDA, and all these devices just work?

...and the processor inside my printer/fax/scanner, cell phone and PDA, and all these devices just work?

Why dont we see lower power laptops? ...using current tech for low power consumption they could make a laptop that has say a 500-600mhz processor and a trans-reflective TFT display like that on PDA's as well as using a hard drive/ram/flash combo to give me 3-4 days run time.

I've heard that Sony is deprecating the Clié UX line in favor of its VAIO type U "superportable notebook." Gimme 3-4 days of run time on one of those mothers & I'd probably end up unemployed (for dereliction of duty)!

A lot of folks with smartphones wouldn't mind 3-4 days of run time (not just standby) from a charge...

I'm probably going to be modded troll for this, or just ignored, but it's gotta be said.

Compare this: set of pictures of a HP iPAQ 4155/4150

with this (the article) set of pictures.

The 4155 can be obtained from newegg for $400, and the Zaurus has a list price of $700 (almost 2x the price), and the only extra thing the zaurus offers feature-wise is a VGA screen. Also, the 4155 is the 2nd-smallest PocketPC right now (with the 19xx series being 1st), small enough to keep it in my pocket all day without it being annoying.

Yes, i own a 4155.

I'm not really concerned with input, PDA users have used styluses with great success for years now. My concern: battery life. How long would it last with that huge display? 3 hours tops? My 1945 would die in 3 hours if I left it on, and being a watch I'm guessing that Toshiba display would have to be on 24/7. Even my "old" Palm m515 wouldn't last 5 hours if kept on, so how is this going to be powered?

WinCE devices aren't designed to run solo, they have to have a "partnership" with a "host" to do things like install software. I had an iPaq for a week before the cradle arrived, and I was trying to install the drivers for the CF wireless card. I had the Dual-CF sleeve for it, with the ma701 in the top slot and a 64-meg flash card in the bottom slot.

I figured I could download the driver package and load it onto the CF card at a desktop machine with a reader, then move the CF over to the ipaq, unpack it, and install it. No such luck. The driver ships as a win32 .exe file which then loads the drivers onto the portable via the sync cable. Whose assinine idea was this? (don't answer, I already know!)

Not that I would've wanted to use an iPaq as my primary machine anyway, even with a foldup keyboard, the screen's too small and the viewing angle is terrible. However, there are a pair of WinCE devices I could imagine using as an everyday machine: The IBM Workpad z50, and the Vadem Clio (a.k.a. Sharp Tripad) are both laptop-style PDAs, with a clamshell hinge and a full size keyboard. They both have real PCMCIA slots, CF slots, hardware serial ports, and VGA screens. Both of them get approximately 8 hours on a battery, and the z50 is available with a double-capacity battery which honestly, realistically does get 16 hours.

Because of the WinCE codependency problem mentioned above, they're both unable to survive without occasional connection to a desktop for certain tasks. The easy solution is to ditch WinCE and run the hpcmips port of NetBSD, which boots on both of them. With a decent-sized CF card you can have a full development environment and not even need someone to cross-compile for you. That's definitely enough to be self-sufficient.

Full keyboard, harware serial port, and 8 hours on a charge. That's a recipe for "portable serial console" if I ever heard one. Oh yeah, it also happens to be a full-fledged NetBSD machine. :)

So because you read something like this "would like to start developing games for cell phones and pdas", and this "suprized that people haven't taken the ititiative to start up there own niche based software companies", and you think you can just do it, because you think game-programming would be fun, and pda type games don't require three years and a huge team to create?

I like your flair, so good luck.

The things that a "killer" features for PDA's (by my standard) are:

• Useable keyboard: Ok, this is more approaching a palmtop, but it's a nice feature.
• Minimum bluetooth connectivity
• Wifi (or ability to use expansion slot for wifi).
• Linux/Mac connectivity

I just discovered the ultra-spiffy Sony Clie UX-50. This little baby just appeared here in Australia, and has a few things which'd make any geek drool. Built-in Wifi/Bluetooth, 640x480 screen, Wifi hotspot scanner software, USB, camera, microphone. Take a look at the pictures, it is damn nice.

I'm currently trying to figure out exactly what I need a PDA for, so I can make an appropriate purchase. As I do late-night support on occassion, I need a PDA that can do SSH, GPRS over bluetooth (via my bluetooth phone), and if possible, have some sort of keyboard (Some of the Sony models have nice ones).

Looking at the SL6000 screenshots, it looks like they have made the keyboard a bit more friendly, but I'm not sure what else has changed. If you want the QTopia environment on your PDA, you can get one of the relatively cheap iPaq's and install OPIE on it. Still, it looks like a great device to hack on.

Now, please excuse me while I go back to drooling over PDA's.

The things that a "killer" features for PDA's (by my standard) are:

• Useable keyboard: Ok, this is more approaching a palmtop, but it's a nice feature.
• Minimum bluetooth connectivity
• Wifi (or ability to use expansion slot for wifi).
• Linux/Mac connectivity

I just discovered the ultra-spiffy Sony Clie UX-50. This little baby just appeared here in Australia, and has a few things which'd make any geek drool. Built-in Wifi/Bluetooth, 640x480 screen, Wifi hotspot scanner software, USB, camera, microphone. Take a look at the pictures, it is damn nice.

I'm currently trying to figure out exactly what I need a PDA for, so I can make an appropriate purchase. As I do late-night support on occassion, I need a PDA that can do SSH, GPRS over bluetooth (via my bluetooth phone), and if possible, have some sort of keyboard (Some of the Sony models have nice ones).

Looking at the SL6000 screenshots, it looks like they have made the keyboard a bit more friendly, but I'm not sure what else has changed. If you want the QTopia environment on your PDA, you can get one of the relatively cheap iPaq's and install OPIE on it. Still, it looks like a great device to hack on.

Now, please excuse me while I go back to drooling over PDA's.

here ;)

That's awesome. I was thinking of buying one of those a while ago. If you want more information go here. Price scared me off, though. Too bad, might reconsider it now.

Tablet pc + wifi + barcode scanner + rugged outer shell == new possibilities for information access.

And some areas that you've never even though of...
Palm Pilot + wifi + barcode scanner == new possibilities for information access that fit in your shirt pocket.

Is it just me, or does the tablet remind anyone of the Sharp Tripad which came out a few years ago.

Don't let the pictures fool you, the keyboard and screen could be configured any which way, and you could use it as a tablet if you really wanted.

Seems like this was an idea ahead of it's time (like the newton) and far more useful than just a tablet.

Just my .02