Do People Really Use Their PDAs?

TAL asks: "With Dell entering the market with their new PDA, the PDA market appears saturated. I work in a high-tech industry and I see more people carrying their PDAs than actually using them. At the same time, I see many people actually going back to their paper planners. I've ran the PDA gauntlet myself and have found that much time is wasted syncing, charging and reinstalling the software. Have there been any studies on PDA turnover? I think the PDA has become more of a status symbol than a useful tool."

Comments

I agree...

[wumarkus420]

When I first got my Palm, people marveled at the chance to look at all the phone numbers I could store at one time. I even kept it in my pocket at all times and tried to incorporate it into my wallet (pretty tedious with the original Palm). However, within a couple months, I was only using it to play Galax. I eventually gave it away to my girlfriend, who also used it for a week or two before deciding it really wasn't worth it to have this giant thing for the purpose of only storing phone numbers and playing the occaisonal game.

So then I get a CE device from work. I thought I would give PDA's another chance. While this time, I had color and ethernet, and a decent media player, it fell prey to the same problems at before. I stopped using it within a month and it now sits in a drawer never to be used again.

I think PDA's are cool, but no matter how much I want to like them, they just aren't useful.

Re:I agree...

[Wellspring]

I've seen this, but I think it has more to do with the device than with the notion of using PDA's. With Palm and M$ equivalents, you have to use graffiti. Any handwriting is a fairly onerous chore. Also, you have to poke around on the screen to do searches and app navigation.

With the Blackberry you don't. So with that said, I am a major RIM fan (I'd imagine that the Good Technologies or Danger devices ought to be about the same). People get addicted to the Blackberry: they call them Crack-berries.

When I had a RIM for my last job, I used it constantly. I responded to important emails as soon as they came in, religiously added people to my address book, and kept my entire personal and work schedule in the calendar (which meant, it popped into Exchange at work, too.)

For all its flaws, the one test of how useful it is is "Do I use it?" Hell, yeah. Constantly. Without having it now, I feel more than ever how my schedule, dinners with friends, my dragonlance game, birthdays, etc. was always at my fingertips and accessable.

OK, so what made blackberry different? The little minikeyboard was a better data entry system than a touchscreen. A jog dial means that everything has the same UI and you control it all from your thumb. The built-in wireless was slow, but communicated in the background constantly, so you didn't have to cradle except for recharges (once per week or two: I've had mine last for three weeks). The wireless coverage footprint is incredible, but the device continues to work fine withotu coverage... it just catches up when you pop back in. It is a durable device that you keep on your belt: it turns on when you take it out of its holster, then turns the screen off when you put it back in. No frills: no color, no music, no filesystem, nothing that drains power, makes the device more complicated, and adds 'coolness'.

That's the message. The more cool the device is, the more it trades away essentials. If you want an MP3 player, buy a dedicated device. If you want a phone, buy a phone. If you want a PDA, decide what you want to run. For me it was email, schedule, address book, and a memo to jot stuff down in. RIM was perfect. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

I agree

[n__0]

Seems people are trying ot find reasons to use their pdas once theyve got them. Realising they aren't as useful or as easy to use as they thought. My dad picked up one a few months ago and a lot of the price of the ipaq that he got seems to come in afterwards with memory expansions and interfacing wires etc. He doesn't need to interface it to everything, it jsut seems he needs to justify why hes got it and having gps and camera photos on their is really a status symbol.

Need too much discipline.

[monadicIO]

I found that I needed to be too disciplined to use my PDA for tasks that I'd use it for like todo lists and phone,contacts. I got a free one sometime ago. I tried using it but found I was spending more time trying to organise my life in the PDA. I gave up shortly finding that it was more convenient to forget things than to spend time and energy inputting every thing in the PDA.

Now if only I had a personal human analog assistant inputting everything into my digital one.

You said it yourself

[ektor]

I work in a high-tech industry and I see more people carrying their PDAs than actually using them.

If people carry them is because they use them. Sure, you can carry some gadget for a week for its novelty factor but if you don't use it sooner than later you will stop taking it with you.

Having said that PDAs are not for everybody. Unless you spend certain amount of time away from you desk and in need of contact information, scheduling or some specific application maybe a PDA is not for you.

Personally I love my XDA especially because I have my email always updated anywhere I go. I don't use it as a phone very often but when I do it works very well although certainly not as well as a normal cell phone.

Not to knock PocketPC, but...

[dachshund]

So then I get a CE device from work. I thought I would give PDA's another chance

On top of that, the PocketPC devices-- despite being way more powerful and generally cooler-- are much less suited to the basic tasks of a PDA (storing numbers, calendar, etc.) They're just too big, eat too much battery, and the software isn't as concise as Palm's.

I really thought my shiny iPaq would be a great replacement for my Palm and my laptop, with it's ability to handle an 802.11 card (and Ricochet back when that existed). Turned out that it was an enormous and inferior substitute for both, and it crashed a lot with the network card in. Now I don't use either, because I'm dissatisfied with the inflexibility of my Palm and the flaws of the PocketPC.

It depends on lifestyle.

[Elwood P Dowd]

It absolutely only depends on the way you live your life. The PDA is a good solution for some people, and a really crappy one for other people. This was illustrated to me with my ipod.

I got one as a cheap bonus with my ibook during my senior year in college. I used it *everywhere*. Since I walked to and from everything I did, it was permanently inside my jacket, frequently synched with my newest music, always synched with my contacts.

Then I graduated and started driving to work every morning. The ipod immediately offered me nothing. Sure, it can play in my car stereo, but with a 20 minute drive, I may as well play MP3 CDs. I didn't use it for months.

Now I've got a new job where the commute includes a 40 minute ferry ride and a 15 minute walk, each direction, every day. I'd shoot myself without my ipod. But I never use the contacts/scheduling features because I can do all that with my PC at work.

Blah, blah, blah. The point is, PDAs, or any other such device, are useful if your life fits their uses. They don't conform to you. You shouldn't conform to them either. If you're a homebody, drive only between work and home, or home and the bar, your PDA isn't going to do anything for you. If you constantly find yourself not having your information when you need it, get a PDA. This is, at max, like 5% of the population.

Not a job issue...

[Christopher Bibbs]

but a question of style. My style used to be to rely upon my wife for tracking every bit of important info. Phone numbers, dates, to do lists, she had it all up in her head. Sound weird? Well, maybe it was.

The point is, some people don't like to be organized and others do. If you like to be organized, the first trick is to find a system that works for you. Any time management class will teach you that. What works for 95% of the world may not work for you which is why we have options.

Re:I don't know about "studies"

[disappear]

What you need is not a PDA, or planning software, but Thoreau's doctrine: "Our life is frittered away by detail ...Simplify, Simplify."

That was easy for him to say: he sat in his cabin and wrote all day, and had Ralph Waldo Emerson's wife make cookies for him, feed him, and in general do all those day-to-day chores for which he had no interest.

(Really, I'm not making this up...)