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

Yes.

[NetJunkie]

Usually the people in the tech industry don't. They get them for a toy and then don't use them. I didn't use mine much, so I gave it to my wife. She uses it constantly and keeps a lot of info in there. It's much easier than the paper system she had before.

At my office the directors and VPs use theirs like crazy. They'd be lost without them. The guys on my team (network team) don't use them much, since we don't have all the meetings and contacts to track.

.....not a status symbol.

[jki]

"I think the PDA has become more of a status symbol than a useful tool."

You think so? I think atleast here in Finland the trend is beginning to reverse - if you carry a communicator - like I do - that is a sign of you being just a workhorse :) If you have the luxury of not needing it - then that's a real status symbol :)

Anyway, I don't think just the PDA functionality would be enough a reason for me to carry it. But when it is at the same time your only phone, and a use anywhere SSH client then there is enough value.

PDAs are pretty useless...

[alexandre]

personnaly i bought a Palm IIIx and after a year sold it and went back to pen and papers... (agendas) Syncing is annoying and the palm lose everything if you don't have fresh batteries.. i cant forget it in a corner for a long time. I did read some eBooks but it's not really worth it. I did have some fun with the software available but after a week you do something else :)

Re:Usage

[DataPath]

I spend a lot of my free time reading ebooks, but I actually do PRODUCTIVE thigns with mine, too. As a college student, I have more classes and assignments that I can really manage to remember without some central way of tracking them. At the beginning of each semester, I take the syllabi (sp?) for all my classes and enter important dates in the calendar, and all assignments into the tasklist. It makes my life so much simpler. And while I'd be a liar if I said I never turned in an assignment late since, it's always been by choice, and never by accident.

Re:Usage

[Doc Hopper]

Everybody's entitled to my opinion. This week, I've read "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "The Hacker's Diet: How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition", P.T. Barnum's "The Art of Money Getting", and I'm partway into reviewing "Perl Programming" and Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer Abroad". I did all this while riding the bus (an hour each way for work 5 days a week) and during the odd spare moment here and there.

All this on a little Palm M500 I picked up for $125 at the time. Yes, the screen is small. However, it's perfectly adequate for reading electronic books. My only worry is that I'll wear out the "down" button on the front of my M500.