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A Handheld for a Primary Computer?
fromtheblueline asks: "As the last of her children leaves the house for college, my mother is planning on ditching her desktop, cable internet and landline in attempts to simplify and reduce bills. She doesn't use her PC for anything more than occasional emails and online purchases and her cell phone has pretty much made her landline obsolete. She emails me asking if there is a handheld that could replace these devices. I don't own one, don't need one (my SE616 and Powerbook is plenty), and really never bothered to research one. A quick search for anything decent reveals prices close to, or over, a low end notebook. As for access, unless she searches for open wifi points, I can't imagine mobile service being anymore competitive than a cable/DSL line coming into a house. Any recommendations, Slashdot?"
Instead of Getitng a Handheld pc why not consider a newer Mobile phone, Both the Sony p800 (older) and the newer P900 come with opera built in, they would need no wireless point as they obviously use gprs to connect to the internet, you can also set up mailboxs on the phone to connect to your email servers. To a lesser extent you might also want to consider the Nokia 6600 (what i have) as it does almost all of the above but cheaper than the p900 (but not touch screen)
Just an idea anyhow....
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
If she really wants to stay mobile and wants "small and light" then get her a TR series Vaio. If she's not a computer user, get her an 12 inch iBook.
Neither of them are cheap, but it'll be easier than doing tech support the next time she drops it...
I spent a couple of weeks using a modern (like less than 6 months old) PocketPC via 802.11b. My results were mixed. I used it for browsing Slashdot and reading the occasional email. Can't say I'd want to do a lot of heavy duty stuff with it, though. It didn't really understand the concept of doing more than one thing at a time. I don't mean multitasking, it did that quite well. I could only open one email at a time, or browse one page at a time, etc. That may not matter to you but it bugged the hell out of me. (not to mention that most sites didn't render on IE readably..)
If all she really does is type the occasional email, then a PocketPC + Bluetooth (using her phone to send the mail out...) + a keyboard for it may not be all that bad. But if she does anything more, she'll ache for her PC again.
"Derp de derp."
Not worth it. Get a little laptop. I have a Tungsten C, and now I mostly use it for the same things I used my Handspring for. Better to put the money toward a 12-in. iBook - most of the Apple stores have an older G3-based one available for something on the order of $800, and the Apple web store has them for that under "special deals." They're not the latest and greatest, but they're a lot faster and more usable than a handheld.