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Are PDAs Simply Finished?
angkor writes "After Sony's sudden plan to discontinue the Clie and pull out of the American PDA market, many industry observers have increased their speculation about the demise of the PDA, in general. The Japanese electronics giant was defeated in the American market by increased competition and an industry-wide decline in PDA sales."
People want either highly specialized mini computers (ie audio players), or they want the full power of a computer. Budget laptops don't cost significantly more than some high end PDAs, and you get a lot more flexibility.
Mobile phones with PDA-like functions are whupping the PDA's out of the market.
;)
Bluetooth r0xx0r j00.
Heck, if the iPod could input calandar and contact info, I definitely wouldn't need a PDA.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
It sounds silly, but if we could disable the phone part of a smartphone it could actually be more useful!
I think that the PDA world will take a dive once Handtop computers become available. Computers like the OQO, Flipstart and the Sony VGN-U70 will start to take over. Why have a PDA when you can bring the actual applications and data you want with you anywhere.
Things may not really take off till the second generation of these devices, but I'm looking forward to taking one of them for a test drive.
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
The PDA is failing for the same reason 3G technology has a slow uptake and is in danger of slipping into moribundency. It's just too much technology that's useless in such a small device while you're on the move. Who really wants to do wordprocessing with something half the size of a tissue box while they're sitting on the toilet? The tech just isn't feasible; it's cramped and the UI is poor. Costs are still ramped up, which doesn't help either.
Anyway, the Treo 600 has it's flaws (most notably the mediocre screen resolution). But before I got this device, every PDA I ever had was something I used for a few months then it fell into general disuse because of the effort to charge it, sync it and use it. This is the first PDA device that I actually use regularly and believe I will continue to use regularly, and that convenience is worth a whole lot. So the PDA is dead... long live the PDA-phone.
As someone who routinely carries a PDA, mobile phone, digital camera and USB keychain drive, I love the idea of convergence, but I don't think technology has reached the point where it's matured enough to make combination devices really as useful and as feasible as separate devices are currently. The reason? Primary battery power, IMO.
My cellphone is a fairly basic Motorola, its batteries can last for days without recharging, and I can leave it switched on at all times, day and night, just popping it into the charger as required. Sure, it doesn't have a colour screen or multimedia messaging or PDA functions, but the fact that it's always ready to use is crucial to the way I use a phone.
My PDA, on the other hand, has a big 320x320 in full colour, oodles of flash memory, sound and video capabilities, and so on. However, the way I use a PDA is totally different. If I left the PDA on for more than around 4-6 hours, the battery would be gone. Fortunately, I use the thing intermittently, only turning it on when I want to check my tasks and appointments or record a memo.
If you can make me a Smartphone that has audio and video capabilities with a large screen that can be left on all day like my current cellphone can, I'd buy it without much hesitation. But that's not the case at the moment.
Today's smartphones are cellphones with poor battery life and/or PDAs with small screens and limited abilities. They're not perfect for either task. Until they are, I'll keep carrying my separate devices, and until we see a PDA with a 4 megapixel camera with an optical zoom lens, a flash and full manual exposure control, I will keep my digicam, too.
Perhaps fuel cells are the answer, but until they're mainstream, why aren't we seeing more Smartphones that could be put into a "super low power" mode - where the colour screen is switched off and replaced by a simple 100x100 pixel mono display, and the 400MHz XScale is switched off and the phone functions run on a 1MHz VLSI to conserve battery life when the thing is sitting in your jacket pocket?
I disagree that PDAs are a gimmick. Maybe for most people they were, but they've led a silent revolution in medicine. My PDA is indespensible, and I know of no young physician who doesn't rely on one heavily.
It can store several texts at once, drug information (including indication, dosing, and interactions), and most importantly the ever-revolving formulary your insurance company uses. There are many programs that make calculating certain medically related formulas a cinch.
The PDA may be dead for the general public, but it has found quite a nice niche in medicine.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I think it's less an issue of PDAs not having uses as it is an issue of market saturation. Sony's mistake is that they literally came out with new PDAs almost every month (and if they weren't released in the US, they were released in Japan and never made it to the states). People who use PDAs just don't replace their PDAs often enough to sustain as many handhelds as there are, much less as many as Sony came out with. Sony's other mistake was to revamp its high-end line so often. $700 PDAs are especially not replaced very often. With the speed at which these things were replaced in their lineup, I can't imagine they were able to produce and sell enough to get good margins on those products. It would have been nice for them to have researched how people actually use their PDAs rather than try to cram everything they could into one of them, since a PDA too big to take with you is not one that you'll use, no matter how much "convergence" you've got in one.
I think Sony's other mistake (one that PalmOS might be repeating with its next OS) was to not support the Mac platform out of the box. Many Mac users (and I'm including myself here to some degree) are notorious for wanting the latest and greatest gadgets. My first PDA was an early Sony. When I switched to the Mac platform shortly after that I had to buy a third party conduit, which became outdated when I upgraded shortly after that to Mac OS X--and then there was NO conduit I could use, no matter how much I was willing to pay. So after three yearss my Sony PDA outlived my ability to use it with my current computer. When I was ready to replace my Sony CLIE with a new Palmtop, I didn't feel that I could rely on my Sony to be "supported" by even a third party after three years, so I went with another brand.
Alex.
You've touched it really - these things need to solve a real 9 to 5 problem. And for doctors - probably because doctors don't bring their desk to the bedside - the PDA is the right thing.
But hospitals have invested heavily in the WIFI infrastructure to accomidate a PDA in the hostpital almost like a cellphone in the outside world.
That said - i think the real tool for medicine is a simple barcode reader - scanning patient tags, medicine bottles, blood pressure readings, and a range of tests into a portable scanner - allows the objective facts of medicine to be collected in real time and consolidated without double entry.
You mention cross checking medicines - that can be done by scanning the patients current collection of pill bottles - and the recommended new entry, the patient id and - viola - a printed drug cross check.
AIK
Well, it depends. I owned a Visor, one Clie, Tungsten C and now I have a Zaurus C760. I have also cell phone which has some rudimentary PDA functions (calendar, notes, addressbook). It all comes down to what you want to use the device for.
If you need just to keep track of phone numbers and occassional appointment, then probably a PDA is an overkill for you. The same if you expect a PC-like functionality from it. It was just not intended for that use.
However, if you need an ultra-portable device, which is capable of decent networking (there are no cell phones with WiFi and data connections via e.g. GPRS are very slow and for exorbitant prices.), has usable screen for data entry and a bit of computing power to handle e.g. VPN, decent mail client and web browser, then probably a cell phone is not going to cut it. Also I want my cell phone small, not a huge brick it would have to be if the manufacturer wanted to accomodate large screen usable for PDA functions. Just look at the Treo smartphones, they are very big for a phone and the screens are still the good old crappy 160x160 Palm resolution (not sure about the recent 600 Treo). And Treos are probably the best PDA-phone combination (or smartphone if you want) that there is on the market today.
Compared to laptops, yeah, laptop is more powerful than any PDA, that's true. However, my Visor ran on one set of AAA batteries for two weeks with normal use and over 12 hours with intensive use in a day long meeting entering data via external keyboard. Even the most recent Centrino laptops have problems to last that long. Not to mention the portability - I am carrying my Zaurus all the time with me, my T41 Thinkpad has 2.5kg, which do not count as a brick yet, but are not something pleasant to constantly lug around neither.
Finally, usage patterns - with PDA, you can just whip it out, power it up, look up some phone number or whatever and turn it off again in seconds. That's about the time you manage to type something on your cell phone fighting with the clumsy interface or your laptop starts to be usable after waking up from suspend.
So, I do not think that because Sony exited the market with their horribly overpriced and often flaky PDAs, which refused to support e.g. Compact Flash because it would undercut the sales of their expensive Memorysticks (even in the NZ line, which had the slot for that - the slot can be used only for their proprietary and very expensive WiFi card), the whole market is going down the drain. There is a saturation in the market and little compeling reason to buy a new PDA if your old one still works fine. The amount of innovation brought by Palm, Sony and HP (iPaqs ..) is abysmal in recent years, so no wonder that people do not buy. The largest peeves of the current PDAs - decent keyboard, decent display (Psion anybody?) and finally stable OS (yeah, both PalmOS and WinCE suck here) are still missing. Sharp is on good track with their C7xx line here, however the software leaves a lot to be desired and in the marketing department Sharp is shooting itself in the foot, IMHO. Fortunately, there is plenty of excelent free software for Zaurus available.
Calling PDAs fad which is dying out is at least bit premature, IMHO. If you have no use for it, do not buy one. For me it was a tremendous help, regardless of having a laptop and cell phone already. I like devices that take the "UNIX approach" - do just one thing and do it well. Laptop and cell phone do not do PDA role well, so why to push them there.
Regards, Jan
I've really enjoyed PDAs over the past few years, but This Tungsten C is probably my last. What *I* use my PDA for is keeping track of my contacts and appointments. I also use it for brief emails when there is access to WiFi.
But enhanced cellphones really do this job BETTER. I can dial or message my contacts straight from the addressbook, and there's one less device to carry.
The article is right that PDAs will survive, but I think they'll find new users. As they become available with hard drives, PDAs could become portable (and continuously update-able) manuals, databases, order entry devices, etc. Heavy messaging belongs on small laptops. Contact management and appointments get shunted to cellphones.
PDAs end up being networked business devices: information terminals for people who need portability but aren't doing much content creation. That's the province of laptops and tablet computers, which will get lighter and more powerful. Cellphones are the communications platform (group calendaring is a communications feature). I think most people will prefer their entertainment to be on a dedicated device like an iPod. Who wants to be interrupted by the boss while you're listening to music or watching streaming video? Keep that crap on another box.
Someone mentioned note-taking. Heavy note-taking, such a meeting minutes, is content creation. Use a laptop. I think voice recognition will fill the need for post-it type entries. Dictate to your cellphone, and it gets recorded or dumped to text. MUCH better than Graffiti or a small keyboard, huh?
Apple saw this coming. They were right not to bring Newton 2 to market, cool as I'm sure it would have been.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I couldn't agree with you more. I love my SideKick (that I'm using to post this reply), and frequently have PDA owners drooling over it. This is especially true in the MANY circumstances where I whip it out to google for something, check the weather or traffic-cams before hitting the road, check online prices while at a computer-show, etc. About the only problems with it, really aren't problems with IT, but problems with T-Mobile! You can't install non-T-Mobile ringtones. You can't install non-T-Mobile software. I use my AIM on it all the time, but many of my friends only use YahooIM... someone already wrote a Y!I'm client for it (check freshmeat), but you have to be a registered developer to be able to install it!
- Posted via Danger HipTop2 / T-Mobile Sidek!ck II -
My mobile (Japanese PHS system) has a color screen plus all the usual bells and whistles and I swear I only need to charge it every week or so. Granted I don't get a lot of calls, but at least the standby time is great. It must be the different system.
As for PDAs, I started with a Newton years ago and up through a handspring and a clie, all of which I gave away after a while.
Now I just carry a little Moleskine notebook for PDA-type functions.
Really.
I'm not a Luddite or anti-technology, but the benefit of having a thing full of notes that will never be obsolete or need batteries is strong. (Don't worry, they're overpriced, too, satisfying that "spend" urge. )
For backups, I scan pages that I want to keep. I've even emailed scans to coworkers. It works well, as I have one of those scanners with a "single button scan" setup.
It never crashes and if I lose it, I'm only out the 15 bucks for a new one.
My writing is better, too, as I use the notes I make in the book as a reference when I type it into my powerbook later.
I really love not having to charge it.
No wall-wart to buy funky European adapters for.
Great tactile experience: Good paper that you can use with a fountain pen. It's just the right size. The strap makes a satisfying "snap" sound. It's black. I even sketch occasionally.
For input, my current choice is a sterling silver Parker 75. $40 from an antique shop.
My PDAs were never this useful. No phone interface will ever be this useful, though a camera phone could easily take photos of the pages in the book and mail them to your regular email account or even to your blog as appropriate.
There's also the "cafe coolness" factor. I never felt like really putting thoughts and impressions into my PDA. I do with the notebook. Even an occasional watercolor, though it hasn't replaced my Nikon. It's a pleasure to sit at a cafe and actually WRITE something.
Of course, it doesn't do audio or video, but I have an iPod that I rarely carry anymore and a PowerBook that shows video full-screen when I want that, which never happens to be when I'm out somewhere where I wouldn't have my laptop.
-- My Weblog.
I am responsible for IT matters in a company with 28 remote sites. Although I'm never 'on call' after working hours, I need to be 'available' for consulting on technical issues nearly 24/7 but I also have a life (honest!). If I'm 'out and about' I can still access any of our network resources via my GPRS mobile phone and a bluetooth link to an iPAQ PDA. The PDA acts as a:
1) SSH terminal (pockeTTY) for our Linux servers
2) Remote Desktop to our Windows servers
3) Remote support tool for desktop PCs using a Pocket PC version of VNC.
Plus of course the usual Web browsing and email checking.
The PDA means I can go out without lugging a laptop everythwere or having to go home or to the nearest office if there's a minor crisis. With the PDA I can 'dial in' from almost anywhere - a few months ago I fixed a print spool problem on a Windows 2000 server while the passenger in a car travelling along the M4 motorway in the UK, and more recently I took a 10 minute 'timeout' from a meal in a Chinese restaurant to reprogram a router. The alternative would be for me to stay in all the time.
I have tried a smartphone for all of this but the screens are just not big enough.
AT&ROFLMAO
/. is largely populated by faithful, Unix-loving geeks who view anything to do with Microsoft as The Great Satan.
The Unix model of programming is to have one tool do one thing well and another to do another thing well. This is why so many text editors, etc. The Microsoft model is to have one tool with the kitchen sink and more.
Having a separate phone and PDA neatly fits the Unix model. The phone is there to make calls and can also act as a modem (Bluetooth is your friend). The PDA is for email, contacts, checkbook, notes, etc.
By contrast, smartphones represent Gatesian bloat and feature creep. They are, inevitably, a half-assed kludge of the two that do both things half-assed but neither particularly well. Usually, you end up with a PDA on a cell-phone sized screen.
Sony's failure had nothing to do with the PDA market being dead. Granted, it's not like it was in the boom days, but it's far from dead. No, Sony's latest units were huge, overpriced ($600 or so), and used their proprietary memory format that just happened to cost double or triple what the others did. Hell, the NX60 (?) had a CF slot, but it only accepted Sony's proprietary wifi adapter. A Sandisk CF wifi adapter costs on the order of $30. Sony's cost $150.
Personally, my Palm Tungsten T has all the usual PDA stuff on it (contacts, calendar, note pad, etc.) plus my checkbook, several games, and an MP3 player. Oh, and did I mention that it also has Bluetooth *and* uses industry-standard SD/MMC cards?
Score another one for open standards.
I own two ipaq H3600's first thing I
did was dump the Pocket PC crap and
put linux on them. With a pcmcia sleeve,
a 10/100 integrated card, and real
trouble shooting tools like tcpdump.
They are the cat's meow when you find
yourself in drop ceiling with a hub
someone stuck there years ago and forgot
about. Last time I pulled out my PDA
in that situation, the tech I was
working with would have killed for
one. If you are trouble shooting a network
problem that takes you into a attic or
into a crawl space that laptop is
not the animal you want to use.
Install prismstumbler and add a
directional antenna, getting a idea
of what the wireless neighborhood
looks like is a piece of cake.
Contacts, phone numbers, notes hell
I got a cheap Casio device that's
better for that stuff and If it gets
run over by a car tire I'm out less
then $50.00.
Great tools do only ONE thing, but do that ONE thing very, very well.
I've been using PalmOS based PDAs since the fist PalmPilot was released and digital organizers prior to that. I don't leave home without my PDA ever.
I have a very hard time understanding how the average person goes through their day without one. I use mine for contact information, calendaring, games, looking up words (carrying a dictionary with you at all times is absolutely fantastic), cached websites(updated twice a day), belive it or not I use that cheezy mirror program that turns your screen black so you can see your reflection better all the time, universal remote, informational databases, notepad, password storage (how the hell do people remember all of their passwords? I have over 50 passwords and the list is growing), family photos, ebooks,...I could go on but you get the point.
I believe the market has gone sour for a few reasons:
A. Modern cell phones do most of the basic PDA functions. B. Old PDAs do most of the basic PDA functions. C. Most people don't own and have never owned a PDA before so they don't know what their missing.
Like I originally stated however, their just going through a transitional period. Once the technology advances to the point that we have phones with month long power supplies, MP3 players, high quality digital cameras and PDA functionality that will make our current PDAs look like calculators (oh yea, I use my PDA as a calculator as well).
^^vv<><>BA