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PDA Designed for the Great Outdoors
Paul Bawon writes "A company in UK called Node has developed the world's first consumer PDA designed for use specifically in outdoor environments. The device is fully waterproof to 3 meters, has a 8 hour battery life, built in DGPS receiver and 1 Gig of storage. Bluetooth and WiFi come as standard as does a touch screen and either a PocketPC or Linux operating system. I bumped into them at a tourism conference in Edinburgh where they were demo'ing the unit and I was impressed. It's smaller than a standard postcard."
Sounds like being an outdoors PDA, it wouldn't really need the WiFi, but I guess it would be useful when your at home. Sounds a little like they were just cranking up the price a bit on that one. But none the less, this is one sweet PDA. Think of going hiking with some buddies, and even if your seperated, if you've all got bluetooth, you can still stay in communication. Deffinitely a must have for and outdoor geek.
"It's smaller than a standard postcard."
/me sets mode +rant
/me sets mode -rant
No it's not. Two of the three dimensions are smaller than a postcard, but so are the flag pole I have in my back yard. Comparisons like that are useless.
Underholdning.info
because ruggedised PDAs have been around for ages - example is the Panasonic toughbook which they target at industrial and 'law enforcement' customers (ie, has to be rugged enough to be used to subdue violent suspects).
The industrial ones are very expensive as the customers can afford to buy them.. is this the difference between them and this new Consumer model?
A portable field charger that doesn't require external battery source (solar, hand crank, whatever) would have been nice. That, or some sort of long lasting methanol fuel cell. I mean, if you're really gonna use this thing in the great outdoors doing forestry surveys or something, I would imagine that having an alternative charging source would have been nice to have. '6 hours ain't a whole day of battery life in my book...'
Outdoor PDAs are truly invaluable. I don't understand why anyone would buy one. If I want to go outdoors, I sure as hell don't want to be near any electronics.
In this day and age with computerized everything, sometimes it feels good just to get away from it all. This device doesn't let me do that. It does let me use GPS which I guess would help when I get lost, but so does my watch which is smaller, lighter, and less to think about when hiking.
This device is sans value.
Dancin Santa
Or do people ususally go the the great outdoors to get away from this kind of stuff.
Schedules, appointments, who cares! My favorite part of backpacking is not knowing or caring what time it is!
Both the article summary and the company's site say "smaller than a postcard" which is obviously a ridiculous statement - two dimensions pretty much tell you nothing about the size of the device... it could be 3" x 5" x 25" and still be "the size of a postcard"
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Sorry guys, I have to go plug my PDA/GPS into my tent.
A PDA with 8 hours of battery life is useless. A GPS with 8 hours of battery life is dangerous.
Eeew.
-Peter
Regarding the screen, it may be scratch resistant, but it's also touch screen. If it's designed for outdoor environments, wouldn't stray branches/falling leaves/rain drops get rather annoying for some if these keep being regarded as user mevements?
Due to lack of disk space this user has been discontinued
I was invited to go camping with some friends of my wife's. They go several times a year to this same place. When I got there, I discovered that almost everyone in the campsite had an RV and a boat (it was near a lake). Since I grew up where camping meant chopping up a dead tree to make fire in order to boil water so it was clean, the notion that this was even called "camping" bothered me. That's not the point (which makes everyone wonder why I posted it in the first place).
The campsite advertised wireless Internet access.
To me, electronics and wilderness are almost always mutually exclusive. Other than GPS and maybe a cell phone, I can't imagine the need to be connected. It would be like taking my laptop to the Bahamas so I could read Slashdot. Sorry, but a vacation isn't a vacation if you're still doing work.
I still don't understand why you need to check your email and appointments out on the trail...
Depends on what you are doing on the trail... How about geocaching (logging, cache page loading, etc)? How about photo blogging from the tail so that people can track your progress with only a small delay? How about tracking/sending information about the trail/terrain conditions live?
I could go on.
A PDA with a network connection doesn't necessitate email.
Why is battery life so short everywhere I look? I don't get it. They ran moon orbiters on less juice than a coffee maker. Why can't we get batteries that last more than an afternoon? GRRR! I hate batteries.
Speak truth to power.
I'm an avid hiker/backpacker, and have run into 'yuppie' types who have their PDAs, GPSs, cell phones etc., with them on their trips; and consider themselves 'experienced' hikers. Problem is they couldn't navigate their way out of a paper bag with a map and compass, let alone tell me what 'mean declination' means.
After college, I worked at an independent bookstore for a bit, including the map department -- once had a hunter looking a topo map, point at the contour lines, and say 'they sure have a lot of roads there'. And to think the man owned a gun...
I do think there's some place for this kind of thing, but it's no replacement for knowledge, esp when you break it or the batteries die or you find yourself needing to think quickly without assistance.
But I'm also something of a purist, I backpack to 'get away from it all' including the digital realm, I really don't want this kind of gadget interfering with my experience. And please people be considerate of others - don't yammer on loudly for 15 min on your damn cell phone when others are trying to enjoy a little peace and enjoy what nature is offering. Thanks.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Not nearly enough. I can't think of any outdoor trek that lasted only 8 hours. Maybe the intent is to only turn the device on when you actually need it, but you can bet that anything in cold weather is going to bleed that 8 hours down to something much less. Any serious outdoor-ready device needs to have several days of battery life, especially if the customer would like to use the built-in GPS to do something as novel as finding their way back to civilization after getting themselves hopelessly lost.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
... and how readable the screen is in various states of light - especially bright sunlight.
Of course, you could buy a bluetooth GPS unit ;)
That's a very good point.
I enjoy hiking. A while ago, I was way out in the woods hiking with some friends of mine. A buddy of mine, had his Ericsson R310s phone with him. Now, this phone is ugly as hell. It's also not available here in the US (and seeing that it's a GSM 900/1800 phone, probably wouldn't work here either). But it's rugged. His phone was the only one that survived the trip.
Most of our phones just died for no apparent reason (I assume it was due to the rain -- and it rains a lot in GB, believe me). After performing "cell phone CPR" on them (taking them apart, carefully cleaning them with alcohol, and letting sit in a warm room to dry), most of them eventually worked again though (which of course doesn't help if you're in a tight spot and need your phone to call for help).
The point is, if you're outdoors and choose to rely on any electronic device (1) make sure that it works (test it; bring extra batteries; etc) and (2) always have a backup plan (if you have a GPS device, bring a map & compass anyway).
Technology is very useful if you know what you're doing but you need be able to survive without it.
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
It's intended to be used as an interactive tour guide at historical sites, outdoor museums and the like - popping up information about what happened 200 years ago where you're standing now and that sort of thing.
It's clearly designed to be bought by institutions.
Putting moderation advice in your
"I still don't understand why you need to check your email and appointments out on the trail..."
Because it will spend 95% of its time in a standard environment, doing regular PDA tasks but looking "rugged" - just like SUV's.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
you shouldn't be out there.
If *ever* there was a slashdot storyline that profoundly demonstrated how stupid the slashmob mentality is, this is it. The mob has grumbled about
- The poor battery life (when, in fact, 8 *hours* of gadget-use is about the norm for brief-use devices like pdas and gps and the talk-time ratings for cell phones)
- taking devices camping
- the poor ruggedization of other devices
- of how this is less valuable than outdoor skills
- military use
- outdoor screen readability of other devices
- Wireless internet while camping
- how people need to disconnect when they go camping
- it'll only be useful to wilderness guides who, lacking any outdoor skills, will need this to show peeps where they are on a map (ow, my sides hurt)
- The need for portable rechargability
- Windows XP prospects
- That it is available in too many colors
- raindrops/branches vs. touchscreens
- The poor range of bluetooth increasing the risk you could 'lose' your hiking companions (oh... migod! Bluetooth? How about just *shouting*?!)
- Doesn't need wifi
- Other devices are similar enough that this one is useless (WTF? Since when has anything been governed by a one-size-fits-all market?)
There are a thousand interesting things to note on this product, and a few were well-addressed in the above context (interesting uses in military, museum, and ruggedized-portable-gadget markets; programmability of this one is an improvement over the Garmin Rino; outdoor screen readability needs attention on a lot of devices: how does this one do?; etc). But that sort of intelligent commentary is just *gone* in the noise. What scares me is that the noise is mod-4 or higher.