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TDA (Tactile Digital Assistant) the new PDA?
imashoe writes "BonaFideReviews has just posted an article on the latest thumb-powered up-and-coming mobile device, the TDA (Tactile Digital Assistant), a possible replacement to the PDA."
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Big deal. Engadget was Talking about this last year
First it was the Smart-phone that threatened to oust the PDA but now the PDA looks to take on the TDA.
As much as it would be nice to not have to fumble with a stylus, I wouldn't say that it's threatening to push out the PDA. You're just replacing one pointing device with a much more imprecise pointing device... *looks at wide thumb*
All I can say is, the're good hardware. Considering the're being built with the same machines that were used to make the SINgars for the tanks and helicopters. :)
I've played with a few finished units, and would buy one over the cheap feeling palms these days any time.
-=fshalor
Like everyone else, I've been using touchscreen PDAs with my thumb since I had a Casio Cassiopia E-100 years ago. Granted this TDA can take two touches at the same time, but I work my PC with one mouse, and I don't think two would make me any more productive to have two.
:P
I use my Sony Erricson P900 every day with my thumb.
I'm also unimpressed by the 4.5 colours that the display claims to have (according to TFA). I gave up CGA years ago!
However (again according to TFA), being able to run on a single AA battery for weeks sounds like the best invention in the last 10 years! They should just licence the power control circuit technology and make millions
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
The only PDA I will ever buy will have:
1) Cell Phone
2) Bluetooth
3) A good megapixal camera / video camera
4) more than 20 gigs of memory for the movies and pictures and MP3s
5) One that can wipe my booty
I sure hope apple comes out with one of these. In a couple of years
Get your free MAC MINI
i want a Tactical Digital Assistant! mmmm cruise missiles at the touch of a mobile button.
It's good to touch?
Am I the only one that find using tuoch screens without a stylus or similar is that you end up with a greasy screen?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Does anyone really use PDA-type devices? I work for a large organization and run around to meetings and all that jazz, but I never have the use for one.
Ah, yes - the "I am the world" fallacy. You are not a statistically significant sample set, so your assessment of something as !useful does not actually mean that the item is !useful.
Anecdotal evidence: observe other people in the meetings; examine the sales statistics for PDA vendors; observe the myriad PDA options at your local electronics or office-supply store. Obviously there is a market for PDAs, and here is why:
Laptop: the most features; more weight; larger footprint; generally shorter battery life [compared to PDAs or phones]
Phone: far fewer features than laptops; much less weight than a laptop
PDA: in most categories (features, weight, size, power consumption) the PDA occupies a niche between laptop and phone
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Some of the highlights:
Back in my day, we used to call them secretaries.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The reason is that I always have my PDA with me, so I can always access (and update!) my phone book, address list, to do list, notes and agenda. This functionality exists on phones but it's crap, especially when it comes to updating the info. Laptops are too bulky. A paper agenda is an option, but unlike my PDA I cannot easily back it up, and paper to-do lists and address lists don't really work.
So the answer is yes: I do really use my PDA, and I cannot think of another device or method to take its place. It does nothing I could not really do by other methods, but it's a godsend for doing these things timely, neatly and without much effort.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In fact, I usually use my fingers to do much of anything with my PDA (Palm-OS based). It's just that this is meant for the thumbs, while my palm is not (necessarily, the buttons are certainly big enough that I'm sure it was a design consideration). In fact, I only use my stylus for entering text (which is a topic this article did not seem to address--how did they implement text entering?) and playing Solitare. And the only reason I use the stylus for solitare is because the program itself seems to have been designed for use with the stylus.
IMHO, this really isn't a new product, anyway. It's an evolution of the PDA, not a replacement. I've personally been expecting PDAs to more or less drop the stylus for regular day-to-day activities, but keep it around for high-precision activities. Getting text entry out of this high-precision set is the goal, and hopefully this device achieves it.
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
Many facts stated in the article cannot possibly be correct:
It feeds on a single AA battery, which according to the company, can sustain for several weeks.
Pretty good battery life for device with "seven processors" and a 320x240 display.
The Jackito measures 140 x 80 x 16 mm
AA batteries have a diameter of 14.5 mm. That leaves less than 1 mm thickness for the case on either side of the battery. The unit would have to be thicker than 16 mm.
a large 4.5 color QVGA LCD fingertip touch-screen
4.5 color? The pictures of the device show what appears to be a black and white screen, so perhaps that is 4 level grayscale.
2.5 MB SRAM
That reduces the capability of the device to legacy Palm-type functionality. How can that compete with new multimedia Pocket PCs with 128 MB RAM that even sport hardware accelerated 3D?
The Jackito is available for sale on www.jackito.com at a list price of 600
$600 for a PDA without a color screen, only 2.5 MB RAM, no integrated WiFi or bluetooth, and is not compatible with either Palm or Pocket PC?
Also Novinit says that the finger's contact area is hundred times larger than that of a stylus and a stylus exerts hundred times more pressure on the screen than a finger.
First, I've never had a problem breaking the screens of my PDAs with the stylus. Second, they are out-right admitting that you can't achieve the same precision using your finger as a stylus. Third, a great deal of the screen is now obscured by something much thicker than a stylus. Finally, assuming the touchpad driver simply uses the center point of the large touch area (ie your thumbprint) as the pointer position, then it is impossible to touch the very edges of the screen, which is where the scroll bars reside.
you can choose the screen type (color or monochrome)...MP3 player...Bluetooth
How can they power a color screen, an MP3 player (ie driving headphones) and bluetooth with a single AA battery?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I can't get enough of this TDA thingie.
Hopefully we'll read about it again soon.
I'll bite, though I have to say this is one of those "use it or don't" kind of things... lots of people sit on both sides.
I use one. I live on it. It has saved my butt more times than I care to recall, and it is the only posession I have that I literally can't function properly without.
Why?
Well, I have a really high-end handheld (the iPaq 5550), with a 1GB SD card. Bluetooth, 802.11b, fingerprint scan, autobackup, swappable battery pack, etc. I use it with a keyboard and recorder at meetings. I sync all of my work on it at 30 minute intervals all day long. Wirelessly, of course. And by all of my work, I mean it literally. It contains every line of code, every document, every script, and every "critical" tool I have ever used. I keep the whole thing encrypted, and set to nuke after 3 invalid login attempts (fingerprint + password). The files are maintained in their native formats (Unix or VMS for the most part, but lots of cross platform files like PDF, HTML, etc. Also all the Office cruft). It's basically a subnotebook on demand. I have a foldout keyboard, and some additional memory cards. I carry them when I need them, and added up they still weigh less than a small laptop.
I have peformed emergency DB restores from my sailboat and (in one case) a restaurant. I have used it to tweak vacation photos. I use it to keep notes. I use it to write code or docs while waiting for other things. I listen to music on it. I use it to navigate. I read e-books daily.
I was hired at my most recent position largely because I was able to instantly tap my entire code and documentation library. When I say "Oh, I've done that before", it means give me five minutes, and I'll have it. Not "let me remember how that worked". When I moved 9 hours away and lived in a hotel, I had my entire database of information no further than my hip.
Oh, and since lots of people like to say "Well, what if it dies/gets run over/dropped overboard/etc?" The answer is simple. It backs up every morning at 04:00, and the backup is transmitted to 3 seperate servers. I do a manual backup daily at lunchtime (to CD as well as the other sites), and small autobackups happen every 30 minutes. For this data to "die" would require 3 seperate servers, the CDs, and my handheld to all choke at once.
I'm extremely paranoid with the data because it *is* my livlihood. Sure, I could operate without it, and for 3 months I had to when I was between devices. That brief experience proved the usefulness of it.
I had another experience where my laptop died last year. Corporate policy was to store data on the common drive and the laptop, and sync it. Unfortunately, this only applied to 100MB we were allowed to store on the server. What about the rest? Well, handheld to the rescue. There was the rest of my data, and I was back in business within 20 minutes (USB 1.x) on an old desktop.
So yes, some people really do use them.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
If you've got a laptop and you've got a cell phone, is there any need for a PDA?
Well, if you do not want to drag a laptop around and still have some computing power with you, there is a need. Besides the obvious (calendering, address book, todos, ...) I use my iPAQ as MP3 Player (1 GB SD card), for running emulators (NES, SNES, GameBoy, Atari, ScummVM, ...), as mobile storage device and to check EMails (in combination with my mobile).
Yes, I could do that with my mobile, a Gameboy, a MP3Player and with a portable HDD, but why not have all in one device?
And Smartphones are, at least IMHO, the worst of the bunch. Why? I have a phone to make calls and maybe to send/recieve SMS'. If I wanted it to be a PDA, I'd buy one (what I did). Smartphones either have a large display and are too bulky to have them on you all the time OR have display far too small to be useful as PDA-replacement. Also, my mobile (a Siemens M45 - outdoor) is nearly indestructible and has a long battery life. If it had a high-res display and a 200Mhz CPU that would change.
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...