Best PDA for College?

andyic3 asks: "College starts in a month. I've been searching for a very simple, tiny, modern PDA for storing due dates on. I've looked at the REX 6000, but it's too simple. I've looked at PocketPC's, but can't seem to find anything smaller than the old iPaq H1910. I've looked at Palm solutions, but can't find anything there. What's the best PDA for this application?"

Comments

The Hipster PDA

[Karl J. Smith]

Index cards and a binder clip. Seriously.

The Hipster PDA

To add some tech to it, use GTDTiddlyWiki and print out the index cards.

There is also a D*I*Y Planner

Make backups with a photocopier, or just type them in again and reprint.

Treo 650

[infonography]

Scoff about the size, but I just got one for $99 w/ plan from Tiger Direct. I needed a Cell and a PDA, it's now what I use 24/7. Students should consider the GSM versions, getting it cracked is cheap and on those trips out of the country it's gonna save you big.

Zire 21

[feldhaus]

I used to have a pen and notepad and swore by it for a while. Then I upgraded to a Palm Zire 21.

It cost 46 GBP delivered (eBay) lasts weeks on a charge and is generally extremely useful.

I use it for my to-do list (*so* handy to have it sort itself!), university schedule, contact list, friends' tea preferences, birthdays (HappyDays), (slow, emergency) web-browsing via my mobile phone (using EudoraWeb), SSH (TuSSH), a London Underground map (MapMap Lite), a dictionary (Noah Lite - not great but very handy and only 2MB), a juggling simulator (JMPalm) and a scientific calculator among various other things. All of the software I use on it is free (much of it is open-source).

Keeping it synced (and charged) via USB with JMPalm on Linux (or whatever Windows software the thing comes with) means that, unlike a notepad, I can lose or damage it and not mourn the loss of the data (and be only slightly annoyed at the loss of "only" 50 quid's worth of kit).

Get yourself a nice, cheap, robust PDA like the Zire 21 that does what you want it to without killing its battery in 5 minutes.

You won't look back.

The Palm M500

[dave_n]

If you are interesting in a palm, the M500 can be found on ebay for around $30USD. It's a great little piece of hardware, and can do everything that you need. It has 8MB of built-in memory, and you can expand that with a SD card, but I've never found a need for that as most palm apps are tiny. It's a greyscale device, but that nets you longer battery life, and frankly it is easier to read off of for long periods, aka reading ebooks. If you are considering the palm, you'll of course want some distractions *games* and I suggest SFCave and Traffic as both are simple yet fun games that are quick to learn and play.

Re:Have you looked at smartphones?

[vectorian798]

Hey. I am a college student (UC Berkeley, Go Bears!) and I am using a series 60 phone right now (Nokia 6600) and have to say that the OS kicks ass....people always complained about Symbian being slow and unresponsive, but they are all idiots. The system will get slow only when you fill up the system memory with crap like songs, shitty ringtones, and images...but that is why a lot of these phones have a separate Flash card inside - so you can store your crap there and leave the main memory alone. On my 6600 I have it set so that pictures I take are directly stored onto the flash card so I don't have to move them later.

Everything runs smoothly, there are a lot of apps available (check out this and this), though I have only tried them out briefly and then removed them - everything I need to do like alarms, to-do's, meeting times, etc. is already on the phone. I would definitely recommend the Nokia 6600 among these phones, because it has a lot of features, and is one of the lower SAR radiation phones - it has a score of 0.5, whereas most phones tend to be 0.7+ (and actually all the Sony-Ericsson phones are above 1!).

Price is only $50 after rebates (only 6 month contract!) if you sign up with a plan, at amazon.

Hope that helps you.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

[linuxwrangler]

Find out why your memory is lacking or diary overly busy - remembering things shouldn't be such a problem. If it is reflect why so.

Your mind is a terrible place to clutter up with stuff that needs doing. It's why you so often have that vague unease that you're forgetting something important. You probably are. However otherwise brilliant your mind is, it is probably lousy at general organizing and task management (remembering to buy new flashlight batteries when you are already at the grocery store rather than when you grab the flashlight to check on the strange noise at night).

The trick is to find a organizing method that works for you - something that I had not done very well till recently.

My sister got my attention by mentioning that, by her estimates, reading a book called "Getting Things Done" and implementing many of its ideas had increased her consulting income by $20,000/year. I am rather leary of the managementOrganizationMethodDuJour but I read the book anyway.

I found the book very valuable and especially appreciated the fact that, unlike so many methods that are closely tied to a particular vendor's books or software, this book says it's about understanding some basic principles. If you like Outlook, use Outlook. Palm? Great. Pencil and paper? They work fine, too.

I can't duplicate the whole book here but the most valuable change I've made - and one which changed my Palm from the infrequently-used paperweight it had become into an indispensible tool - was to eliminate the concept of the todo list and implement the concept of the project and the next-action.

The typical Palm user tries to use the thing by agonizing over due-dates and priorities and categorizing items as "work" or "personal", etc. Instead, use the todo feature as a "project" list where a project is defined as "anything you want to get done that will take more than one step".

You will find that almost everything is a project and if you spend a few seconds thinking about the project you can identify the single next-action that will move that project toward completion. The "notes" feature in the todo list works very well for this.

As an example, say your car windshield is cracked then "fix car windshield" is the project. A few moments of thinking takes you from "I need to find a windshield shop" to "Bob at the tennis-club mentioned he liked the place that fixed his" to "I'll call Bob" to "but I don't have his number" to "it's probably in the club roster". OK, the single next action that will move this project forward is to find Bob's number and the place that it can be done is at home when you have the club roster handy.

This leads to the other important change I made after reading the book. My projects are now organized by "context" - basically, where can I accomplish the next-action. The categories that work for me include "at home", "at computer", "at phone", "with wife", etc. For the example above, the project would start in the "at home" category. After I look up the number and scribble it in the note for that project I would move it to the "at phone" category and so on. A project at the "select paint color" stage might be in the "with wife" category. Whenever I need to go to a store I glance at the "errands" category and see what might be combined into the same trip. While the "priority" feature in most listing programs seems like a good idea it matters little if the absolute most-important item is to send an email and you are nowhere near a computer. But if you are waiting for your flight to leave you may be able to pull out your cellphone and use the time to move items in the "at phone" category forward.

One useful category is the "waiting for" category - the rebate that will be coming in 6-8 weeks, the shop that told you that they will get a quote to you by Friday. When your project is on hold for some external reason you move it to "waiting for" and put a due-date in it. If you hav

Palm Tungsten

[captjc]

I am just starting College as well. I used a palm all through high school. I highly recommend a palm over a PPC. I used mine for Assignments (with Four.Zero [commercial] laer to change to DueYesterday [free and better]), Calender (built in) and Games during boring study halls. For just the bare essencials, something like a palm 3xe would be sufficient [My second one]. I later upgraded to a Tungsten T and loved the extra storage space, color screen, rechargable battery and Storage Cards. I could do things like play newer games, edit Office docs, and listen to music. I just upgraded to a Tungsten C with Wifi and even more storage space for college. Even before I get on campus, the features, processing power, and upgraded OS was well worth the purchace. All of the palmtops I mentioned I bought off of ebay for around $100-$150 each, The 3xe and Tungsten T are probably much cheaper now.

In my experience with these, I offer a few suggestions.
1) A palm with a good stow-away keyboard is great for taking notes, and writing while away from your computer. And it is smaller than a laptop.
2) Learn Graffiti enough to write small enteries fast as well as have a decent shorthand. By doing this you can take down notes and assignments as fast as you could write them on paper.
3) Avantgo is a great [free] service that allows you to download webpages to you palm and is useful if you want to have the news or weather (or whatever) to read during freetime (or a boring lecture)
4) Sync EVERY DAY I can not state this enough
5) Carry extra bateries. Or if you have a rechargable device, charge it every day.
6) Get a hard case especially if you keep it in a backpack...I learned this one the hard way, I placed my backpack on the desk (with my palm 3xe inside) it fell off the desk and the screen got smashed
7) Writerights (plastic screen protection overlays) are a good investment...you only get like 6 for $20 but you can leave one on for like 6 months (regardless of the one month recomendation) and they do keep the screen scratch-free

Palm Zire 31

[KD5UZZ]

If you don't need any extra bells and whistles a Palm Zire 31 is a GREAT PDA.
I've had many PDAs starting from the Compaq Aero 1500, a few iPAQs, etc and I love the Zire 31 above all others.
What it doesn't have:
Bluetooth
Wifi
CF slot

What it does have:
SD Slot
Color screen - but you can't read it in direct sunlight
PalmOS 5
VERY Small size
Good battery life
MP3 player - sound pretty good!
IR port - was great getting numbers off my cell phone
16MB Ram

I use my 31 for ebooks, quick notes, tech manuals (PDF is great!), listening to www.twit.tv, and of course scheduling.
This is the smallest, easiest to use PDA I've ever owned. It just works (TM). It doesn't have too much power that I try to make it do things a PDA isn't that good for (Web, etc), I just use it as a PDA.