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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?"
Costs a buck at any store, doesn't take batteries, doesn't lose it's memory. I tried using a PDA for a while in college and I found I was always the last one out of the room because it always took so long to tap in my assignments. I found it worked a lot better to write them down in my notes for that class for that day then type them into a scheduling program on my PC back in the bat cave.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
The best PDA? Pencil and paper. No easier or cheaper way to write a quick note down, or to tear off a corner and give your phone number to that hot babe.
Can't remember a week of appointments, or a few irregular but important dates... is your diary that busy? Need to remember submission dates.. write them on a calendar in your dorm/flat, are you really going to work on something randomly during the day?
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.
"There is no cost to writing down on a PDA" - no, not at all. Most importantly, don't let technology disable your inate abilities. Carrying a PDA may feel (self) important but try a role where you actually need one. You'll realise human memory is all important:
With 5+ meetings per day and having to reflect/relay them ad-hoc I can testify that a good memory is all that matters - constantly active, not reflective on what a screen states - a PDA really doesn't matter other than as a backup. Groupworking diaries really don't work unless you're constantly sync'd with others, and is probably out of scope and Blackberry is the only option.
I've been searching for a very simple, tiny, modern PDA for storing due dates on. ... I've looked at Palm solutions, but can't find anything there.
Obviously you're looking for something more than you're telling us. Unfortunately, this is slashdot, not the academy of mind readers.
Could you be less specific?
Why don't you actually set out some of your requirements? Then you might actually get some useful answers.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
For simple stuff like due dates, most mobile phones provide a simple calendar with alarms. The good thing too is that, unlike a PDA, it's unlikely that you will be without your phone.
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.
If you've got to go electronic, I'd use a Palm m100. They're cheap as hell, and mine will get a month or two on a single set of AAA batteries.
Sync it every once in a while.
--saint
How about accepting a better list of requirements from someone who has both been playing with PDAs since the Newton and already graduated from college? This is what I wish I had in 1995- and this is what we have available today from a variety of manufacturers:
A fold-up full sized keyboard for data entry that can fit in your pocket- preferably wireless (either IR or Bluetooth) so that it can be set up quickly.
A good note taking application of some sort- it should accept both typed text and pen drawings.
A good Todo List that links to the calendar in some fashion- to give you early warning of upcoming deadlines and allow you to prioritize assignments.
A reasonable-quality voice recorder- if possible one that you can record up to 90 minutes on and still run the results through a voice recognition program to get text notes out. No matter how fast you are at typing or handwriting you will always miss something in your notes- automatic note taking would be a big plus.
It should have a very large internal memory as well as interface to your desktop machine back at the dorm for backups- ideally every night before you sleep everything you need should both be on the PDA and your desktop machine- and best of all this should be automated.
Anybody else have any other requirments for this young person? Anybody know of a ready technology that fits this list? I've got my own favorite right now (PocketPC HP Ipaq 2210 with Bluetooth Keyboard and Hitachi 2GB CF-form-factor Hard Drive) but I'm pretty sure there's a cheaper linux solution out there as well that also fits the requirements- and there are certainly better PDAs when it comes to the hardware buttons.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
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.
Trapper Keeper, ready to ensorb. [cables reach out and grab Cartman monitor like a giant hand, and pull it towards the Trapper Keeper]
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
The best PDA for college is one which sucks for games, has a slow CPU, has no wireless capability, and can't play audio or video content. Something like a base-model Palm comes to mind.
It does what you need without tempting you to waste time with things unrelated to your school work. You can keep to-do lists on it, a calendar for class schedules, assignment due-dates, exam schedules, and college functions. You can use it to track school-related expenses. You can keep a contact list on it. You can get calculators, unit converters, spreadsheets, and other math-related apps for it.
There's a reason why the medical profession -- busy professionals -- standardized on PalmOS: It does what a PDA should without trying to be a notebook computer, video game system, and multimedia content player. It's small, rugged, lightweight, and inexpensive.
If you only need to store due dates, and have an alarm alert you a day before a paper is due etc., I don't see why a plain old Palm wouldn't work. Even a cheapie cell phone would work. I don't carry a PDA nowadays. I just store all my appointments on my cell phone, which I keep in my pocket.
My cell also has audio recording... so if I need to quickly store an idea or record a snippet, I just record it into the phone's buffer and transcribe it later. Many brilliant spur-of-the-moment ideas were saved this way.
I used to carry a Palm, but it was just too inconvenient to whip out during the winter (have to unzip my winter jacket, wait for the screen to warm up etc.) And any Palm is too big to stuff in my trouser pocket.
If you want a PDA to take notes... ah... now that's different. Nothing beats pen and paper for resolution, speed, and freedom of positioning. No tablet or PDA can beat the resolution of crisp handwritten text. Really.
If you have a good system for note taking, e.g. the Cornell note taking system, you don't need to resort to any digital means for taking notes.
If your handwriting is bad, improve it.
That little thing was a HUGE help. My schedule was very fragmented, and I'm slow to memorize schedules, especially when they're layered and alternating. Needless to say, I used my palm every day. Most days it would be the first thing I looked at when I got up in the morning (usually just to judge how much time I needed to get ready). I also looked at it between classes; it helped me figure out where to go and when I needed to be there.
That was the most important function to me. I also ended up making extensive use of the phone book and memo functions. The task list helped remind me of important assignments, but I didn't catalog all due dates on the thing.
I know palms are not the hottest things anymore, but let's face it; you especially don't want an entertainment machine. As other posters have stressed, you don't want wi-fi, games, videos, or other really cool programs. You want something to help you work. In my opinion, the palm does this well with good, solid core applications. I also use a GPL program on the side to calculate my gas mileage on my car (sourceforge does wonders).
A good thing to do is find an older palm. The basic functionality of palmOS hasn't changed much at all, and you'll get a great price on a small handheld if you go used/discontinued/refurbished/whatever.
Also, other posters mention the effectiveness of paper and pencil. Beware. I'm the type that's rather loose with papers. Things in writing can be difficult to keep structured and organized if you're me, and papers get lost all the time, not to mention that they are a hassle to carry. A PDA like my palm makes all my data microscopic, automatically organized, and easily sortable and searchable. I find this more convenient and portable than a pencil and paper solution. That's just me.
Find a system that works best for you, but I do definitely recommend a cheap palm. If you do in fact prefer Windows pocket edition for whatever reason (can you say nethack?), an older generation pocketpc is also a handy thing.
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.
David Novosel "Two roads diverged, and I - I took the one less travelled by."
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.
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
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
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
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No, the notepad won't beep at a given time, nor will it play Solitaire. And yet, despite this severe handicap, hundreds of engineers managed to figure out how to put men on the moon and return them safely to earth, all without some goddamned gadget beeping at them on a regular schedule.
I mastered the art of how to use a clock about the time I was five. It's not that hard, really. See, when the little hand is on the four, and so is the big hand...
Hey, dunno what the heck you're looking for, but my palm m505 has served me well for the past year in college, and will forseeably for the next 3.
Has everything I need: morning waking up alarm, "appointments" which are my classes with 5 minute reminders, since I don't carry a watch, address book, memo pads, notepad functionality (still missing the printer to hand your number to a hottie, but I bet the next version will have it), and for deadlines, well, just make them as appointments with a week or 2 worth of reminders.
Not only that, but the palm's interface is well thought out, even though people are reluctant to learn grafiti to use it efficiently.
Seriously, either a palm will fill your needs with a tad of creativity on your side, or you're going to have to lug your laptop around to use your favorite calendar app everywhere.
This is from a CS major too, and there's no cheaper and easier way than to adapt your habits to a PDA's capabilities than the other way around.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
This very well may be the most insightful comment I've ever read here. It's shocking how people want to shoehorn technology into the most basic day-to-day tasks. My opinion: if you need something to beep to let you know you have an assignment due, you're not ready for college.
My advice - get a cheap used or after market model from a couple years ago. Carry it around for a few months and see if you use it and how much damage it receives.
You may find that you use it constantly. Certainly true if your memory for names and numbers is anything like mine. If so, then you'll be in a position to make an informed choice when you buy the newest model in a few months. Informed, in this case, means that you'll know what features you'll actually use on a pda.
Or, you may find that you never touch the thing. Then you'll have saved hundreds of dollars that you can spend on something you really will use.
Or, you may find that you're the kind of person who destroys or loses several of pda's every year, in which case a constant supply of old cheap ones may be the ideal solution.
You can find used palm-IIIc's for $25, aftermarket new ones for a little more. Or, if any friends of family are pda users, they may will just hand you their old model if you ask them for it. (I've gone through two models this way myself, and passed each along to other people when upgrade time came.)
The only caveat is that the newer high(er) resolution screens are a lot nicer for reading lots of text. If you plan to view books on the thing, then the older models just won't cut it. (But unless you work in a cleanroom or you like to read in bed and you share a bedroom with someone who goes to sleep earlier than you, you may well find reading books on a pda isn't something you ever want to do.)
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.
-Daniel
KD5UZZ
www.w5yj.org