Slashdot Mirror
Pen-Based PDA Market on Death Bed
An anonymous reader writes "The traditional pen-based PDA market is destined to evaporate within the next four years, according to HP, and it will be focusing its handheld efforts on converged smart phone devices, such as its latest BlackBerry rivals unveiled this week -- the iPAQ rw6800 and the iPAQ hw6900." From the article: "This won't come as a surprise to many, as HP hasn't given its traditional pen-based product line a refresh since the launch of the iPAQ hx4700 towards the middle of 2004. It released the iPAQ rx1950 in September of last year, but this was very much an entry-level product and made few waves among the high-end, tech-savvy consumers that dominate the PDA segment."
Pen Based PDA's will be replaced by better tablet pcs.
I am not sure why they have not caught on a lot more, they offer tons on functionality, and decent uptimes.
Take handwritten notes and have them stored in digital format stored immediately?
Why not?
Windows? I haven't used that since 1999. Fix the Slashdot Problems
Fine, get out of the market. Just please, someone stay in. I'd be lost without my PDA, and I don't want a 'smartphone'. I want something I can reference while holding the phone...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Harley-Davidson has a release fortelling the impending doom of automobiles in favor of motorcycles.
not all of us WANT all in one devices. I like my phone, MP3 player, and PDA being separate devices. If one breaks I'm not screwed three times over.
I don't believe it, has Netcraft confirmed it yet?
If there is anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now.
We have a new mobile phone company in its birth, HP which will sell only SMART phones?
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
... and I can't stand it. I could enter data incredibly fast with one hand with pen on the palm, with the treo I have to fumble using those stupid small keyboards, which takes two hands and is very, very , very slow compared to just writing something with the pen. I have just about given up on entering any data into the thing because it is so difficult. I want a palm phone with no keyboard. I guess I'll be going back to my regular old palm and separate phone though.
I love my Palm with satnav software. For me, this is the best compromise yet for satnav: it's linked to my address book, easily updated with new maps/POI etc, and usable everywhere. Much better than traditional in-car satnav. Running this on a phone would suck, too, thanks to the tiny screen of a phone.
Most people NEVER needed a PDA anyway - a calendar and addressbook in a mobile is enough for most people.
Plus many modern PDAs cost almost as much as a small / low budget laptop. Why bother buying an expensive gizmo if you can the real thing for a bit more? Also subsidized smart phones from network operators will always be cheaper as 'unconnected' PDAs.
So in the future we will only have even smarter phones and mini notebooks. PDAs will be gone - they were an evolutionary step to the new offsprings.
From what I read on MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11636942/ , the Origami project will be a paperbook sized tablet computer (i.e. a PDA on steroids) that will run regular Win-XP instead of the crippled CE or XP-embeded found on most PDAs. Basically the PDA will evolve from an embedded system with limited functionality into a more full-featured portable PC with full multi-media capability. This will could also be a threat to the iPod, since the Origami box would also be a portable player, but with other features included.
PDAs are slowly going the way of the pager.
As soon as you have devices that do everything a PDA does, but better and still cheap, the PDA as it is now will disappear. The problem is a lot of these devices now try to do everything, but don't do anything well (and they're expensive). Once that begins to change, it will be no surprise.
That's what i thought the origami was going to be. Why not have a blackberry-type device which is super easy to use, works perfectly with Exchange, and has all the cool pen-based pda functionality. As long as they could pull it off without being cumbersome, i think it would work. Thats why some devices succeed and some fail: crappy ones are too cumbersome to actually use.
Han shot first.
It surprises me how persistent predictions of this kind are, no matter how equally persistent their failures to fulfill themselves.
The "desktop replacement" will supplant the beige box as the home computer, any number of futurists have proclaimed over the years. Counting at least ten years since I heard that one pronounced widely for the first time, it doesn't seem to have done so.
Or the tablet PC and, years earlier, the HPC will supplant the laptop. Still waiting on that one, but no especially strong signs at present.
The fact of that matter is, varying form factors serve their varying purposes, and they will continue to. A 1.8" wide screen is not a 2.4" wide screen is not a 4" wide screen is not a 6" wide screen. And they serve their varying purposes.
This is just HP predicting that their R&D investments and chosen product lines will be the right once. And a great surprise that always is, when a company predicts that the technologies it decides to develop...are the ones it endorses. Who could have foreseen such a thing?
Karma: Chameleon (comes and goes)
Thats why HP's new iPAQ hw6900 has none other than a sylus and touch screen, LIKE ALL PDAS!
PDA's aren't dead. Just expect to have a Radio capability on them from now on. Whether you buy service for it or not is up to you. Thats kind of like saying "PC's are dead!" because all PC's now come with a IEEE 1394 interface and Ethernet Card. Its still a PC. That doesn't make it a server or a media station.
I wonder if HP believes their own nonsense or if they are splitting hairs to try to reposition themselves in the phone market.
the high-end, tech-savvy consumers
Do you mean the early adopters who are willing to spend way to much on a piece of kit so they can flaunt their technical superiority? I wear a watch, I carry a planner and I have a pen. My watch is self winding (yes, it is even an analog watch), I recharge my planner once a year (calendar refils) and a pen is always at hand. I guess that just leaves the effort of finding the correct date and writing something down. Oh, and manually checking the schedule.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
T-Mobile has (finally) updated their MDA line with the MDA IV. It's awesome. It's pen based, keyboard based(like a sidekick mini), runs Windows Mobile 5, has transcriber support, touchscreen, everything. And it's a phone. =)
I think HP just doesn't like that their stuff isn't innovative anymore(neither is T-Mobile, it's just a rebranded HTC Wizard or Qtek 9100 or I-Mate something or other, I forget who the actual manufacturer is, but...) whereas HP has released the same old stuff for as long as I can remember. I looked at the iPaqs and they're the same as they ever were!
I'm enjoying the MDA but I know other, better ones will be coming out with other providers as well. There's always something out there, HP just can't get it right. They did it first, and did it best for awhile, but now it's over.
Some people do not want a phone/camera/PDA/media player in one device. Some people have these already as separate devices, and don't see a need to keep buying the 'latest and greatest' gadget just to be 'cool/hip/whatever.'
I don't think that the PDA will go away as long as the PDA's power/speed increases and the price stays low.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
My lifelong use of a pocket-sized memo pad and a ballpoint pen hasn't once crashed on me yet.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
The PDA (personal digital assistant) is simply changing shape. It's called the cellphone. We need our cellphones. Take a look at Japanese cellphones. They are used as e-wallets, garage door openers, gym membership verifiers, 3 way video conference communicators, and so on. With the advent of e-ink and flexible display technology, we can expect larger screens with higher resolution and lower power consumption that roll out. Take a look at the images at e-ink.com. The PDA is not dead. The personal digital assistant is simply changing shape to accommodate the needs of people the world round.
Microsoft has decided to get into the outdoor industry and wipe out Northface et al., by introducing a wheelbarrow that can carry much more than any backpack ever could. While extremely convenient and not much larger than a backpack, the wheelbarrow offers all kinds of extra features and ... oh, i'm losing my will to live ... must post ...
And I was a rabidly loyal subject. For years, each new Palm I bought was exponentially better than the last. I went from the Pilot, to the III, to the V -- and then things started getting shitty. They'd still put kick-ass feature upgrades into each new rev, the Tungsten C being a very dramatic example, but the quality was going down at an even faster rate. We bought maybe 20 Tungsten C's, and the failure rate within 6 months was maybe 33%. Then we moved on to the Life Drive (again, STELLAR feature set) and I had mine replaced 3 times in the first 2 months. With quality control like that, it doesn't matter at all if everyone still wants to go the PDA route -- they're gonna go the way of the dinosaurs anyway. Oh, let's not forget the constantly shrinking support model. From ever tinier initial warranty periods, to ever larger repair costs, to the inevitable move of tech support to India, they totally betrayed us in the support realm. Goodbye, Palm, we hardly knew ye.
I am not left-handed, either!
Tried using a Palm VII a few years ago. It kind of worked. But eventually gave up on it. It was more hassel that it was useful.
within four years, eh, hp?
why, with your airtight reputation for being able to spot (and drive!) trends, i'd say this is pretty much guaranteed to be a spot-on prediction. particularly if the prediction was made in 1999.
i'm just happening that someone, somewhere, manages to save the trademark 'zire'. that is a precious word, and one that we can't take for granted.
go get it
The one class of PDAs I know to be on the rise is... analog!
I just splurged and dropped ~$20 on a new PDA. This PDA I purchased is great! The batteries never run out, it is almost totally immune to shock from being dropped, I can transfer data easily between home and office, and the format is universal so I never have to worry about incompatibilities, and it is so fast and easy to use that even my parents can understand it. I went ahead and purchased an add-on module for it so I could have the advanced calendaring to track my gigs and rehearsals. Luckily, I already had a docking station for it with extra storage capacity as well as a variety of other add-ons, so it fit right into my daily routine.
I consider it one of the best investments I've made in years. Spending $20 to successfully replace a $300 device may not sound realistic, but I've never been more organized than I am now. All I had to do that I got rid of my old PDA systems (Palm OS based devices) and find something that fit better with my new filing system.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
I work for Palm.
So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.
Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.
But trust me.... You don't.
I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about.
This is how bad info gets passed around.
If you dont know about the topic....Dont make yourself sound like you do.
Because some people believe anything they see.
Just like how the mobile phone was going to replace the handheld video game system in a few years. Or how desktops were going to be replaced by laptops, or how laptops were going to be replaced by tablet PCs.
Some people just don't want a PDA with a monthly subscription fee attached.
Jack of all trades, master of none?
I want a Cell Phone. One that isn't the size of a damn PDA, but has text input via a stylus and touchscreen.... Large Phones deter me..... But it's useful being able to "pencil in" appointments, assignments, and stuff like that on a PDA.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
When the batteries quit charging or
When it breaks and Palm charges exhorbitantly to replace it, assuming of course, you can actually get a hold of Palm tech support, or,
After I through it against the wall in frustration after (yet again) being unable to browse the Palm's own web site because of "unsupported download type".
I've owned a Palm since The Beginning but the Tungsten C is my last one. To big, too short of battery life, terrible software. No FM. Lame.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They're crap to use. I mean, they're *useless* for any serious amount of data input, have you ever tried writing a letter on one? and a PDA or smart phone is more useful for displaying data because *it fits in a pocket*...
l
. html
You want a serious computer, today, it *must* have a keyboard, otherwise it's a data display device.
For those who don't want to carry a PDA, camera, a laptop and a phone, Nokia have the Communicator devices, everything in one.
Big:
http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,54106,00.htm
Small:
http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,6771,77854,00
Deleted
There are lots of things I can't do with just a keyboard. Compaq had an amazing line of PDAs that killed Jordana. From what I can see HP turned over iPaq design to their own second rate team and killed a great line. Even used prices for pre HP iPaqs on Ebay is high because they were good. HP is a stupider company than I thought, you don't buy your competitor just to kill it, you buy them to become good at what they are good at.
HP is following blackberry because not only can't they innovate, thet can use assets they paid for well.
Let's see... My list would be:
- Small factor that I could carry with me in my pocket. Pants pocket preferred, but I could settle for belt or jacket.
- Cell phone with high speed wireless access (GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, etc...)
- Possibility to be ONLINE, connected AND one or more phone conversation simultaneously.
- VoIP client integrated to it.
- form factor with small keyboard for basic on the go work.
- OS should be easily upgradable
- sensitive screen so I can take notes on it with an integrated pen.
- Blue tooth, wifi, and all possible wireless technologies.
- Bluetooth should have all profiles enabled, file transfer, keyboard/mouse, headset, A2DP (bluetooth 2.0).
- Infrared receiver/emitter.
- Should be able to control it by voice as an option. Say Bluetooth headset with either a push-to-talk feature or automatic recognition. CONFIGURABLE.
- (mini )vga-port (wireless option?) so a full size screen can be connected.
- My favorite feature would be full wireless connectivity so when I arrive at my desk, my screen keyboards and all automatically connects to it and I could use it as my desktop.
- Automatic wireless backup on another computer whenever possible.
- Full encryption of content in case of loss.
- Security by either fingerprint/iris scan/etc...
- battery life of 10 hours when not plugged on power.
- Integrated GPS.
I think I am pretty much complete. Any more ideas? HP are you listening?
I wish I could work in a research center. I would have a lot of fun and ideas....
At least if PDAs are losing to tablets, I haven't seen evidence of this.
It is more true that PDAs are losing to converged devices, but I think that's only half the story. What I think really is happening is that PDAs are being bracketed by laptops on one end and converged/feature rich phones on the other. Everybody who might use a PDA is almost certainly carrying a laptop and a phone that if it isn't "converged", it is practically so in all but name.
Personally, I don't think either fits the true PDA niche, which is about form factor. A true PDA is larger than any reasonable phone would be, but fits in your shirt pocket without stretching it or making it sag. To some degree the PDA manufacturers have brought this on themselves, blurring their market niche by making the PDAs more desktop like in their power; WinCE bears a lot of the blame for this. It's the classic tendency to want to blur your market position to get more sales. You pick up a few sales on the edges, at the cost of losing clarity as to why the customer should buy your product in the first place.
My sense is that the 200-600 PDA market is in fact doomed, because the marginal value of the PDA once you are carrying a laptop and featureful phone is small. However it doesn't mean there is zero value in the PDA. It follows that PDA prices have to drop. If I were to imagine the successful PDA device of 2010, it'd cost about $100 in todays terms, and by design would complement your phone and laptop, having easy to use wireless connectivity to them. Connectivity exists today, but it is extremely awkward. Microsoft's bluetooth is positively dreadful from a user's perspective. The question is whether PDA prices will reach that point before the buyers have completely abandoned the form factor.
There are two additional survival scenarios to consider. The first would be specialized devices, such as a GPS/PDA or perhaps some follow on to the video iPod. These are cases where usage makes a phone form factor less attractive. The second possibility is that a truly superior PDA may appear and revitalize the market, although this is a long shot. What I think we've learned by watching the music player market is that design and connectivity matter. Sure lots of people bought MP3 players before the iPod, but the iPod actually drove the expansion of the market, rather than cannibalizing it. It's not impossible to imagine a video iPod/PDA becoming a must-have item.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
PDA's lack storage, but provide an excellent interface.
Tablets don't have the smaller portability.
I think the future looks like smaller HDD players or flash drives with an OS but NO DISPLAY and a video out (bluetooth or hardline). Hook it up to your car, your computer, the screen on your phone, your home theater...whatever.
The common denominator is not the interface, it's the data.
I'm right there with you. I've got a high-end Palm and an mid-range Axim. I've tried unsuccessfully to use both to get myself organized. My cell phone holds all the contact information I need on a daily basis. Since entering anything in an electronic calendar that requires handwring recognition (or numerous taps on a virtual keyboard) is slow, the only entries in my calendar were recurring things I remembered anyway (weekly team meetings, martial arts class schedule, etc). The important stuff to jot down (oil change on Thursday, doctor on Tuesday) never got written down, so I was always forgetting. I tried to use it as an electronic shopping list, and failed. In the end, my Axim became a way to play games in boring meetings.
Then I moved to some $0.25 mini spiral-bound notebooks from Staples with a bullet-type space pen. It's tiny and light-weight, so it's always with me. Lists get written down immediately. When I'm done shopping, that page is torn out and thrown away. An upcoming schedule page at the front keeps me organized, as does a simple to-do list. When pages fill up or are no longer needed, they're torn out and tossed. When the notebook is empty, I spent another $0.25 to replace it. It's going to take me a long time to reach the level of electronic PDA cost with this system, and I've never been more organized.
I think pen based for pointing is a good thing. However, I find that entering text via the pen never worked very well. It was slower than typing on the mini keyboards, didn't feel natural, so you're writing was messsy, and if you weren't sitting still (on a bus,in a car), then it was even worse.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I want my PDA and phone to be seperate. The phone should handle communications duties. And they should talk to each other wirelessly (bluetooth).
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I recently had an oppertunity to develop a .Net app for a Pocket PC. One of my primary design and layout considerations was to make the buttons thumbable. With larger buttons and small dead space between them, you lose a lot of screen space, but the app can then be used with out a stylus making it significantly easier to get around in.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Been using a PDA for years. Read books, play games, keeps photos, my emails, phone numbers, personal notes, date reminders ... It is a part of my life really. Use it everyday. One thing it doesnt need it a damn phone. Im already around too many phones (most times i dont even bother answering my phone @ home. more bother than what it is worth.)
I will be upgrading when im inclined (to a model around $500-$600 CAD), and i guess with HP going out, that is one less model i need to be concerned with researching when i do decide to purchase. I highly recommend a PDA to anyone who enjoys any of what i mentioned above, cept for the phone thing, if you *must* have a phone, then you will have to sacrifice some things in the name of communication.
PDAs won't die, they just need to be reinvented. Anyone got an ideas?
\
Why do you care if nobody is making PDA's any more? You have one, already. How many more do you need? Will yours stop working if companies stop making them?
I don't respond to AC's.
When HP bought Compaq, they had just come out with a refresh for the Hp Jornada Pocket PC that made it one of the best devices out. While the Rube-Goldberg iPaq had a larger market share by dint of being the first device out using the ARM processor that became the standard with Pocket PC 2002, it was ungainly to actually use... you pretty much had to add a sleeve AND a protective case, making the resulting device too large to conveniantly carry in your pocket, the Jornada 568 with its hard shell and built-in CF slot was only a little bit larger than the "naked" iPaq, but it was complete and self-contained... and the electronics were virtualy identical.
So what did HP do? It killed the Jornada and came out with a stripped down non-expandible baby iPaq for the "Jornada Fans". Me, I took this as an opportunity to go back to PalmOS.
There's plenty of OTHER blame to go around: Microsoft, Palm, Sony, Jaff Hawkins and Handspring's ADD-fueled product-line shuffling. But HP sure owns a fair slice of the blame.
Pen based PDAs were being hailed as the latest and greatest.
I wonder how many people blew their $$$ chasing that fad?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
I hate to tell HP this, but the touch-screen pocket-sized computer will always be with us, as long as hand sizes remain the same, and as long as pockets still exist. Maybe we won't call them a PDA. Maybe we'll call them an Internet Tablet?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
There are some pretty fast alternative on-screen input methods. See, for instance:
Z haiAccepted.pdf [PDF]
s onZhai2004.pdf [PDF]
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/zhai/papers/IwCvol16
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/zhai/papers/Kristens
I also want bluetooth.
I call Verizon - "can I have a bluetooth phone without a camera?" "No - the cell phone people won't provide them, but we have lots of engineers and lots of lawyers who want one". I call Motorola - "can I have a bluetooth phone without a camera?" "No - we don't sell those." "Why not?" "I don't know"
So I don't buy a new phone.
Motorola, LG, and anybody else out there, behold! I have money! I will give you money if you provide a cell phone I want! Money that can be used to buy hookers for the senators in washington who will give you special tax breaks! Money to buy hookers for yourselves. Money to tip the little people who wash your car. I want to give you money, but you don't want to give me what I, and hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of other people want!
Directly related to this thread. People don't WANT a smartphone. They want a phone and a PDA. Maybe Paris Hilton wants a smart phone so she can leak her contact list out and make the news while all of her friends have to change their numbers wants a smartphone, and maybe the Paris Hilton wannabes want one, but you will sell a phones AND PDAs if you provide them to people like us.
MONEY! Money that wants to be in your bank accounts, paying for your hookers! We are the market. We have the money. Give us what we want and we'll give you what you want. This is how it works.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
In all seriousness, the "analog" solution you mention is much more versatile than any PDA.
For years I've been using a simple pen and mini paper notebook in the back pocket. (Not front pocket protector, I'm not an Engineer.) Lately I've been using the PocketMod. It's extremely useful and versatile, but does require frequent "recharging".
Its not so much that Palm offers Smart phones. Its that Palm does not push back against the idea of PDA being a phone accessory as opposed to a phone being a PDA accessory. Its not in their interest to be second fiddle, but they dont seem to get it.
I went from Palm to Treo to BlackBerry. Which is from Stylus for everything to Stylus for selection and keyb for rest, to keyboard and thumbwheel. Each was a step down in user interaction. A smart phone would be yet another step down. Palm leadership is incompetent.
If only pen-PDAs had introduced a new "pen paradigm" to replace (or at least augment) the keyboard and mouse paradigms in their UI. But they aren't even as graphical as the current creaky old paradigm (dating from the beginning of the epoch). They're more textual. They don't do text recognition, either per-letter or per-word/-phrase, as accurately as typing. And worse, correcting mistakes takes longer and is much more distracting than with typing.
Penpads have the opportunity to make most interfaces to info symbolic. Well beyond the mere icons and overloaded (and dumb as a stick) windows we're used to. Feedback between the pen and the graphics could be much more tightly coupled than through the larger circuit of deskbound keys/mouse and distant text/icons/buttons. That feedback needs to leverage much more informative "display transformations", showing state not only of the info directly controlled, but immediate effects on related info, whether found, input, read, weighted, written or sent. Iconic gestures with with smart widgets, retrieving each other in context collections, "smart hiding" unused onscreen GUIs, on-the-fly dataflow and flowchart control diagrams. And the maximum integration of all data, segregated only within modal datatype boundaries, with maximum symmetry in interfaces and interconnectivity. "Applications" would disappear in favor of default-networked dataflow, with every immediate context offering every legal operation, at most two gestures away. "Saving" data goes away, with just un/do WYSIWYG visualization of versioned transactions stored in relations. Local storage as cache only, synced to distributed network "backups". All because the pen is more expressive, but less precise.
All those features will come. We'll reiterate the evolution in large tablets first. Which will immediately start shrinking, as always with personal electronics. But we had our chance to get it right the first time, in 1996-2006 (the "Pilot Era"), if only SW architects had shown as much imagination as the HW architects and engineers put out. But at least this time around we'll have plenty of mistakes to learn from.
--
make install -not war
I don't think the PDA pen-small-computing thing will evaporate at all. It will just evolve into something else that remains useful. Be they watches, phones, wallets, traditional PDA palmtops, something-not-yet-thought-of, etc., the PDA will stick with us for a long time.
On another note, I've always enjoyed messing with HP stuff - it's generally interesting and sometimes even esoteric... BUT... If I were trying to get my product into the world's consciousness, I wouldn't name it iPaq xr4900Bni6lQwlTurbo2.0qnPDA (or even the shorter version in TFA). Easy-to-remember names are much better than alphabet soup.
Sometimes I miss having my Newton 100 around...
A Passionate Independent Musician
Tablets dont fit in your pocket. So they are not a replacment for a PDA.
Nothing wrong with a tablet, just that they are not a 'pda killer'. ( though they might eventually start chewing at the laptop market ).
Fancy cell phones are more of a threat to the PDA market.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...this is my favorite. Check it out. http://www.pocketmod.com/
That's the Palm legacy for you. Palm kicked Newton ass partly because they used a 'good enough' handwriting technology that resulted in a MUCH cheaper device because it didn't require the massive computing power that Rosetta did. While this was appropriate at the time it's now a legacy anchor holding back a major portion of the PDA marketplace.
Yes, there are better handwriting recognition engines on some PDA's, but those devices tend to be coupled with crippled user interfaces that make the improved HWR of only marginal benefit. The Newton wasn't perfect by a long shot, but it was designed from the ground up to work well with pen input and did a much better job than most modern PDA's.
Yes. My Newton worked great for this. It was a fantastic, data input device that was entirely suitable for high volume data input and even had some decent graphical input capabilities. Once I attended a lecture where, instead of just writing down the key points, I wrote down virtually every word... in a 90 minute lecture! Admittedly, this won't work well in a physics class and the speaker, in this case, was a dramatic speaker who paused for emphasis frequently. However, sitting in a meeting and taking notes with a laptop is disruptive, but scribbling notes on a Newton isn't any more disruptive than writing on a pad of paper... unless your alarm goes off
Another key factor, that is common to all PDA's, is that mobility means you can easily take the device to the source of your data. Once I drew a picture of a sidewalk wedge that needed to be replaced and added the dimmensions to the picture as I measured them. Then it was an easy matter to fax a quick note, complete with a dimmensioned diagram to the contractor to do the work.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Thanks for the link. :)
Possibly the most useful thing I've ever seen on the internet.
Ever heard of the Newton?
Palm?
So why avoid the more high-tech keyboard type PDA/cellphones? Because they have a ton of functionality i don't need, and every time you add functionality you're sacrificing something else, usually price. Adding those stupid little keyboards is certainly increasing the price, increasing the size of the device, and often decreasing the screen size. The email and web functionality and all the other PC like aspects are certainly included in the cost as well. As a result in order to get the functionality i want it looks like i'd need to get a $500 or so cellphone when it could really be accomplished in the standard $200 cellphones. (Especially if they got rid of the stupid camera functionality, which i don't really want either.)
So that's why i'd really prefer an old fashioned, simple stylus style PDA. Because i don't want to pay extra, in both money and device real-estate, for functionality i don't really need.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Apple is not going to enter the PDA market, just like Steve said!
Amazing, I've just been through the same kind of epiphany. I've got my iBook and Treo with me constantly, but a couple of weeks ago found myself floundering with my todo's and whatnot. While syncing is no problem, I really didn't feel I had a Birds Eye View. Since I'm a project manager basically hired out to customers, I have an extremely heterogenous workload. Like many, I went the GTD -> 43Folders (link in parent post) -> Hipster PDA (3x5 index cards).
I liked the templates I found referenced at 43Folders, especially those at DIYPlanner http://www.diyplanner.com/. BUT, I've whittled it down to a week template, and a blank template that covers everything else.
The result? Pure goodness! An empty inbox, a few contexts, preemptive rather than reactive management. And all in two weeks. For the first time in a long time I'm facing a weekend without catchup work.
I love my Treo, but it has been completely displaced by pen and paper + Mail.app + iCal.
Simplicity rules.
Most people NEVER needed a PDA anyway - a calendar and addressbook in a mobile is enough for most people.
Plus many modern PDAs cost almost as much as a small / low budget laptop. Why bother buying an expensive gizmo if you can (get) the real thing for a bit more?
A laptop is not "better" than a PDA. More precisely, it does not replace a PDA any more than a PDA replaces a laptop. I can have my PDA with me any time, jot down something that's on my mind, and it's stored. It's quick and simple.
A small enough laptop with tablet functionality or a micro-keyboard could provide that functionality, but when you put a full PC in a package that small it starts to not be so useful for the things you would want a full PC for. And for that kind of usage scenario (always around, use when I need it, quickly, and usually briefly, possibly in less than optimal conditions) software written for a PC isn't too suitable anyway. For a portable device you need software designed for a small (physically and in terms of resolution) screen. For a mobile device you need software that's well suited to that usage scenario, minimal effort required to perform the most common actions.
Mobile phones are bound to take over PDA stuff, of course - as time goes on we'll eventually reach the point where the mobile phone as a whole (subscription and all) is cheap enough and small enough and efficient enough that it simply wouldn't be worth not including one in a smart device (meaning, if you had a PDA-ish thing, it having wireless connectivity and a data plan would be a given. And if you have the connectivity and data plan, adding a mic and speaker is trivial...) - and in the mean time, for all those people who want a phone, creating smart phones is the best way to sell them digital organizer functions which they either don't need, or don't know they need.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
I want to be able to do a little organizing on my MP3 player and phone and listen to mp3s on my phone and PDA, and be able to share any kind of anything between them.
I want everything to be able to do everything, but each should also do one thing well.
That way, if one of them breaks, I can use the other one...kinda.
My PDA is my bookreader, and my phone is my mp3 player but in a pinch either will do the other thing. It's just that the phone has an understandably small screen, and the PDA has an understandably bad set of speakers.
Stop thinking about getting screwed three times over. Start thinking about how easy it is for manufacturers to add certain additional limited functionality for almost no cost for certain devices.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The pen, a lovely analog device, is horribly inacurate, requires calibration, and requires two hands. That was one thing when Palm was competing with writing in a notebook and wanted things familar, but in this day and world where people love the mouse and a few buttons, the pen is just a hassle. The ability to do anything on a BlackBerry with just one hand makes it rather ideal for many cases (this being calendaring and looking up addresses, entry of course is another story), not to mention having a keyboard (newer Palms of course do).
It's just sloppy to use the stylus, and requires too much attention from whatever else it is that you're doing (driving, on the can, etc).
Tablets haven't taken on because they're about 15" diag because of the screen, about 1" thick, have a turning radius for converting it to a tablet/pc in some cases where they convert, create heat, noise, and suck back power in a matter of a few hours.
They're very capable for situations where they are needed (I most often see them in doctors offices to bring a patient a diagram 3D model of a proceedure), but when they're too big and too incapable of doing what a handheld needs to do.
That's like me getting a portable TV for the car and you carrying around a 13" CRT television and a power inverter... I'd imagine mine will be much more useful.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
The interesting question is this: what is the difference between what people want and what people need.
Answer this wrong, and you fail to get the customer on the all important upgrade treadmill.
Keyboards are a trade off. What you give up is the ratio of PDA size to screen. A PDA that is smaller is better. A PDA with a bigger screen is better. It therefore follows that the ideal PDA is all screen, and a keyboard PDA will never be ideal.
On the other hand, a keyboarded PDA has the following advantage: it's easy to learn. A few minutes in the store, and you're as good as you're ever going to be on the thing. And therein lies the problem: is that good enough? Having used both keyboard-less and keyboarded PDAs, I'd say that for the answer is no. I'm not saying that's true for everyone, but it is certainly true for many. I'd be interested to know if many people who got used to Graffitti in the Palm days actually prefer the keyboard after a few months. I'm sure some do, but most people I know who were palm enthusiasts don't.
I think the problem is this: people don't go into a store to buy a keyboarded PDA. They go in to buy a PDA, then choose keyboarded ones over keyboardless ones because they are beginner friendly. However, this doesn't mean that they're necessarily happier after eighteen months than if they'd gone without a keyboard. If the keyboard is a limiting factor in their PDA experience, those people will probably go converged, accepting an even more limited keyboard because they don't perceive the PDA functions as having much value. They might forgo PDA functions altogether.
What I'm trying to say is just because a feature is popular it doesn't automatically follow that it's good for the market.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But when devices converge, and you get one thing that is a cell phone, and a camera, and an MP3 player, and a GPS/mapping/directions device, and it manages and hotsyncs your email and address book and lets you edit them, then how can you really say which category of device "won" and which ones "died?" Is it based on the existence of a pen for input that truly defines the PDA? Is it based on whether you end up buying the device at an office supply store or a cell-phone store? Is it based on which predecessor device the new device looks the most like?
I don't think PDA functionality is going away, it's either being subsumed or else subsuming the functions of other devices. I think that when functionality is integrated, arguing over which previously separate set of functionality "won" and which "died" is just pointless semantic quibbling.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
This thread couldn't go much further with at least a mention of HP's Itanium and predictions there. "RISC IS DEAD!" They threw away their own chips in order to go with a combined product. What a colossal failure that was. HP's former CEO was very big on 'the future'. Carly's and HP's great fault is that they gave vision more weight than reality.
Washington, D.C. - Today the Bush administration announced the first major increase in public spending for the mentally ill since Ronald Reagan slashed psychiatric care for indigents in the 1980s. Under the new program, Medicare will be expanded such that every American who is diagnosed with schizophrenia will be issued with a Bluetooth headset to allow them to speak to the voices in their heads more efficiently. In a surprising move, the Administration has budgetted $100.00 for each of the 298 million U.S. residents, regardless of citizenship status.
In a related story, Halliburton (symobl:HAL) has announced that it will be making unsolicited takeover bids for Motorola (MOT) and Jabra, major players in the Bluetooth handset field.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
More versatile? Sure, if you need some paper mache, or want to fold up an airplane and throw it at someone, or an emergency rolling paper. But the PDA has a zillion uses too. You could use it to crush a [small] nut for example...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am dropping my cell phone as soon as WiFi blankets my city, San Francisco. I prefer IM to text messaging, and I want video as well as audio on my calls. ArtSrc
about damn time. my newton is starting to show its age. now the industry can move on to something *new* and finally come up with a replacement for it.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
What does "most people" have to do with anything?
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Agreed. Three days ago I got fed up with the failing handwriting recognition of my old Palm Vx, Wednesday I bought a brand-new T|X (I was going to buy it with this year's tax refund but I was pushed beyond the point of endurance).
I want something that I can put in my pant's pocket. With long battery life. With a good display. That doesn't crash.
I don't want something with a cell phone, it will violate the size issue and also gives me a single point of failure depriving me of two devices if one fails or the unit is lost. I don't want an MP3 player in it, the fidelity will suck and it will suck more memory that I don't want to give over to it. I don't want Bluetooth, I don't want WiFi (it can't get onto my home network because of my security restrictions). I definitely don't want a digital camera as I'd like to do some DoD consulting at some point.
And I don't want something from HP/Compaq: two B companies that merged to form a bigger B company (except their servers, I like Compaq servers).
Sorry, I've been using Palm Pilots for over a decade and will not give it up until they pry my cold dead fingers from around it.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
My PDA beeps at me 15 minutes before an appointment. I can pull up a map on the same device to give me directions to said appointment.
Now if I could get a scanner attachment for my PDA for all the notes I still scribble on paper, it'd be perfect.
They're crap to use. I mean, they're *useless* for any serious amount of data input, have you ever tried writing a letter on one?
No, but I used to draft short papers on my Palm III in college. At the time I had no laptop but wanted to be able to be somewhere other than my room and still get work done. The Palm was nice for that, especially as I got really good at Graffiti - plus it was easier to input accent marks and tildes (needed for those annoying Spanish assignments) on the Palm than on my PC.
I say PDAs are hard to sell because they're a new kind of device. To sell a PDA you need to explain to people why they need a PDA. Selling phones is easy. People have used those for over a hundred years. People grew up with phones. So selling a phone that's battery-powered and mobile is easy to do - it's a familiar device, enhanced. But to sell the PDA, you've got to explain to people why they need this thing they didn't need before.
To me, the advantages of having organizer functions in digital form, and of having a general-purpose computer that I really can have with me all the time are worth it. But smartphones are gradually taking over all that.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
I use an old Palm Zire handheld. Black&White, not even greyscale. No backlight either. (ever hear of the sun?) Small, Very Durable, I have dropped it a few time and keep it in my pocket with my keys (without a screen protector!) and it works great. Recognizes text fast and well. Does calendar, Adressess, reads text controls my TV, keeps bank records, etc. Best Part? Battery Lasts SEVERAL WEEKS between charges.
It's the next best thing to pencil and paper.
Why not just make more SIMPLE devices, that do a few things very well. I dont need pictures/music, i have Digital Audio Player and a Camera for that.
Similiarly, my Black and White Digital Audio Player (Creative Nomad Zen Xtra) stores 30 gigs, uses standard lappy HD, a replaceable battery and itself lasts 20 hrs playtime. It also costs less, and is more durable than, an IPOD. What happened to simple, highly effective devices?
my little rant
I'm looking for a replacement to my Clie TJ37
- under $400
- *not* MS Windows based
- replaceable battery
I don't understand the rave about phones, I don't see the need for one. My office has one on the desk and I sometimes use one at home. I've used up one 500 minute calling card since like 2001.
I use my PDA for reading books (I usually a book or so per week), task and project outlines (using progect right now), todo lists, and jotting down notes. Lots of notes on lots of different subjects. I don't use the calendar and I rarely use the contacts.
I tried using paper, but then I end up retyping everything on my computer. With a PDA I just cut and paste.
I want to honestly see more interfaces like the palm's hardware pen. I mean c'mon, does that crappy little thumb keyboard actually appeal to you? When blackberries were introduced to the world I thought they were one of the most god awful interfaces to use ever. I think the palm will be a precursor to something even better, like a multi-point touchscreen interface. There is a reason that I want a palm and not a tablet. When I turn on my palm, it is on in under a second, and I don't have to deal with the Windows OS and all of it's crappy vulnerabilities and downfalls. My tablet and/or laptop will not fit in my pocket. When I think of a good interface, I think of the palm pen. Look at it this way. If there is a tree in front of you, do you want to have an axe? or do you want to type "chop" "chop" "chop" with your thumbs? I use my Tungsten C to get on my home wireless and talk to friends for free through the AIM client. I cannot do that with a phone because internet service on your phone is extra $$ from your regular internet. I like having one internet bill. When phones have an option to communicate entirely through web based services like 802.11 and bluetooth without charging you for minutes, and they have a more tangible interface than the pen interface palm uses (holographic projections and laser sensors?) maybe I'll consider dropping the PDA. If anything I wish more companies and portable devices would develop a more accessible and tangible interface. the point is, I have more muscles in my body that could be potentially used to communicate information than the ones I use for my thumbs!
First of all, I was told I was working on Wednesday at 9 so I pencilled that in, and yes, it was slightly faster (but only slightly) than my Nokia. But then I hit my first snag: nowhere could I find an alarm function to remind me. Thinking it was an extra module that had to be purchased seperately (which is really bad value for money, IMO) I spent ages on Google looking for it... to no avail. Thankfully I didnt miss work because I went back to my old Nokia's calendar to remind me. (Of course, it auto-synch'd via BT next time the computer was one.)
The second problem I had was when I needed to record a complicated series of directions to get to a friend's house -- it was quite a way away and in the end my hand just got tired of writing (Oh, how I longed for a keypad). Again, the old Nokia came to the rescue and I used the record voice function to succesfully record directions -- I was very disapointed at the new solutions lack of audio recording or even a rudiumentary camera (640x480 even?)
Another problem I kept running into was the lack of any audio player (perhaps thats another module)? I mean, I dont like having to carry around 3 devices with me everytime I go out when my Nokia was very much an all-in-one. Sure, I could have written out the OGG files in HEX and hummed them back to myself but I'm a student and to be honest, I don't really have that kind of time anymore.
Another problem (they were really bugging me by this point) was no way to transfer e-books to the new solution save by hand. I tried transcribing Zarathustra but gave up only a few pages into the book -- it really wasnt worth it, so I just coppied it over BT to my Nokia. I could have bought the dead-tree with me (which I also owned) but I needed to take a few other books as well and it didnt fit into my bag.
Finally the trial was bought to an abrupt halt when I dropped it. Yes, I'd been dropping it all week with no adverse affects but it had been raining and I dropped it in a puddle -- all my appointments, all my shopping and to-do lists, gone in a slimey mess of sticky paper. Now if I'd dropped my Nokia, sure, I'd have lost those but only temporarily thanks to the automatic bluetooth sync. I was so angry! I mean, what kind of device is built in this day and age without any kind of easy backup facilities?
Folks, stay away from this -- its nothing but a sham and a waste of money.
This is true for HP - they're finding their market "challenged" to say the least. The problem is not the market, it's having a device somebody wants to buy. The recent handhelds have been very uninspiring, so smartphones are taking off. Unfortunately, it's "old wine in new bottles," basically phones with handhelds somewhat integrated in but still with the same-old interfaces.
The non-smartphone handheld is become a niche device. Unfortunately for HP, they're handhelds aren't fitting the niches as well.
but this was very much an entry-level product and made few waves among the high-end, tech-savvy consumers that dominate the PDA segment.
Yeah, right. That's why the low end Palms continue to break sales records? This notion that PDA's are being bought only by technophiles is pure rubbish. Yes, the PDA boards are dominated by tech-elitists, but the rank and file of users are not so saavy and don't seem interested in the overpriced, overfeatured PDA's that the nerds seem so enamored of.
PDA-philes have been trumpeting the death of Palm OS for at least 10 years now, because they make the nut selling simple, non-feature laden PDA's. On the boards you read how foolish Palm is for leaving out this feature or changing that feature, and still Palm sells tons of PDAs.
It's a fact that Technophiles and PDAphiles have zero clue as to what constitutes a marketable PDA. They just moan and groan that the current crop of PDAs can't do this as good as there computer, and can't do that as good as their computer, and can't do everything all at once. HP, Dell, and most of the other Windows Mobile manufacturers continue to listen to the whining on the boards and have continued to make overpriced, overpowered, underbatteried pieces of junk, and they all insist that the PDA market is dying . All the while, Palm listens to the regular folks who use the devices and has hit after hit after hit. Beware who you heed.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I've got the best of both worlds with my iPAQ h6325. It has a full-size pen-capable display just like the Palm, but comes with a free clip-on keyboard that resembles the one on the Treo. It supports the Palm-style pen input, and also does real (but often really bad) handwriting recognition. My preferred method of data entry is the on-screen keyboard. Pen-based hunt-n-peck is just as fast and easy as trying to learn the Palm alphabet.
I own an Ipaq. It surfs the web via wifi; plays mp3's, wmv & wma files, divx movies, mpeg1 files, ogg vorbis files; opens word, powerpoint and excel documents without them having to be translated via the computer ala palm; opens adobe acrobat files; has solitaire; views photos; can access an sdcard and a compact flash card at the same time (I can copy files from the sdcard to the compact flash card using only the ipaq); has a decent speaker; I've found an antivirus/firewall program for it; and I've purchased a portable keyboard to go with it that has the number keys on their own line.
The battery is removeable, lasts for hours, and is probably swappable with another for long journeys. I DON'T lose all my data when I lose all power as my model has flash memory.
It and the keyboard fit into my purse with room to spare.
The damn thing is a very light laptop with a really small screen.
Anyone who says that pen-based pda's are dead is simply trying to explain why the consumer is hellbent on purchasing cumbersome gigantic laptops with a battery life of 20 minutes when all they need is a pda.
Their interfaces are generally good. Perhaps it's just a case of using the wrong tool for the job? I'm not sure why you'd want to write a letter on a PDA. They're not intended for that type of thing. They intended for looking up and entering small (but useful) amounts of data.
I'm never going back to piles of notes in a drawer. I used to print out a calendar and carefully transfer all of my to do items from one page to the next, making notes along the way. This allowed some automation and, for once, I could remember people's birthdays. It worked but it had lots of problems my Handspring Visor fixed. It was hard to put everything in it and it was hard to search. When my list of things got bigger than one page, I was scratching in the margins. Invariably, small pieces of paper with information would accumulate in my drawers before I had time to organize them. The visor does searches and it alarms when I need to do something. Though it only had 8MB of storage, I never filled it up and everything was easy to find. No, I'm sticking to the pen based PDA.
HP only hates them because M$ can't get handwriting recognition right. Palm got it write and do does Xstroke. HP and M$ may exit the category, but the category will exist until someone invents something that can read my mind.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The point is: Graffiti-like input can be software-optimized, while thumb-boards are hardware-optimized for a certain language. So Japanese key-driven gizmos (for example) don't work well in other languages, but the same Palm hardware can be sold worldwide.
It is so very sad that the PDA market has tanked. I had such high hopes for PDAs especially since when I was younger, I wish I had this technology to help me through school.
But alas, the corporations have had their way with PDAs, slowly poisioning the PDA market as they nutured the iPod, PSP, and Blackberry. Dear Palm and Ipaq, Clie, Zaurus, and Newton, your shall not have died and been forgotten as the underground will preserve the legacy and never forget the importance of these portable devices. This technology will rise again, despite the dumbing down of technology and all those who use them.
Besides, why the hell would anyone bring their collection of 2LiveCrew MP3s and watch television at a business meeting?
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
A few months ago I overheared someone saying that Intel would be focusing technology on laptops (Maybe even the PDA market). This is assumed because corperate technology is rocketing and that the majority of this market is mobile. I hope Intel makes a good decision but does not neglect the need of new technology overall.
- Jeremiah O'Neal
http://www.we6jbo.webhop.net/
Rev: 0x
Jeremiah B O'Neal http://geocities.com/we6jbo/
Fire up Blender, 3ds max, or what have you, and model a cool looking shell for the flash drive's guts. Then send the file to a 3D printing service such as www.3dArtToPart.com.
This is not good. I have a thing against multifunction products because if one element breaks or becomes unusable it immediately negates the cost spent for an all in one item; you have to buy another component to make up for the malfunctioning one.
It's been said before, but I like my phone to be just a phone and my camera, if and when I get one, to be just a camera. I love my iPAQ 4155, one of the reasons being that it has stylus input and a screen large enough to work with the stylus. If or when I upgrade, looks like HP won't be a brand to consider.
Hopefully this isn't indicative of a larger trend. I can't imagine having to work with a cell phone sized screen when entering calendar or task info.
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.