I just want to add my vote to the 'yes - (well - kind of)' column.
I've been in a never-ending quest for the perfect PDA. Initially I wanted to replace my diary, phone book and paper note book. I started out with a Newton (the original model) but the handwriting recognition sucked (for a lefty anyway) and it was slow and the battery life sucked. But the OS rocked. Why is it that no-one else has done the newton thing where you can type 'lunch with Mark' on the notepad, tap 'assist' (or whaterver it was) and bingo, there's an appointment scheduled with Mark Whoever for 12:30?
Anyway, I gave that up much to my wife's chagrin as I'd convinced her to buy it for me as an engagement present (she still won't let me sell it).
Next was a paper diary. It was fine but I wanted alarms and a properly sorted phone book. Also, having a single copy of my data worried me.
So then I tried a Psion 5 - for about 2 days! I was still on the 'replace my paper notebook' strategy and I wanted the Psion for its keyboard as I'd hoped I'd be able to touch-type on it. But the keyboard was too small and the feel was awful. So I sent it back.
Next was a Cassiopeia E-10 - one of the first gen WindowsCE systems. This was really good. WinCE isn't bad and my employer used Exchange so it all fitted pretty well. But the battery life was atrocious and I could never use the backlight as a result. Apart from that it was good. I liked Jot too.
After that I settled on a Palm m100 which I've had for about 2years. It's an 8MB m100 and it did pretty much what I wanted it too - which by now was reduced to diary, phone book and AvantGo. Oh, and it was terriffic once as a serial terminal when I was deploying a stack of HP systems! It was worth it just for that. It's a good little unit. Not fast but with good battery life and it does what I need it to. It's platform-independent which became important when I left my Exchange-based employer and worked for myself (I based myself on Linux and now OS X). I tried a Palm Vx for a while but I think the m100 is more sturdy. I've dropped it a few times and it's never complained.
I still have my m100 but I also now have an Ericsson T68i. That, coupled with my bluetooth adapter for my iBook, iCal and the OS X address book has seen me move all my phone book to my phone (logical huh?). Synchronising the two is a piece of piss and my phone is _always_ with me and now I jot down appointments, reminders, tasks and stuff as they come to mind. The palm's really too big to carry around - compared to the phone anyway. The phone has some shortcomings - I can't snooze an alarm and it doesn't (yet) sync with my work PC (which runs Notes). And it'd be really really nice if I could get AvantGo on it! I miss my daily AtlasF1 update going home on the train.
I considered a Treo but they're too big. So's an O2 or any other PDA/phone combo. The size of the T68i is a real plus.
Anyway, to sum up, my quest for a paper notebook replacement isn't over but for now it seems the best thing a PDA(/phone) can do is organise my phone numbers and my diary and web channels. Maybe a TabletPC might help on the note book side? But it wouldn't replace my PDA
Larry Wall ses: "Because if it turns out to be 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism"
there it is again! Religionists, including christians, believe they have a monopoly on morality! this is ignorant and insulting, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Here's a couple of alternatives upon which to base a morality: 1) The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated.
But there you go. Treat others as you would like to be treated. == slaves of selfish genes.
You're just being nice to others so they can be nice to you.
I worked for a while at a physics department in a University. They used IDL almost exclusively for number-crunching - especially the atmospheric physics guys. Apparently you could write code rather quickly and easily and it had excellent graphics capabilities. Check out Research Systems Inc.. Mind you it costs a stack. We got it cheaper coz we were a Uni but it still cost heaps.
We had some Matlab around which the theoretical guys used more but IDL was the most prevalent.
Slashdot Mirror
I just want to add my vote to the 'yes - (well - kind of)' column.
I've been in a never-ending quest for the perfect PDA. Initially I wanted to replace my diary, phone book and paper note book. I started out with a Newton (the original model) but the handwriting recognition sucked (for a lefty anyway) and it was slow and the battery life sucked. But the OS rocked. Why is it that no-one else has done the newton thing where you can type 'lunch with Mark' on the notepad, tap 'assist' (or whaterver it was) and bingo, there's an appointment scheduled with Mark Whoever for 12:30?
Anyway, I gave that up much to my wife's chagrin as I'd convinced her to buy it for me as an engagement present (she still won't let me sell it).
Next was a paper diary. It was fine but I wanted alarms and a properly sorted phone book. Also, having a single copy of my data worried me.
So then I tried a Psion 5 - for about 2 days! I was still on the 'replace my paper notebook' strategy and I wanted the Psion for its keyboard as I'd hoped I'd be able to touch-type on it. But the keyboard was too small and the feel was awful. So I sent it back.
Next was a Cassiopeia E-10 - one of the first gen WindowsCE systems. This was really good. WinCE isn't bad and my employer used Exchange so it all fitted pretty well. But the battery life was atrocious and I could never use the backlight as a result. Apart from that it was good. I liked Jot too.
After that I settled on a Palm m100 which I've had for about 2years. It's an 8MB m100 and it did pretty much what I wanted it too - which by now was reduced to diary, phone book and AvantGo. Oh, and it was terriffic once as a serial terminal when I was deploying a stack of HP systems! It was worth it just for that. It's a good little unit. Not fast but with good battery life and it does what I need it to. It's platform-independent which became important when I left my Exchange-based employer and worked for myself (I based myself on Linux and now OS X). I tried a Palm Vx for a while but I think the m100 is more sturdy. I've dropped it a few times and it's never complained.
I still have my m100 but I also now have an Ericsson T68i. That, coupled with my bluetooth adapter for my iBook, iCal and the OS X address book has seen me move all my phone book to my phone (logical huh?). Synchronising the two is a piece of piss and my phone is _always_ with me and now I jot down appointments, reminders, tasks and stuff as they come to mind. The palm's really too big to carry around - compared to the phone anyway. The phone has some shortcomings - I can't snooze an alarm and it doesn't (yet) sync with my work PC (which runs Notes). And it'd be really really nice if I could get AvantGo on it! I miss my daily AtlasF1 update going home on the train.
I considered a Treo but they're too big. So's an O2 or any other PDA/phone combo. The size of the T68i is a real plus.
Anyway, to sum up, my quest for a paper notebook replacement isn't over but for now it seems the best thing a PDA(/phone) can do is organise my phone numbers and my diary and web channels. Maybe a TabletPC might help on the note book side? But it wouldn't replace my PDA
I know some commercial Unixes are certified to C2 if you have it configured right. What about the Linuxes?
Larry Wall ses: "Because if it turns out to be 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism"
there it is again! Religionists, including christians, believe they have a monopoly on morality! this is ignorant and insulting, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Here's a couple of alternatives upon which to base a morality:
1) The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like to be treated.
But there you go. Treat others as you would like to be treated. == slaves of selfish genes.
You're just being nice to others so they can be nice to you.
I worked for a while at a physics department in a University. They used IDL almost exclusively for number-crunching - especially the atmospheric physics guys. Apparently you could write code rather quickly and easily and it had excellent graphics capabilities. Check out Research Systems Inc.. Mind you it costs a stack. We got it cheaper coz we were a Uni but it still cost heaps.
We had some Matlab around which the theoretical guys used more but IDL was the most prevalent.