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When a Plain PDA Is BestFour reasons why no-frills PDAs are better than their hybrid, feature-packed brethren.James A. Martin
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Feature: When a Plain PDA Is Best
Things aren't looking good for the traditional PDA.
Sony has stopped selling its Clie line of Palm OS-compatible handhelds. Toshiba has exited the Pocket PC market outside Japan. In 2004, shipments of traditional PDAs--those without wireless phone capabilities--declined for the third consecutive year, according to IDC (which, like PC World, is a part of International Data Group).
What's up with that? Put simply, smart phones and hybrid devices- -which combine the functions of both cell phones and PDAs--are wooing users away from traditional handhelds.
But don't give up on our old friend just yet. Here are four reasons why PDAs are better traveling companions than hybrid PDA- phones.
Bigger Screen
Because a hybrid device needs to be compact, like a regular mobile phone, its display can be considerably smaller than a PDA's. For instance, the PalmOne Treo 650's color screen is 320 by 320 pixels, compared to the 640-by-480-pixel screen of Hewlett Packard's IPaq Hx4705.
In real terms, this means viewing just about anything--contact information, photos, multimedia content, GPS maps--is better on most PDAs than on most hybrid devices or smart phones. The larger screen makes PDAs, in my opinion, significantly more useful. For example, you could keep photos of a new product stored on an HP IPaq Hx4705, then easily show the photos to a prospective client. On a Treo 650 or other hybrid device, your picture wouldn't have nearly as much impact.
Better Notebook Alternative
Need to create or edit Microsoft Office documents on the run? A PDA is much better at this than your average hybrid device.
Windows Mobile PDAs come with pocket versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, and Internet Explorer. Many Palm OS PDAs include Dataviz's Documents To Go, which...