What to look for when buying a PDA
Find out what you want from your PDA before you buy it
Knowing what functions your choice of PDA has will help you to make a better purchase. Often PDAs can offer more funtions than you actually need.
PDA’s just ain’t what they used to be – but that’s a good thing.
The first handheld PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistant’s) were basically electronic organisers, but these days they can do just about anything except tap dance.
Just like any other electronic device that you buy these days, if you choose one with more facilities than you need, you will find yourself with functions that sit unused and what’s more you would have paid twice the price for them than you would have needed to.
So the best place to start before you set out to buy yourself a PDA is in establishing what you actually need it for. Is it for personal use or for business? If it is for personal use, what everyday functions would be useful to you? If it is for business, what extra utilities would you be looking for?
The most basic PDA can start at as little as $50. It will have the necessary organiser style abilities like calendar and scheduling, phone book and perhaps a financial organiser amongst some other simple functions.
This is the PDA in its most simple application. When you get to the top of the range you are in a totally different playing field. Here a PDA will have phone and camera facilities.
The screens on the top PDA’a are LCD display and can offer high-quality images for viewing photographs, videos and high-end graphics for games.
There are two different operating systems available to the user in general but you cannot choose which one you want on a particular PDA; you get whichever that particular model uses. Although there are other operating systems available they are not in the same ball game at this stage of things.
Srprisingly, the BlackBerry –which is a certain winner in this field, uses an OS totally its own. The BlackBerry is one of the most popular PDAs. It has a whole series of units that can offer a host of different functions, right down to a GPS or web browser. On the BlackBerry, you are able to send emails and connect with other wireless PDAs. It also has the capabilities to expand its memory through using its USB memory port.
If you are a ‘rush’ addict, you may not want to settle for anything less than Hot-Sync abilities that allow you to transfer information to and from your main computer onto your PDA at high speed using the USB cable, the alternative is the serial port which transfers the information at a much slower rate.
With an attempt to cover everything a consumer might be niggly about, the designers of these products have even taken into consideration the extra comfort of holding your PDA by producing it with grip-style materials that enable you to hold the unit safely with less chance of it slipping from your hand during use.
So if you are in the market for a personal assistant, a PDA might just be the way to go. It’ll save you on workers comp and holiday pay too!
