Do People Really Use Their PDAs?

TAL asks: "With Dell entering the market with their new PDA, the PDA market appears saturated. I work in a high-tech industry and I see more people carrying their PDAs than actually using them. At the same time, I see many people actually going back to their paper planners. I've ran the PDA gauntlet myself and have found that much time is wasted syncing, charging and reinstalling the software. Have there been any studies on PDA turnover? I think the PDA has become more of a status symbol than a useful tool."

My PDA is...

[bic2k]

sitting at the bottom of a box unused for the last year... good turn over... most of my toys don't last more than 6 months...

Usage

[pbobby]

I use mine all the time.... to read eBooks /:)

Do People Really Use Their PDAs?

[skoda]

Do People Really Use Their PDAs?

Yes.

(schedule, address book, tracking cash expenses, games during boring meetings)

Of course I use it.

[Stradenko]

I use my PDA (Sony clie) for everything I can - japanese study, scheduling (classes, work, travel) - it really helps me to prioritize things, games, pictures, contact info, etc. It's hard, well terribly inconvenient anyway, for me to do without it these days.

It was definately a good investment in my case.

I used to

[Peyna]

I used my PDA for a little while my freshman year in college (Palm V), I'd take some quick notes on it and use it to store schedules, important dates and addresses. Aside from that I used it for games during boring lectures, or to beam stuff to other classmates about the teacher =]

Now it sits in my deskdrawer and I don't use it anymore. Batteries, syncing, and everything else weren't problems at all. In the end it was too cumbersome to enter data (even if you knew it well), and the software offered was minimal.

I probably would have been happier with a Windows CE device, since they come with a much larger, easier to use range of applications. It's hard to say. But, I don't miss it much.

On that note, how much is someone willing to give me for an old Palm V? =]

I don't know about "studies"

[Snarfvs Maximvs]

But I work in a large (50k+) high-tech company and NOBODY in my part of the world uses paper planners anymore. Even our over-compensated super-high-up VPs etc. use a combination of RIM, cellphone, and Palm/CE devices to stay on track. When you're quadruple-booked for meetings all day in multiple geographic locations, paper ain't gonna cut it.

My boss wouldn't survive without his blackberry! I make do with an iPAQ and sync when I get to my desk. The only way I get work done is that I don't have a cellphone or a pager. My boss keeps threatening to get me one and I respond with threats to quit. ;-)

I could not survive w/o my PDA

[xchino]

I have no idea how I got along before I got one. Mine isn't even a good one, Just a Visor Handspring, 16-bit grey scale, but damn is it useful. With my Nokia 3360 I can connect to the internet via infrared on the pda and phone and use PalmVNC to control my servers from anywhere. Also, the the infrared is hella useful as a universal remote control.. Between omniremote and pmremote I never have to miss my favorite shows whenever I'm around a public TV. I also use J-Pilot + the Keyring plugin to carry a nice encrypted list of l/p combos and general server info. I jot down notes on it all the time. I can also use the phone book etensively. I don't really use the scheduler at all, cuz I have no schedule :)

But the BEST use for my pda I've had so far is basically as a gameboy :)

Constantly

[CodeWheeney]

The reason I've stayed with my now old-school Palm IIIx is because it's invaluable to me. It doesn't have wireless or color, but it has my life on it. I now don't forget to carry the appropriate piece of paper or list with me because I always enter these things into my PDA. I'm currenlty 2700 miles from my home, but my PDA has all of the information I might need for my work or personal use (family phone numbers, infrequently seen friends who I thought of seeing because I was near them, and I had there number). It's also got important work information and useful lists. I can pop into a record store and pick up a new album on my list. I can also pop up several useful astronomy applications and get some casual binocular observing in, and log the results.

My IIIx is very useful because it's simple, reliable and omni-present. I carry it everywhere.

Re:Usage

[JedKivi]

Same here

Why I Used My PDA and Why I Stopped

[Carnage4Life]

I used to love having a PDA (Palm IIIxe [palm.com]) around and used it for a variety of reasons including

• Meeting schedule always handy even when I wasn't at work (plus beeping reminders).
• Todo list always handy (plus beeping reminders).
• Games to play during boring meetings.
• Email Inbox always available
• No more scrabbling for a pen when I want to get a girl's phone number

reason I stopped using it

• It started taking too long to sync Outlook to my Palm which sucked since I used to do it at the end of the workday and waiting 10 - 30 minutes for it to finish syncing wore on my patience.

PDA / cellphone is a big win

[patSPLAT]

I just got a cellphone module for my Handspring Visor. That nice address book becomes much more exciting when you just hit a button to call the number.

~ Patrick

Re:Usage

[Jonathan]

Exactly -- eBooks are an application of PDA's that the designers never really thought of, and one in which the PDA fulfills much better than full-size dedicated eBook hardware. I like to read books, but often I don't have one with me when I have a few free minutes. A PDA is far more portable than a paperback book and I almost always have mine in my coat pocket.

Of course

[LegendNH]

My dad bought me an ipaq (3635 I believe) when I was in my last year of high school. I wrote down every assignment, I set dates to do projects, when they were do etc.... I never lost anything again. In the summer I bought a (1) gig micro drive for it to play mp3's while I walked around my lake.

In college now, it is like my best friend. I store a backup copy of class notes; many of the handouts (posted online only) are in Word format so I download them to my ipaq and read them off there. I couldn't do it any other way. The only time I print anything out these days are when my professors ask for a physical copy. I can play games in between classes. Listen to music when I work out, take notes, highlight handouts posted online. I store my daily assignments and tasks.

When I am driving home from class and I forgot to do something, I would pull out my ipaq press the record button on the side and talk to it. When I get home I usually take a break before starting my homework and sometimes I forget what I was supposed to do. I play my recorded message and do what I was supposed to.

I do so many things on my ipaq I couldn't even name everything. I don't think I could ever go back to pencil and paper again. I do other things like securely store my passwords, I have phone numbers in there, email address's of friends, family, people I am working with on a project etc... The ipaq was by far the greatest school investment for me...

Also my ipaq case stores my College ID, Drivers License, Credit card, $40, and a phone card. So I don't have to carry around a wallet. My ipaq is truly an all in one device.

I'm just waiting for the new ipaqs to drop a little so I can replace so I don't have to carry around a wallet. My ipaq is truly an all in one device.

I'm just waiting for the new ipaqs to drop a little so I can replace my older one and at the same time replace my cell phone.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Use of PDAs depends on features/abilities

[Moofie]

Palm IIIxe has a backlight. Press and hold the power button.

I know, because I shocked my friend who owns one by showing him how to turn it on.

I've also never lost data during battery replacement. I am in the habit of syncing first, but even so I've never had the batteries out long enough to lose info. I don't know what I'm doin differently, but your experience is different from mine.

BlackBerry

[mhocker]

While not strictly a PDA, the RIM BlackBerry has recently replaced my iPAQ which I had for several years. In fact, I'll never go back - the killer app for a PDA is having email and a "live" synchronised appointment book. That way, my admin can add/remove/change meetings and send me a quick email while I'm anywhere in the US, which I can respond to. It even works at 35,000 feet!

Do I miss the colour touchscreen of the iPAQ? No. Do I miss any applications? Well, now that I have AvantGo on it, no I don't. Do I miss handwritiing recognition? Hell, no! (In fact, I can't imagine a worse thing to do with a laptop than take the keyboard away and use only a pen - are you listening, Mr. Gates?)

While you still do have to sync the RIM occasionally to clean out the mailbox and to get contents synchronised with Outlook, it is by far a more "connected" device than either the iPAQ or Palm. And to me, that's what matters: connectivity.

Sadly, as The Register is fond of pointing out by calling them "Lawyers in Motion", RIM has a habit of suing any other company that tries to bring "push" email to PDAs. Nevertheless, it is 100% clear to me that all PDAs (and probably mobile phones, too) will work like BlackBerries in the near future.

Re:Usage

[IanBevan]

Yup, exactly the same. I tend to use Amazon [amazon.com] and Fictionwise [fictionwise.com] to buy my books, the latter has a heavy sci-fi leaning.

I also play chess [pocketgrandmaster.com] on mine. Mine's a Toshiba e570 PPC, which has CFII slot for which I plan to buy a 802.11b card as soon as my local cafes start a wireless browsing service (Wellington, New Zealand) which I understand is in the works. Then hopefully I'll be able to play chess over the net while drinking my latte :-)

I've also used it to go online (when I was in the UK) to check my email using the IR link on my Siemens S35 cellphone - slow but workable.

I'd quite like to be able to use it at work, but we use Windows NT 4 (bleugh) which has no USB support and the serial link sucks. Worse, we use Novell GroupWise - probably the worst piece of arse email/groupware product on the face of the earth - which does not sync to my PPC.

Couldn't live without it

[gremlin_591002]

I get to work at 7 in the morning. By 8 I'm in the truck going everywhere (I program HVAC systems). Without my Visor, I'd never get through the day. Need to know when the last time I calibrated a sensor? Look it up in the Visor. Need to fill out my time sheet for last week? Just print a copy of my weekly calander. What was the password to that router that I set up two years ago? Look it up in the Visor. Opps, forgot my checkbook and need to make a deposit. Look it up in the Visor. I've been using Palm based PDAs since the Pro. I gave my original to my son almost a year ago. He uses it to keep track of his cartoons and play games (he's 8) but I'll bet he uses it for tracking school assignments before to long. In my world, the key is to keep it on me at all times, that means a geeky belt pouch. Sometimes I wished I had to wear a sports jacket. :)

Re:Usage

[motardo]

just look for a RCA eBook Reader, they used to be plentiful, but now you can pick them up cheap.

I used a Palm Pro extensively in college

[frinkster]

I couldn't keep track of all the girls I met at the bars without it.

OK, maybe not. But I did use it constantly for keeping track of assignments, class projects, and meetings. Of course, I also used it for the occasional game when class got really boring, for keeping some lists of computer lab locations, UNIX and vi reference guides, etc. I stopped using it after I graduated and found that my schedule just wasn't busy enough to warrant it. Plus, I had to recalibrate the screen every few days and I swore it ate batteries faster the older it got.

I got my dad a cheap Palm (don't remember the model) two years ago. He's a school psychologist and has tons of meetings at all the different schools in the district and has hundreds of contacts to keep track of. He considers the Palm a God-send.

Re:I'm carrying my PDA

[IcEMaN252]

Au contraire, I can't see my desktop (as in table) or floor right now b/c there is too much on it. I never used a paper organizer much. But, I have a PDA and love it.

Re:Usage

[mikeboone]

I recently got a cheap Handspring Visor and found this site [pluckerbooks.com] for reading books with the cool Plucker [plkr.org] browser.

It's old stuff, but it's free.

you tossed out the wrong end

[twitter]

It started taking too long to sync Outlook to my Palm which sucked since I used to do it at the end of the workday and waiting 10 - 30 minutes for it to finish syncing wore on my patience.

Looks like you abandoned the useful end of that connection. Where I worked they put in pop up screen that said, "Another application is attmpting to look at Outlook's contact information. allow this?" Yes it was a pain but it was worth it because Outlook never did a thing for me but my Handspring was very useful [slashdot.org].

I imagine this pop up headache did not happen with WinCE crap, but I could be wrong. Microsoft would never use it's monopoly position to favor their own projects and programs, would they? When did it start taking ten freaking minutes? Because NT did not have USB support, I did all my transfers over a normal serial cable and it never took that long, unless I missed the stupid popup then the whole computer hung.

My Uses

[Bugmaster]

I guess I don't use my PDA to its fullest potential. I use the calendar, address book, memo pad (I store URLs, my favorite quotes, characters sheets there), a dice-rolling program (for tabletop RPGs), and a few games. Oh, and the calculator of course.

Now, I probably wouldn't use all the of the organizing apps if I had good handwriting and rudimentary math skills... But I don't, so the PDA is really useful for me.

do people use these things

[cyclist4two]

I support over 900 ipaqs and am suprized by what the clinets are placing on these things. Just wish the activesync program was not prone to failure. BTW its not games, its documents they carry throughout the day. I would agree that a few buy them and and then put them in a drawer, but the same number are at the other end of the bar curve and pushing for more connectivity. Its nice to look up a phone number or check out a map (from streets and trips) to see where you are when you are lost. Try that when all you have is a state map!

Re:I'm carrying my PDA

[Anonymous Coward]

his girlfriend

bird == chick

My iPAQ

[SEGV]

I started with a Palm Professional. The screen was horrible, so a year or two later I got a Palm V. I liked the screen, but a few months ago I was yearning for something more. Better screen, more RAM, more processing power, and also more expandability.

The iPAQ 3900 series came out, so I bought one with Bluetooth. It's expensive, but I'm a programmer and I love the toys. I played around with some Palm programming, and someday I'd like to tackle Pocket PC.

But what I've found, is that the better the PDA I've had, the more uses I've found for it.

The main use is just to always have a notepad around. I keep lists of everything (shopping list, important numbers, etc.) in my PDA. Contact information is also useful.

Another thing I like is having material to read. Instead of having to pick up a magazine at the dentists, I can catch up on content *I* want to read. This is much better with the iPAQ and its near-eBook capability.

I've started using the calendar functions more and more, linearly, with time. I don't really have that many meetings, but I put in things like to remind me when to renew driver's license, etc. The things that you really forget if you don't think about them.

With the iPAQ's multimedia capabilities, I can store some photos of the wife and baby, and also sound clips. That's the old photos in wallet trick.

Video takes too much memory still. But MP3s are a nice option, if it were more convenient to play them (UI-wise).

Games are OK but I prefer to play at home and instead do reading on the run.

So I've found that the better the PDA, the more I use it, and the more uses I find for it. Slowly it is becoming like a mini laptop.

I find that it takes discipline to force yourself to carry it with you, and to use it. It's too easy to just grab a piece of paper to note something down. If you always use the PDA, and always have it with you, that's the first step.

Another important thing is to use a decent input system. Graffiti is nice, but the Pocket PC lets you choose your own input system. Find one that works for you. If it's too hard to input, you won't use the PDA, so it is crucial that you can input your stuff fast enough.

My biggest complaint about the iPAQ is just the bleeding-edge of it all. It can play movies, but I can't script an MP3 playlist playback, or a slide show of my photos. I want a big button on the Today Screen that goes to my shopping list, another for baby pictures, and another for my favourite playlist.

I tried Bluetooth, but it is one hell of a hassle. Even after setup and configuration, things just take too long. Why does it take ten seconds to find my transceiver? There's nothing else here!

I really want text to speech (for listening to books) and speech recognition (for navigation and input), that is convenient and free. I know you can solve a lot of these issues I have by buying more stuff, but really I paid a fortune for the device, I shouldn't have to pay more for things it should have. I tried IBM's voice software but it isn't really usable.

Re:Usage

[bjtuna]

If you have a Palm, you may want to try Due Yesterday, found at No Sleep Software [nosleep.net]. Designed specifically for tracking assignments.

Re:Do People Really Use Their PDAs?

[mferrare]

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

Re:Usage

[dsoltesz]

Actually, I bought a Rocket eBook a couple years before I got a PDA. I got the eBook for reading web course assignments on, but I still use it for reading actual books and stories. I do most of my reading at home or on road trips - one eBook is less to carry than the two or three paperbacks plus several magazines I used to take with me. But, the PDA is handy for reading the news on the way to work in the morning. The benefits of each are as follows -

eBook:

• Larger screen
• Larger print
• Same amount of memory
• Easy to dump a web page (or set of pages) on
• Comfortable - almost feels like a paperback, and is actually more comfortable to hold than one

PDA:

• Color screen
• Easy to sync content that changes frequently (news sites for instance)
• More flexible - you can install various readers to handle a wider range of formats
• Of course, games.

Of course, I've been waiting for the less-than-a-pound tablet PC to arrive. In a couple years I suspect I'll have what I want (and maybe be able to afford it), then the PDA, eBook, and the computer in the living room are all out the window...

Re:I'm carrying my PDA

[splungent]

I got bored of it when I first got it (Palm 3) but I have been carrying it again as an e reader. It is great on my commute (Smaller than a book). The address and appointment features comes in handy too but I wouldn't carry it just for that reason.

Cell Phone + PDA = something indispensible

[Greyscale]

I resisted the urge to get a PDA until I found the Kyrocera smartphone series--a cell phone with an integrated PDA (Palm OS). I'm a computer geek, but I will only carry one frickin' geek tool. I refuse to weigh my pockets down with a phone, a pager, and a PDA. But one device for all three? I use the hell out of it. And Kyocera's next smart phone model will play mp3's and have GPS. A la Tolkein, one geek device to hold and bind 'em.