On the decline of digital pockets.

Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) - where do i start?
(This rant is inspired from Are PDAs Finished? and various conversations over the years with Mike, Ant and Daev)

My PDA history

I’ve been a long-time PDA user, well, what I consider to be fairly long-time - longest time of anyone I know. The number of people around me who have actively taken a step towards their own PDA-ness during this time has only increased by a number of one (1). *insert long break here as I search back through my lj trying to find some sign of when I first got the PDA* About 2 years now. I’ve had my Jornada PocketPC 2002 for about 2 to 2.5 years.

Their hype over that time has grown large, then disappeared, then re-appeared, then disappeared - I feel like it’s a never-ending cycle of pain and love for these poor helpless, confused devices. I remember back in the day when I first had conversations with Ant + Mike about these Pocket PCs (PPC) - from the word go; it always seemed like a device no one would actively purchase. God I?m such a spoilt-brat, I mean what kind of person gets a toy like this for nothing you know?

We argue

So anyway, jump back 2 (2.5) years to today, just last week in fact, when Daev and I had a conversation about PPC’s and Palm’s. The pair of us have this tendency to argue about most things technical, but it is always good to hear a different (even if incorrect *wink*) point of view. Even though I?m an older, and therefore wiser, pocket pc user - he is definitely the more pro-active. Pro-active entailing actually purchasing a device, spending a bit of money on a case, a lil extra dosh on a piece of software or two. So you can see where we come from, I?m the lazy - I have a device because I was given it and I believe it’s a nice glorified calendar/contact thingo ; while he’s the - I love these devices, I?m going to buy a new one soon, oo oo have u seen how small the new iPaq’s are etc etc.

We both look at each from the opposite side of the “yes, I have a portable computer - fence.” So what’s their point? Are they worth spending the money? Will you use it if you had it? Well I argue that, no, for their price - for someone like me (and yes daev, someone like you) they are NOT the most cost-effective way to do things. Obviously it’s nice to have a universal calendar that can theoretically last forever, but come on, how much really does a diary cost? Do diaries break if you drop them? No. Can you scribble shit all over a diary, and make it so much more interesting and personal? Yes. Would you spend $600AU on a diary? No. Sure - you can’t always fit a diary in your pocket, but that’s possibly a good and a bad thing.

My argument

My argument has always been based on the fact that without using Microsoft Outlook, my PDA would be useless. The whole point of the device, I feel, is to have all the information that you would use for a business point of view - with you at all times. Which is what my PDA does, and it’s great. I have all my contacts on my PDA, and I have all my contacts in my email client (outlook) - they synchronise automatically. I have my calendar on my outlook, and I have my calendar on my PDA. I have my to-do list on my PDA, and my to-do list synced to my outlook - I mean - my PDA basically is a roaming OUTLOOK. That’s all it really is - the only tiny benefits I get is the AvantGo method of syncing + storing web pages on the device so that I can read them later - which I only do when I?m sitting at the doctor’s office, or somewhere else boring - and occasionally to check movie times if I?m not near a computer. (same with the weather).

So is this functionality worth the price-tag? You be the judge. I mean personally, I was using paper diaries/journals for a while pre-PPC. You can keep your calendar, to-do, and contacts in this thing as well. AND, if I were to get a big job and had to keep track of hundred-million things at once, I?d probably have to go back to keeping a paper diary. If you’ve seen the way (even the modestly good) the PPC Calendar works, you’d know that any serious business man wouldn’t be able to keep track of a busy day with this device - I must thank Couchman’s dad for this actually, for I myself was quite naive to the fact, believing that I could keep track of a busy day using a PPC, the poor dude pulled out his calendar .. jeez. You’d open up your PPC calendar, and all you would see would be hundreds of tiny lil boxes, all overlapping and crossing, squishing each other into malformed shapes, the text getting truncated and uglified - it just wouldn’t work.

Where this stuff might work

So where would I actively pursue the use of a mobile device?

Firstly where i would NOT. If you need remote internet - to check your email - to access corporate databases while flying around the world - you would have a laptop. Trying to view and visualise a lot of information on a small platform just is not feasible.

Okay, places where I believe PDA’s are viable. Where the person has to roam, and make changes to some sort of inventory or stocklist, like a delivery person, or a warehouse clerk. Jobs where there isn’t too much dirt, but you might need access to resources located remotely, but can’t be tied down to a laptop (I?m thinking on-site engineers for mining companies - maybe). A lot of people say hospitals are great for PDA’s, but I would disagree. Tiny tech is a fad, u know. When doctors want to access records, they want the paper and clipboard - it’s not easy to quickly scan a lot of information on a small screen, even if you can be bothered to set it to horizontal mode, then change the way you?re holding the device etc.
But the gold prize (I feel) goes to form creation! - This goes back to the days of working IT in real estate. Those guys write a shitload of forms, which in turn get processed by someone else into a readable usable format. Property appraisals, property inspections, damage assessments, rental inspections. Most of these guys would have a preset form which they’d scribble all the shit into, meaning that with the time + effort, this process could be digitised onto a PDA-based format. Reduce the paper, reduce the processing time. Drop the PDA into the cradle and it automatically fills out the large-version of the form to be printed out.

I dunno - it’s a very confusing subject. As you can probably tell by now, this rant doesn’t have a lot of structure - but I had to get some of this stuff out.

*nb: I apologise for any boredom caused ;P

Posted by Christian 14 June 2004

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