Sunday, including PDA thoughts

[cellio]

Today we got together with my parents to celebrate mothers' day, our anniversary, and my father's birthday. We took them to Sunnyledge (I think that's the name of it), which does a very good Sunday brunch. Ironically, while the buffet usually includes a couple kinds of fish that I can eat (along with meat, which I can't eat, and other dishes, which I can), today the ocean-based offerings were shrimp, mussels, swordfish, lobster, and lox. So one out of five. :-)

My father recently got himself a PDA. I was curious to know more, because he has the same vision problems I do. He was constrained in also needing something Mac-compatable, so his choices were more limited than mine would be, but for one data point, his looks pretty good. He has a Tungston E, which has a crisp, legible display that can fit a fair bit of text in fonts I can read. The graffiti interface is also much easier than the last time I used one -- this was "Graffiti 2", and most of the strokes look like letters, rather than semi-thematically-related glyphs (like an upside-down "V" for "A", which I remember encountering before). I was completely unable to write a "k", and my attempts at "u" kept producing "v" instead, but I think a small number of hours of practice would actually fix that. And I could write resaonably quickly too without it getting confused, which had not been true before.

My father carries his in a shirt pocket. Women's shirts don't tend to have that pocket, and even if they did the placement would be, err, suboptimal, so I'd need to find something I could reasonably carry in a back pants pocket. I imagine this has constraints on size, heat-tolerance, and durability. (Or are there belt-based solutions?)

I'd also need to think about how I would end up using it; things like the calendar, address book, and standing grocery list are obvious, but can I use it as a text editor to, say, compose LJ posts or edit a D&D character sheet when I don't have a real computer to hand? I know there's a Hebrew calendar out there somewhere, and someone I know has a siddur for hers, both of which would be handy. I'd want some application that supports a table or database of all my books/CDs, so I stop accidentally buying duplicates; I assume that's straightforward. I'm going to assume that music applications are not feasible.

What do people who have PDAs end up using them for after the first few months? (I know that dglenn also asked this question recently.) What's involved in having web-browsing? (What do you pay in monthly service fees?) My father didn't have a browser on his, so I didn't get a feel for whether most web sites even render on such a small screen.

I'm not going to run right out and buy one, but I'm at least entertaining the idea now, which is a change.

Short takes:

Fun stuff: Anton Chekov's book-signing (and reading) in Union Square. Link from nickjong, who got it from Neil Gaiman.

Non-fun stuff: Soldiers in Iraq losing internet access, just in case they want to ship out more photos from prisons or something. (Link from insomnia; see also this one from tangerinpenguin and others.) Feh. Some of my coworkers are in Iraq right now (civilians, on a base, nowhere near prisons); if we stop hearing from them I guess we'll know why.

Comments

[alienor.livejournal.com]

I have an iPAQ (pocket pc) and think it's great. In addition to graffiti, it has 'letter recognition', which is closer to actual real letter shapes, so it's easier to learn and use. There's still a learning curve (Richard gets tripped up on some of the letters), but it's pretty slight (he uses it only once every 3 or 4 months when I'm driving and there's no real paper in the car).

I've been trying to find a good database program, but I'm not happy with what I've tried. I want to be in the grocery store, type in the price and quantity, and be able to compare it with similar data points that I've collected (this is on sale here, but is it cheaper than at the other store that normally sells this item for less?). I've found an Access database online that someone wrote for this, and I may just have it spit out excel spreadsheets on a semi-regular basis for the iPAQ.

I've used it to compose LJ posts (using the PDA app for LJ), and it's easy and simple. I get tired composing long posts with the stylus, but I don't use it often enough to get a keyboard (I'd probably loose it between trips).

I don't have trouble with music, other than storage space (I have a slot for removable memory cards, but I haven't had the spare fun-money). But then, the model I got was top-of-the line when I got it (Nov 2002); I don't know how it compares to the current models or to what range you're looking at.

[cellio]

Thanks for the information!

I want to be in the grocery store, type in the price and quantity, and be able to compare it with similar data points that I've collected

You'd also need to think about data expiration. Your price records on laundry soap are probably pretty stable, but last month's information on strawberries won't help you now (but might eleven months from now). Could be tricky.

Music: I should have specified; I was thinking more of compositional aids (ranging from jotting down a melody stuck in my head to full-fledged composition) moreso than playing MP3s. geekosaur has some pointers on that in his comment above.