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(availability and that sort of thing in Norwegian)
The main advantage of a PDA is that once you input the password (major drag, but necessary) it's immediately "awake". Turning on a regular PC is a deterrent to impulsive computing! At work I would keep the PC on and I'd often be close enough to write down my thoughts. Even so, my best ideas often end up on the PDA, while long letters often gets written on the PC. When my brain is idle (like at night) the great ideas come sailing without preamble. With the PDA on the nightstand, I won't lose any of them.
Since my main use of the PDA is a place to organize my ideas, I don't have much use of all the extra programs a lot of people use. Exactly what you need a PDA for will impact how much memory you'll need. Although I intended buying a Compact Flash card, I realized that as long as my user files are only weighing in at around 600Kb - there's no need unless I need it for backup purposes. Say if I took a long trip without a laptop, and still had lots of new files or ideas on it. If both batteries drained all user data would be lost!
This will probably make more sense for people who like the same things I do (why else would you visit this site?):
The main advantage of a PDA is that once you input the password (major drag, but necessary) it's immediately "awake". Turning on a regular PC is a deterrent to impulsive computing! At work I keep the PC on and I'm often close enough to write down my thoughts. Even so, my best ideas often end up on the PDA, while long letters often gets written on the PC.
1) Song lyrics: Good as backup for paper. I'm sure I'll have a use of it one time or another.
2) Song writing: You can write the lyrics on something hopefully more stable than a lose scrap of paper. Add chords between the lines (drawing function in notetaker along with text).
3) Recording song sketches: I tried the voice recorder at several settings. It's OK for recording notes. You'll hear what you said. However, the sound quality leaves something to be desired. A lot of artifacts ard noices. Remember that my comparison is the MD player. The microphone is very small, and probably not as good as the bigger ones I'm used to. I'll use the voice recorder for sketches of songs when the MD player isn't available. I'll re-record the sketches when I get hold of the MD player, since I don't consider the output of the E-15 good enough for archiving purposes.
4) Piano player. Haven't tried this one yet, but I expect it to be useful. You can play notes on a piano on the screen. Good for writing songs if no other instrument is within reach. For chords and key arrangement, not sheet music.
5) Midi player. Not going to try this one, but there's software that will connect a midi device (with serial connection) with the PDA as a midi player. In other words, a portable midi player for those instruments without a sequencer. I'm not going to try this possibility, but for the sake of argument I did some checking. Even if your synth doesn't have a serial interface, you can get a converter box. So if you already have a CE palmtop and a synth without a sequencer - let me know if you try it and how it turns out, OK?
6) Photographer's log. Latin names of flowers or location names. Some even insist on recording shutter speeds and aperture settings.
7) I guess this is more for journalists, and I'm still not
sure it's the right medium. Haven't tried it out yet:
For help during interviews. Keep a set of questions, mix and
match, take notes at all time and have them available to help out
with other interviews. Take notes during interviews. You can also
record an interview on this, because it's adequate for dictation.
I wouldn't use it for that, because I'd bring the MD. I guess
it's possible, though.
8) Attached at the hip to my e-mail accounts, but don't like lugging the laptop.
9) Although I haven't installed a web browser yet, I expect I will. However, you can view web pages minus formatting in Note taker if you invest some time: In Netscape (don't use IE, so don't know how that's done), open the webpage, and then save as text file. Then open the text file in word and mark everything (ctrl+a) From the menu, choose format and auto format. From the dialogue box, change from general document to e-mail, OK. The select everything again, and select normal from the styles menu. I made a macro to make it easy to format several pages. I also tried dropping the whole html page in word, but that got even more complicated. Well, why do I use all those stages? You may not need them for every page, but the pages I wanted to convert had those pesky blockquote codes in them, and that meant the margins were all screwed up. That meant the text didn't flow right on the little pda screen. I really wanted that flush left margin. That was the reason for those several extra steps.
10) I could put the Bible on it. Yes, even in Norwegian.
The Bible for CE
11) Keep outlines for sermons on it. Always ready to preach!
12) I borrowed this from a visitor to this page. Our network is so small I don't really need a PDA for the same stuff he uses it for:
The PDA would be very useful to me looking up IP address and software inventory as I walk around to PC's fixing problems. I could know before I get to the PC what version of office, NT service packs, IE, etc. I have an excel spread sheet with all this info I will be importing to my PDA.
This page was created by Ann Elisabeth Nordbo
and has its home at http://www.annelisabeth.com/
Updated 12.26.2004
Premier issue October 26th 1999