Archive for April, 2003

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m a gadget geek. I’ve been in love with gadgets all my life. The latest loves are small machines that store all sorts of information that I used to keep in my brain, a notebook, or a purse, briefcase, or backpack — dates, contacts, notes, stories and ebooks, TV schedules, shopping lists, passwords.

Windows CE, Pocket-Sized PC, Pocket PC, Palm, TrueSync — I’ve tried them all. Somewhere along the line I settled on Palm devices — mostly because they were MUCH cheaper and smaller than their Windows equivalents.

I’m on my ninth in approximately six years — a sweet little Handspring Treo 90. It’s everything I want in a PDA — small (one of the smallest on the market), color screen, GREAT battery life, thumbboard instead of Graffiti input, 16 MB RAM plus a MMC/SD expansion slot for extra storage. Its tiny size lets it fits easily into my lifestyle. I just slip it into a jean pocket or my backpack and off we go, me and my other brain. (Unfortunately, Handspring recently discontinued the Treo 90 in favor of just making wireless devices for the cell phone market. Bummer.)

This weekend, however, I flirted with a Wi-Fi wireless PDA. I actually bought one on Friday — the brand new, just-announced Palm Tungsten C. It was beautiful. The high-res screen was large and very bright. Its 400 MHz processor meant it was FAST. Unfortunately, it was also significantly larger than my Treo.

It was easy to configure and picked up my wireless router right away. Of course, I was only two feet away from the router when I was configuring it.

Right after I got the wireless signal configured, I found I had to perform a bathroom-related function, so I took the Tungsten C with me to continue checking out its features. What do you know, I got a signal on the throne. That’s right. I could surf in the bathroom. Of course, the bathroom is only about 10 feet from the router.

It was late by the time I finished installing and configuring everything. (I keep a LOT of stuff on my PDA.) So, I ended up taking it to bed with me. Whhops. The 50 feet to the bedroom did it in. It could *barely* get a signal. And when I shut the door, it died. Oh well, I said to myself, I didn’t really buy it to surf in bed. That’s why I bought my iBook.

The next day, after a lazy morning sleeping in, we decided to go to Borders. Mel wanted a book and I wanted to test their T-Mobile Hotspot.

Hotspot? More like an iceberg. I couldn’t get a signal anywhere in the bookstore. Either their router was down or my PDA wasn’t up to snuff. Based on the bedroom experience, I would put money on the PDA.

I couldn’t justify $500 just for the ability to surf while peeing and it really was too large for my taste, so back it went. An SD wireless card is supposed to be out sometime in June for about $150. Maybe I’ll try it with my little Treo.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll go back to reading magazines while indisposed.