VisorCentral.com - What is a PDA?

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Posted by sowens on 09-26-2000 07:24 PM:

Yeah, this question seems pretty simple, but I'm thinking less of a definition and more along the philosophical.

The reason I ask this is that I've read a number of responses that call the Visor (and Palm devices in general) just a PDA. Perhaps I'm unique in this, but to me a PDA is the equivalent of the paper datebook (like the Sharp Wizards and Casio digital organizers), which seems far too limiting a description. The Visor seems more the modern equivalent to the early 80's PC than "just a PDA".

So what do you think? Is the Visor just a PDA, or is it something more? If it's something more, where do you think it'll eventually lead, and what additional technologies or changes to the platform will it take to get there?

Posted by Hoser_back_home on 09-26-2000 08:44 PM:

How about a PIM?

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Posted by Cerulean on 09-27-2000 01:48 AM:

yeah .. hoser gotz it .. pim (personal information manager) is your electronic datebook and pda is a personal digital assitant which broadens the scope to encompass what is currently happening with the visor, pocketpc, palm, etc..etc.. I really like the term PDA -- it fits great with what the units are currently doing while still allowing for exapnded functionaility without the term becoming dated (like PIM) -- I feel this is akin to a PC .. sure, it started out as a personal computer, but nowadays, PC's are used for a wide variety of tasks, not exclusively for personal computing usage.

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Posted by sowens on 09-27-2000 05:36 PM:

yeah .. hoser gotz it .. pim (personal information manager) is your electronic datebook and pda is a personal digital assitant which broadens the scope to encompass what is currently happening with the visor, pocketpc, palm, etc..etc..

Hmmm, perhaps this is the crux of it, though I seem to remember that Sharp Wizard I bought as being marketed as a PDA, as was the DaVinci. Both were nice, but they lacked the storage, capability (application-wise), and expandability of the visor and the pocketpc's. Guess I just need to look at it as an evolutionary change instead of revolutionary.

I feel this is akin to a PC .. sure, it started out as a personal computer, but nowadays, PC's are used for a wide variety of tasks, not exclusively for personal computing usage.

Exactly! The PC eventually took over many of the tasks that larger machines performed. It opened the door to a whole new way of running our lives (I wouldn't even try to balance my accounts manually anymore. ). Since the PDA is equivalent to the early PC, what can we expect from the PDA's of the future?

Oh, and I still don't like the idea of my visor being "just a PDA".

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Posted by JHromadka on 09-28-2000 02:41 PM:

Think of it as the Visor having PDA features but also being a handheld computer.

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Posted by John Nowak on 09-28-2000 05:08 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by sowens
Since the PDA is equivalent to the early PC, what can we expect from the PDA's of the future?

My first computer, purchased in 1981, was a $4000 IBM PC with, I believe, 128k of memory and two, yes, two 1.3 meg floppy drives and a screaming 8Mhz processor. My stock Visor comes with over twice the memory and speed.

Toss in a Stowaway keyboard and the only thing the IBM had which the Visor doesn't have more of is a large color screen.

While the WinCE devices have better screens than the Visor, they still don't match the old 10 1/2" CGA monitor I had back then. Now, I don't mean this in the sense that the CGA had a higher resolution (which I can't recall, honestly) or greater color depth (which it did not -- the CGA was 16 colors, if I remember aright). I mean that it was physically bigger and despite the very nice text on a PocketPC, it was easier to make extensive edits on a document on the CGA screen.

I guess what I'd like to see someday is four small LCD panels which fold or assemble into a screen analagous to the Stowaway keyboard, which would then break down to form a package about the size of a folded Stowaway but perhaps twice as thick.

Naturally, the OS of the PDA would need to be able to handle -- oh, I don't know -- 640x480 at 256 colors at a minimum.

At this point, the PDA begins to overlap the notebook computer with a few important differences: first, the PDA is modular so you don't need to carry the whole thing around with you (you can leave the screen in your hotel room and take the keyboard to take notes at a seminar, or take out the PDA and use Grafiti to take down a phone number), the PDA starts more quickly, has better battery life, and (very likely) a more robust OS. On the down side, the notebook's raw power and storage space would almost inevitably dwarf that of the PDA.

Oh, and I'd also like a pony.

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