Too many PDAs!

I have 2 pocket PC’s, a Blackberry and a Tablet, all of them play music but I also have a Creative Nomad 20G.  How did I get in this mess.

Well it started with one of the original IPAQ’s which a few years ago I thought was a marval.  I carried it everywhere and loaded it with loads of useless software and tried to squeeze a CD’s worth of muisic onto it.  After about 3 months I hardly ever used it because the battery life was too short and the synchronisation too much of a chore.  My 11 year old daughter has it now, and after a month of enthusiasm hardly ever uses it either.

Then I got the Nomad, I copied all my CD’s onto it and hardly made a dent in its 20GB, I converted all of the Tech-ED conference DVDs into WMA files so I could listen to them in the gym and out walking.  It got used a lot for a few months, and still gets used perhaps once or twice a week.  But if I lost it tomorrow it would not have much of an impact on my life, in fact I probably wouldn’t even notice.

Then I got my first Blackberry, a dual band mono model with integrated phone, (headset only).  I loved it, in my view almost perfect form and function for its purpose, Wireless Email and Calendar.  I never did get tasks to synchronise with Notes properly.  In fact after about a week the only time it ever went into its crade was to charge its batteries.  I never synch it with my PC all synch was wireless.  However the gadgeter in me wanted more so I got a colour 7210, triband model, with a bit more memory and a real phone.  Its great, has fantastic battery life and the colour makes it look a bit livelier.  its true that its adictive though.  I use it every day, even though I work at home because it allows me to appear to be working when I am in a cafe or walking, or sitting on the beach.  The fact that I never need to synch it, that its always on, always up to date, incredibly slick to use means I am never without it.

But then I was given a shiny new Pocket PC, from HP.  It’s tiny, has a fab display, bluetooth, 64MB, SD and CF cards.  it syncs with my Tablet just great.  But its not got a phone,  I still have to take an action to synch it and it’s just not as slick as the Blackberry.  However I do still use it, but more as a complement to my Blackberry, one I can do without but is nice to have.

Finally I have my tablet, my only truely indispenable gadget.  Its a perfect complement to the Blackberry though neither depends on the other they both keep in synch via a corporate Notes server wirelessly.  One is there for real work, the other for instant on communication.

I have another phone, a Nokia 6210i in addition to my Blackberry because Blackberrys don’t have a car kit and using them as a phone does eat into that fantastic battery life.