My Seventh Blog Post: Too Many PDAs

This is the Seventh in my series of posts looking back on my first 10 blog posts.

This post describes a problem that’s thankfully been solved in my life:

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 marvel.  I carried it everywhere and loaded it with loads of useless software and tried to squeeze a CD’s worth of music 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 cradle was to charge its batteries.  I never synch it with my PC all synch was wireless.  However the gadgeteer in me wanted more so I got a colour 7210, triband model, with a bit more memory and a real phone.  It’s great, has fantastic battery life and the colour makes it look a bit livelier.  it’s true that its addictive 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 hasn’t 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 truly indispensable 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.

As I read this post I’m kind of amazed at the amount of messing around that I had to do carrying and caring for all these gadgets and don’t even get me started thinking about the cost of them all.  The PC was still king then as it is now, but two more generations of Blackberry was all it needed for me to drop the Nomad MP3 player the iPaq and the Nokia, then came the Palm Treo, then a few years later I went back to the Blackberry Bold and eventually the iPhone and iPad.  Once I had the iPad I went back to a traditional laptop rather than the compromise ridden experience of a Windows tablet.

I’m writing this post in Caffe Nero, just before making a move to the Beach Terrace Cafe for breakfast, I’m off to the solicitors later, which is a new experience for me, after a walk on the dunes (pictured)