PDA recommendations
 

I've finally decided it's time for me to look into buying a PDA. I basically need it as an organizer/calendar and don't want to spend a ton of money.

Palm Pilot?
Toshiba?
Other?

How many MB?
backlit?
options?

Thanks for the advice!

For you the cheapest way is to stick with the ones that run off the Palm OS. Some of the most inexpensive ones I have seen have been the handspring visor and some of the lower end Palms. much more I couldnt tell you since I use an iPAQ 3955 which unfortunatly is not one of the cheaper priced ones

Yeah, the benefit of a PDA which runs on Palm OS is the software available. Many are freeware or shareware and mostly very affordable. Your basic use does not demand for much in terms of Color, videos, photos etc. Maybe the Palm Zire would be adequate. But do look around, the best advice is that the PDA's gotta suit you... (ie. size, look etc.). Good luck.

based on the description of your needs, definitely get one with Palm OS and not a Pocket PC (I'd say this anyway, but that's just personal preference).

I think Sony Clie's are pretty nice - but I'm picky and really prefer color to green screen. But if you don't mind green screen, the most effective way to go would probably be a lower end Palm Pilot.

I have a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 runing OpenZaurus 3.2 I like it very much. However, it's a handheld PC, so it may be out of your price range. They go for around $350.

I've always been a fan of the palm platform... The new Palm Zire looks like a winner, and any of the Sony Clies would prolly be good.

There's a pretty good article on them in one of the last few PC magazines that might help. It's probably online.

I like my Handspring prisim. The PalmOs PDSs are nice because there's so much software available for them. But some of the new Pocket PC devices are really nice. The cameras are finally getting good. Get one with as much memory as you can afford. If I could buy any of them right now, I might get the new Handspring that came out recently.

Your needs sound pretty basic so I'd go with the Palm as suggested before. I love the Handspring Visor Edge. Lots of funtionality, and extremely thin. They're discontinued now, but you may find one on ebay. The Handspring products are a little better than the Palm products IMHO, in terms of features.

One serious weakness in the palm/handspring line: Some offer a memory slot for compact or SD cards, but in order to put something onto the card, or use something on the card, it must be downloaded into internal memory first. As a result, the expansion memory is good for little more than backups. You can buy applications and books pre-loaded on the SD modules, but this is a limited benifit for me.

For more money the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 is fantastic, and there are web sites out there that support it via freeware and shareware, but I found that the Compaq 3900 was best for me. The brightest and largest color screen for the money, and lots of products and accessories out there for it. I have 256mb of memory on a SD card that is directly accessible from both the PDA and from the pc when it's connected. pretty sweet.

The Zaurus is nice, but what you want is a simple PDA. I love my Zaurus, but wouldn't recommend it to you. Take a look at Palm Zire 71. It's not too bad, price-wise, though it's not like it's a $100 PDA. However, it'll give you room for expansion. It has SD memory card support, a built-in camera, 16MB of RAM (plenty of space for documents and programs), a color screen that is viewable in the sunlight, double the resolution of standard Palm PDAs, and an improved Graffiti writing system.

They carry these at Best Buy, and will let you try one out, so I'd recommend doing that. You can find a nice selection there.

I don't believe that's true anymore. It was true on the visor classic, edge, and prism, but I don't think it's true of the Treo.

Pocket PC is fine but you're locked into using it with a Windows OS.

Go with Palm and an SD slot. Palm can work with Windows, Mac, Linux - no limits.

I have both PalmOS and PPC. If you are only interested in the PIMs: schedule, contacts, task, I would go with the Palm Zire. Small, light weight, the rechargable battery last forever between charges. Yes, it has small memory and no backlight but 2MB is more than enough for PIMs.

But, if you want to do more, I would recommend getting a color unit, either OS. One thing I would look at is your other electronics and the memory cards they use. Do you have a camera or other electronics that uses compact flash, sd, or memory stick? I would try to stick with one or two different memory formats.

Go to a best buy, circuit city, compusa, etc and play around with what they have. My personal recommendation would be a Dell Axim Basic. It uses both CF and SD, great battery life (better than other PPC's and most every PalmOS unit), and is usually between $225 and $175, depending what special Dell is running. Much more powerful than Palm units in that price range and better than most PPC's costing more. The only drawback is that it is a bit bigger and heavier than many Palm units.

Hope this helps:)

u can't get a better pda for the money than axims

Other than OS considerations, you should look into processor speed and color options. The faster and brighter means the more time it spends charging and the less time you can use it.

I own a clie NR70V and am amazingly pleased with it. The only problem I have is that the only current way to do internet is through bluetooth which just makes you carry more stuff around. The clie models are always really sleek and comfortable except for their latest NZ90 which is just ridiculous but has so many features. I'd suggest going with pocketpc if you had the money and didn't require any kind of specialty software as most of them have SD, CF, 802.11b, and Bluetooth all builtin on the nice models. Otherwise stick with a palm they aren't as pretty as PPC but IBMs weren't pretty either.