My PDA (aka Palm, Tungsten E) has been my constant companion for about 5 years now. I even soldered a new battery in about a year ago. It was the perfect instrument. It could sync with Outlook, I could read books, and even download web pages (offline, of course). Then, the paint began to flake. I couldn’t sync with my new PC (curses, Vista), then I started having problem syncing with my XP machine. Still, I resisted the urge to buy a smart phone–I did not want to get locked into a contract, and that monthly data package was just too big of a pill to swallow. I used a prepaid phone (Tracfone), it was cheap and worked just fine.
A month ago, I saw an ad that had me frothing at the mouth. An Android for $25 a month, no contract, and unlimited internet. I bit. And haven’t looked back. It’s a Samsung Intercept. Small, and not the biggest screen, but it does everything I want in a smart phone. Thousands of apps and real time internet. A bonus is that I can also download Kindle compatible books and read them on my phone.
I did have to make some adjustments–I no longer use Outlook. I’ve replaced it with Gmail (I forward all my barker.teebark.com mail to my gmail account). The Android app for gmail works great, and of course, I was able to import all my contacts with no problem. So, I have no more sync problems–it’s all done automatically, in the cloud.
I’ve also picked up some awesome apps that I would never have been able to use with my PDA (bless it’s little soul). Evernote is extremely useful–I now use my phone camera to capture handwritten notes, and labels of items I see in stores, and store them in Evernote. Then, at my PC, everything is automatically synced up and avalable for me to use there. And I can add tags to any notes or pictures, so I can find things very quickly.
So, as you can guess, I’ve retired my PDA. It was a sad day–it served me well. Progress.