A PDA in every pocket?

[mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com]

Over in the "Blogs replace newsletters" thread, Bill Swallow 
noted:

> I read blog content unplugged as well as
> when plugged in. Have Bluetooth PDA, will travel. ;-)

This raised a question in my little brain:
Do most of the rest of y'all have PDAs?  What is your 
primary usage of them? What are you hoping for, technology-wise 
that would prompt you to switch from PDA to handheld PC, 
or from handheld PC to... what?
Or are you fully satisfied with the current state of 
the beast? 

I would expect the distribution of PDAs -- especially 
more expensive things like Blackberries -- to crowd 
the ranks of the contractors and freelancers. I'm 
sure some captive writers can't live without their 
Palm or Blackberry or other device, but I'd expect 
the concentration to be lower. Is it?  If I've missed 
a Techwr-L poll on the topic, just slap me upside the 
haid, an' ah'll shut up.

I keep wanting a PDA for the neat-thing factor, but 
I don't seem to have a convincing use for one... yet.

I'm a "captive" writer. I've been at this current gig 
for 7 years, the one before that for 7 years (... oh-oh...)
a blip job that lasted a year, and a 9-year employment 
before that...and then history gets kinda fuzzy...  
All that to say that I'm not a contractor 
or free-lancer, and so I don't maintain a network of 
contacts that I "work" and "massage" and "ping". 
I've totally lost track of anybody from my previous 
employment, because it was in another city, it was 
7 years ago, and it was the kind of company and division 
where people tended to transfer around the world every 
few years.

The people who are important to my current work all 
work where I do, or at another office of this same 
company, accessible via our e-mail system address lists 
and other means.  That is, I don't seem to need to 
maintain a vast electronic storage of contact data.

I don't even maintain a big phone-number list in my 
cell-phone, since it's a pain to enter data on phone 
keypads... probably I should look into methods of 
downloading from a computer... but then I'd need to 
create the list in my computer, from the big, old,
hand-written, paper list that I do keep.  
(blush!  how embarrassing... but at least 
it's nicely leather bound...)

I briefly inherited my wife's old Palm 1__ (forgot 
the model number, it was old), tinkered with it, off 
and on, for a couple of days, then mislaid the thing 
and forgot about it.  I had thought that I'd use it 
for note-taking, both at work and for those "aha" 
moments while commuting, or for those brilliant ideas 
that never seem to strike except in the middle of the
night... but the process was too cumbersome, somehow.

So, except for freelance contact maintenance, are PDAs 
and handheld computer-thingies an indispensible work 
tool for tech writers?  Or a very dispensible toy?
Or a piece of additional clutter that you really don't 
need in your life?

Those who have them for work, did you pay for it yourself?

If you subscribe to some service (a la Blackberry, or the 
text-pager units with the PDA features) do you pay for
that service, flat-out, or is it covered by the employer 
or by the guvmint (tax deduction, work-related)??

Inquiring minds (well, one anyway) want to know.

Kevin  (PuDAh-less... oh, ok... PeeDeeAey-less)



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