my $PDA = &get_pda(rand());

By anders pearson 25 Jan 2001

i’ve decided that the time has come for me to join the whole PDA craze and pick up a little box with which to run my life. so the question now is which one to get?

for obvious reasons (microsoft is evil, a UI designed for a large screen and mouse/keyboard doesn’t scale well to PDA sizes, etc) anything running WinCE (Cassiopeia, iPaq, etc) are right out of consideration.

what’s left is basically the Palm family, Visors, and the Sony CLIE. Visors are cheap and have the whole module thing going for them but i’ve been told that they’re rather flakey and the screen isn’t that nice. goatee.net sings some pretty high praises for
the CLIE and so that is a definate possibility. of the offical Palm
machines, the m100 is very cheap and has a plastic faceplate that doesn’t break easily
(important), the Vx looks pretty and is really small, the IIIc has a color display which is pretty cool, and the VIIx has built-in wireless internet, which is very cool.

after reading tons of reviews, i’m basically torn between the CLIE and a
VIIx. The CLIE is smaller, nicer looking, and cheaper, but that wireless internet has the potential to be better than sex.

so now i’m asking for the opinions of any of you out there who know anything about PDAs and have any recommendations to make or warnings for
me.