Down with PDAs!

Really, I have nothing against PDAs, they just didn't work for me.

Guess I"m just trying to get a rise out of the gadget freaks amoung us.

I tried the Apple Newton, MP2000, Palm Pilot..

I posted earlier in the Software Forum about my tendency to scatter, or duplicate my PIM and contact files among too many apps, but during my PDA phase, it was among media too. PC to PDA, transfering files back and forth, getting them in sync, man, there are only so many hours in the day... and I maintained a Franklin Planner with the same info in it too. Something had to give, I was wasting more time trying to come up with the perfect system and the redundancy was stupid. I tossed the Franklin Planner and ditched the PDA. Now, when I'm going on the road, I print out my To Do List, and that's all I need. The number 1 item on my To Do List is.. to update and print out.. my To Do List.

Can anybody explain why they'd rather spend 60 seconds entering some graffiti into a PDA when they can scribble the same info on a scrap of paper in 5 seconds? Unless it's some kind of pager, cell phone, etc., all rolled into one, that your company as paid for and mandates that you carry... Do you (we) really need to be messing with these things, or is it just the gadget-o-phile in us? I keep a piece of paper in my wallet with all of the critical telephone numbers and such that I really need. As ADDers, isn't the goal to simplify, streamline our lives and processes, not complicate them... isn't a PDA just another time-killing distraction? It was to me.

Now, I know this will generate some discussion, so fire back please. Maybe there IS a PDA that's perfect for me, I'm eager to hear from you who find them worth the trouble.

faceonmars
I'm at the end of my first week of experience with a pda. I was a loyal fan of the "Daytimer" format previously and stood by my contention that a pen and paper were pretty darned efficient use of time and energy for a long time.

The only digital technology that has been missing in my Daytimer is an alarm and a count down timer. I have been using a digital watch for this until now. Now I get to wear a nice watch instead.. < g >

The biggest reason I can see falling in love with my pda over my pen and paper is the extraordinary usefulness of entering data.. having it legable, associating times and dates to things and have them repeat as well as having the option to have a timer go off either in the long term or the short term.

I can't remember how many times my count down timer would go off on my watch and I'd be standing there struggling to remember what it had been set to remind me of.. eh

This is why I'd gladly learn to enter things into my pda ahead of my Daytimer.
Cheers! Ian

I agree that pda can be big time waster, and so can multiple PIM trials. I still use my PDA becaseu i just set it in the sync cradle and it automatically updates the PIM and calendar info with Outlook. It has all my phone numbes, always....so that is a plus.

On the other hand, PDAs could be so much moire useful if designed for ADD....so far they are not.

Jon

What's a PDA..

A while back, motivated by a movie that struck a chord with me (Memento.. I've made joking reference to the movie in other posts.. for those who haven't seen it, it's a 'Must See')
http://www.splicedonline.com/01reviews/memento.html

I decided to try a little experiment.


It's my contention that just about any system can work -- after watching the movie 'Memento', where Memory-Loss-Man Leonard resorts to snapping Polaroids of everybody and everything, scribbling names, notes, and numbers on the back of them to himself.. as well as tatooing his most important information (Life History, etc.) on his body.. I was inspired to take my cheap little digital camera and try this. I stuck a nice big 256MB Compact Flash card in it, set it to Basic mode so I could take about a thousand photos if I wanted, and just photograhed EVERYTHING of importance, and I organized the photos by day, week, rank... it worked! Snapshot of my To Do list (macro) Address Book, Weekly Schedule, Grocery List, and hundreds more. It worked.. I can see how you can adjust to any 'system' that you can dream up, and if you 'work' it, it'll work.
I did this for a couple of weeks, just to prove to myself that my hunch was do-able. Whip out the little digital camera, hit 'PLAY", navigate through my menus, and there was all my info, zoomable, sorted, prioritized by photo grouping.

And all this was with a cluncky old Nikon 800. Imaging the possibilities with some of the new PDAs like the Clié, with a built-in digital camera. For the extreme 'visual' types, this could be the answer.

If I ever get too old or forgetful to use something like this, I can always revert to tattooing my name on my body.

Just like Leonard.

it dosnt take me 60 seconds to write stuff in, and plus scraps of paper are the death of me

I ordered Memento on Netflix, I'll let you know what I thought after I watch it, but that will be in a couple months, my cue is long. ...sounds good though.

Thanks

Jon

I used to have the oldschool Palmpilot, the one without the colour screen with that flippy thing that covered the screen. It didn't help me out, but I imagine the new colour ones might, as they seem much cleaner and streamlined and also are a lot easier to see.

I'm curious about the use of more recent tablet PC's, that are a cross between a PDA and full functioning laptop computer. Has anybody tried these to see if they are useful? I am wondering about the integraton of the hand writing recognition with the ADD organizational software mentioned elsewhere... Could this be a useful thing for us?

Advantage of a Day Planner (over a PDA)- I don't have to read a manual to use a nice little day planner... I don't need to keep track of a special little pen to write on it... If I lose it, it was only $5 anyhow..

I'm not a fan of little scraps of paper though... those drive me crazy...
"I swear I put it right here, next to these other scraps of paper... oh man.."

i like my PDA. i call it my external brain.

Brent

scraps of papers piles of notes calenders with scribbles all over them missed appointments telling 2 people id be in 2 different places at the same time or one little pda with all my dates phone numbers appointments work schedules etc all together at my fingertips easily synchronized with my desk top and printable to boot.



GOD I LOVE MY PALM!!!!!! Its like an american express card for me "dont leave home without it"


Plus, have you ever gotten that antsy feeling while waiting somewhere? Kinda like a cross of boredom and impatience? I just pull out my palm and play a quick game of chess cards etc to occupy the old grape for a while.

Plus since i like computers im more apt to use my Palm than i would be to use a paper daytimer!

geesh, the money i have wasted on these things, i have had about three different pdas and i have never used them for anything other than a phone book. i was too lazy to learn how to use the damn software, takes too long to write using the secreen keyboard and heavy to carry around. right now i have about twelve pieces of paper in my pocket . sometimes , most times i miss appts and i love paper, i wish they had a voice recognition pda that could do the hard part, inputing the info that i want to and a way to search by voice for the info i need.

PDAs have worked for me. I'm a software developer, so I live on computers. I generally enter everything via the PIM on the computer (Outlook in my case, for better or worse). The PDA provides a nice, portable format for storing all that stuff (and rudimentary editing) when I'm away.

Of course, I'm using a system that functions well with PDAs--a personal "flavor" (or corruption, abomination, call it what you will :rolleyes:) of the GTD (http://www.davidco.com/) method.

As for tablet PCs, I'm on the fence. I've played with a few, and the geek/gadet-o-phile factor is HUGE. I absolutely love the interface, love being able to write or type things and I love the concept of getting back to one location (to rule them all, and in the darkness lose your data ;)). The one down side I can see to them is form factor--they're just a little to big to take everywhere. Now, if they could just put handwriting on the MS-running smartphones or shrink the form-factor of the Treos a little bit more...:D