My Rechargeable Brain

I've never owned a PDA before, but wanted one for a long time. It seems the older I get the more I'm expected to remember and keep track of, yet the shorter my memory gets. Ugh. What is one to do? Why talk the hubby into buying a PDA, of course.
At the time of purchase, we were literally living on the road. As over-the-road truck drivers who were leasing our own truck, we had a lot to keep track of. Truck expenses, customer contact information, bill due dates for the home 20, birthdays, tax information, etc. It seemed the list grew every day. I began scribbling notes in a traditional notebook. But it either got lost somewhere in the truck and took forever to find when I needed it or the old "out of sight, out of mind" would kick in and I'd forget to remember the things I wrote down! Next came a DayRunner. That worked for a while, but the thing started getting cumbersome and soon I was leaving it at home or stashing it in a storage compartment somewhere. Not doing me any good there. So finally, in May of 2005 I talked hubby into making a side trip to Office Max while we were waiting for a load in Salt Lake City. Their selection wasn't very big, but they had enough options to cover the basic categories of PDA. I had already decided it needed to be Palm OS based. Palm was the first and it seemed from my software research that it was the most widely supported.

I originally had a requirement that my PDA have a built-in digital camera as well. We were passing a lot of good scenery and my digital camera was getting quite a workout. But it quickly became obvious that the resolution on the PDA cameras were much lower than that of my digital... probably so much so that printing decent sized photos would be out of the question. Besides, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that some day soon I'll find a Nextel camera phone I like.

Wi-Fi was another requirement I originally listed. Umm, OK, we can wait on that one too. We have a laptop with wireless in the truck. Didn't really need the PDA to be wireless as well, considering there was a massive price difference between the E2 and the only Wi-Fi equipped Palm they had in stock. Now I see the Wi-Fi SD cards are dropping in price and have hopes of having one of those soon.

So the decision was made and a shiny new E2 was introduced to our Freightliner Classic. In less than I day I was inseparable from this thing. Setup and software installation was a breeze. The initial install takes a while, depending on which applications you choose, but it's just a matter of installing the quick install program on your PC, picking the Palm apps you want and pushing the Sync button.

Documents to Go is a great tool for composing, editing and viewing your Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents on the go. Any changes made, whether on the Palm or the PC, are instantly updated during the next Sync.

All my contacts from MS Outlook transfered automatically saving me the trouble of having to copy them all over by hand.

I had played around with some of the older Palms in stores before and quickly learned some of the quirks of the old Graffiti system. T's were written as upside down L's, K's were just odd. The E2 utilizes the updated Graffiti 2. The newer system is much smarter and more closely mimics actual writing. The only letters that constantly give me trouble are lower case i and k. Actually, I have no problems with k, but hubby does.

After downloading and installing a few games found on Internet freeware sights this thing also makes for a nice diversion when waiting around. The 32 MB RAM has been sufficient for our needs so far. I've played around with the MP3 player a few times using an SD card from my digital camera. I played through a few songs while performing various tasks. Another reviewer mentioned a skip while doing this, I didn't seem to have this problem. My Palm currently acts as a hybrid address book, photo album (I keep a recent photo of each niece/nephew, my dog and our truck on it), handheld game console, shopping list, memo pad, to-do list, calendar and general memory card for my own brain's processor. I still have close to 20MB available.

I can't imagine life without my Palm and wonder how I ever got along without one up until now. I have stopped using the separate cables for charging/sync and purchased a cradle for it at Circuit City.

Other purchases included a PalmOne leather case and screen protectors (A must!). I found pre-cut ones (Belkin brand) when I bought the E2, but they were inadvertently left in storage in another state. Since then I have been unable to locate these again and had to settle for the PalmOne branded universal screen protectors. These require you to cut the desired size out of a larger sheet following a provided template. (Cut slightly larger than the lines indicate for better protection on the screen edges.) The included screen cover is a little piece that slides onto the unit and only covers the screen portion, leaving the shiny skin of the device open to scratches. The leather cover I bought provides snug fitting protection with storage for extra SD cards and credit cards.

One thing of note to older Tungsten E owners. The E2 is equipped with flash memory. I've heard some say this slows the PDA down compared to the E version, but considering I can let the battery go completely dead and not lose any of my information I think it is worth it. And it seems plenty quick to me.

My only real complaints about this gadget is the fact that the chrome plating has started wearing off my stylus (they are replaceable but a 3-pack from PalmOne is about $20), and the battery is not replaceable. I dread the day the battery dies, but hopefully that is far away. Having the ability to replace a shot battery would have been nice.

The battery life has really surprised me. Being accustomed to a digital camera sucking the life out of NiMH batteries in 30 minutes and a laptop lasting maybe 2 hours on a good day, I was expecting this little powerhouse to need frequent recharging. But this isn't the case at all. Hubby would take it to work with him when he was working dispatch and play with it all night before needing to recharge. Now that he's changed jobs and it's back in my control, I charge it up about once a week. It's not dead at this point, just giving it a little boost.

I highly recommend this thing to anybody needing to get their life in order. It sure has helped me out.