A PDA for the Birds?
Believe it or not, I’m actually considering getting a PDA. Yeah, me. The guy who had the original PDA (an Apple Newton), and gave up using it. Okay, we’re considering it. So, what got us started on this?
We were at the local wild bird emporium, when I spotted this nifty $500 package: A nice little PDA (Palm Tungsten E2) and some pretty cool birding software in a neat bundle. And then, I though how handy it would be to be able to keep track of my calendar when I’m out and about. See, my life is very neatly pigeonholed in Google Calendar. And, I’m sure there’s other stuff I could use a PDA for — mobile e-mail, GPS, notes to myself, MP3 player, picture viewer, etc.
So, I settled into research mode. What I found was that in order to have real, up-to-date calendar sync and e-mail, I’d have to add Wi-Fi, which is a $100 option. And, there’s no direct link to the on-line Google apps. Donna helped out, too, and found that for $50 less than the package price from National Geo, 
we could buy the software and PDA separately. I then found that for $100 more than the Palm Tungsten E2, they have the Palm T|X, which includes the Wi-Fi built-in and has a larger screen to boot. And, I did find Companionlink, a way to bi-directionally sync the Palm calendar with Google.
We’ll see where this goes, after the color laser goes back to the store. But, that’s another story.
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[...] As mentioned previously, I’m considering the purchase of a PDA. While the idea of a $250 piece of software on a tiny little chip to keep track of the birds we’ve seen has sort of gone by the way-side (as Rob points out, “$250 (plus $275 for the PDA) for a Palm-based birding directory? You’re kidding me, right? A Peterson’s or Audubon field guide and notebook are much cheaper…”), the idea of a PDA to have ready access to my calendar and e-mail, along with a few other functions is still very much alive. So, now I’m back to my usual premise when choosing hardware: choose the application software first, and then let that drive the hardware requirement, within certain limits. [...]