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Well, the old Visor Platinum still works, but I decided I needed something with a little more oomph before the next time I travel, so about half my federal refund went to getting a new Tungsten C PDA.
My ideal PDA would have had the following features:
Well, the only thing out there that seemed to come close was the Sony Clie UX-50, which was (according to a friend) somewhat Mac-unfriendly and also had the disad of not being sold in America. After much thought, I decided not to buy a UX-50 from an online reseller, and asked around to see if anyone I knew had something close.
The Tungsten C turned out to be about the only other product that matched most of my desires. It's not a mini-tablet, but it does have an integrated thumbboard. It lacks the USB port, using smartcards instead (and at $40 for 256MB, I'll hold off on getting one until and unless I find I need more than the 64M built in). It has wireless and good memory, and it's very Mac friendly. So I picked one up from buy.com for $350 ($50 cheaper than ordering it through a local brick and mortar, none had them in stock but most could special order...and $50 more expensive than buying a used one through an Amazon reseller) along with a Rhinoskin case that shipped separately and should be here today.
Got the Tungsten (still haven't named it...but never named the Visor either) Thursday, and while I'm still poking around tucows and palmblvd for stuff to pack onto it, it's up and running and I'm carrying it around at work now.
Wireless at work is still being installed, I can use it with good speed on the ground floor and crawling on the second floor, but not at all up on the fourth floor where my office is. Once they get the remaining hubs in place, though, I should be able to use it up here as well. The built-in web browser is okay, although it can't resize the frames on the departmental Outlook webpage, so the control buttons take up 3/4 of the screen. Since one of my reasons for getting this was to be able to access my work email while at conferences, I will need to fix this (I've asked the IT guys to look into making the frames resizable, but my boss says he can resize them find on Pocket IE...might have to find a copy of that for PalmOS).
I got a nice SSH client called TuSSH (Tungsten SSH) that lets me access my Linux accounts remotely, albeit with teeeeeny typeface. Now that I've verified it works, though, I will definitely be paying the requested donation for it (it's "begware", in that there's no shareware crippling and it's freeware, but they'd really like you to pay $20 if you can). (EDIT: turns out it was defaulting to the smallest possible typeface, and I just wasn't finding the relevant setting menu item. They pointed me at the right place and I bumped up the font size to something more reasonable.)
The Rhinoskin I ordered has a pocket for a creditcard or ID card, and I'm told it's good to keep something in there to stiffen the cover. I have just the thing: a creditcard-sized Fresnel lens magnifier that I can use while reading email on TuSSH. :)
Also ordered a travel charger, since the Tungsten has an internal battery and I don't want to mess with the ratsnest to take the whole synch cradle with me on trips.
Oh, and I did consider buying this using my research funds, since the driving force behind upgrading was to be able to easily check my mail while at professional conferences, but I decided that I'd overwhelmingly use it for personal stuff, so I bought it with my own cash. I may end up using it a lot for work (such as checking online gradebooks and homework in class when all the terminals are being used by students), but I still like knowing it's MINE MINE MINE. :)
I've toyed with variants of "Wolfram" (German for Tungsten) in naming this, but that seems too obvious.
My ideal PDA would have had the following features:
- Set up like a mini-tablet, with keyboard and full screen.
- USB connector built into the PDA, so I could use keychain memory with it.
- 802.11b wireless built in.
- Mac-friendly, but also easy to synch with PC (going along with the USB, so I could easily send data to either my home Mac or my work PC).
- Enough memory that I wouldn't need any expansion memory unless I decided to load it up as an MP3 player (in which case, I'd DEFINITELY want that built-in USB).
Well, the only thing out there that seemed to come close was the Sony Clie UX-50, which was (according to a friend) somewhat Mac-unfriendly and also had the disad of not being sold in America. After much thought, I decided not to buy a UX-50 from an online reseller, and asked around to see if anyone I knew had something close.
The Tungsten C turned out to be about the only other product that matched most of my desires. It's not a mini-tablet, but it does have an integrated thumbboard. It lacks the USB port, using smartcards instead (and at $40 for 256MB, I'll hold off on getting one until and unless I find I need more than the 64M built in). It has wireless and good memory, and it's very Mac friendly. So I picked one up from buy.com for $350 ($50 cheaper than ordering it through a local brick and mortar, none had them in stock but most could special order...and $50 more expensive than buying a used one through an Amazon reseller) along with a Rhinoskin case that shipped separately and should be here today.
Got the Tungsten (still haven't named it...but never named the Visor either) Thursday, and while I'm still poking around tucows and palmblvd for stuff to pack onto it, it's up and running and I'm carrying it around at work now.
Wireless at work is still being installed, I can use it with good speed on the ground floor and crawling on the second floor, but not at all up on the fourth floor where my office is. Once they get the remaining hubs in place, though, I should be able to use it up here as well. The built-in web browser is okay, although it can't resize the frames on the departmental Outlook webpage, so the control buttons take up 3/4 of the screen. Since one of my reasons for getting this was to be able to access my work email while at conferences, I will need to fix this (I've asked the IT guys to look into making the frames resizable, but my boss says he can resize them find on Pocket IE...might have to find a copy of that for PalmOS).
I got a nice SSH client called TuSSH (Tungsten SSH) that lets me access my Linux accounts remotely, albeit with teeeeeny typeface. Now that I've verified it works, though, I will definitely be paying the requested donation for it (it's "begware", in that there's no shareware crippling and it's freeware, but they'd really like you to pay $20 if you can). (EDIT: turns out it was defaulting to the smallest possible typeface, and I just wasn't finding the relevant setting menu item. They pointed me at the right place and I bumped up the font size to something more reasonable.)
The Rhinoskin I ordered has a pocket for a creditcard or ID card, and I'm told it's good to keep something in there to stiffen the cover. I have just the thing: a creditcard-sized Fresnel lens magnifier that I can use while reading email on TuSSH. :)
Also ordered a travel charger, since the Tungsten has an internal battery and I don't want to mess with the ratsnest to take the whole synch cradle with me on trips.
Oh, and I did consider buying this using my research funds, since the driving force behind upgrading was to be able to easily check my mail while at professional conferences, but I decided that I'd overwhelmingly use it for personal stuff, so I bought it with my own cash. I may end up using it a lot for work (such as checking online gradebooks and homework in class when all the terminals are being used by students), but I still like knowing it's MINE MINE MINE. :)
I've toyed with variants of "Wolfram" (German for Tungsten) in naming this, but that seems too obvious.
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Yes, I'm a total geek.
Now, if only I could get her to open the Boom Tube....