Has the notebook-to-handheld conversion begun?

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Back from PDA to Ultra-Portable notebook: I am just regular commuting, no business travel, no door-to-door business, so I first thought a notebook would be unnecessary expense; so in 1998 I bought a PDA (CASIO E11, one of the 1st Windows Pocket PCs, and one of the best).

It finally got shelved after 1 year :

- sure very good (was stunned by most the good finish and speed *inside* most of the apps and features), but it wasn't quite finished everywhere (B&W screen, prone to lose the screen calibration, and above all, too many taps to switch between applications: 11 seconds from needing to calculate something to beginning actual calculating, vs 3 seconds for my good old pocket calculator);
- it appeared many things can be done efficiently only on a PC, not on a PDA;
- so I realized that I used less and less my E11, because my new PPC toy (Pocket PC) was beaten in speed by my good old PPC working tool (Paper, Pencil, Calculator)
- then in Jul 1999 I bought a Notebook: not in the high end, but powerful and versatile enough, and light and small enough: 13.3" XGA (1024x768pix), 31x24cm (12.2x9.5"), K6-3/350, 4MB graphics mem, 64MB (now 256MB = MAX), 30GB, W98 FR (now W2KSP4 US).
At that time I soon discovered the enormous benefit of being mobile, even for a quite sedentary as me, even with a noticeably less powerful PC, at the condition that it carried and handled my whole stuff without exception: I found myself no more using my powerful and comfortable Desktops PCs (office and home), and doing all on my notebook, despite less powerful and smaller screen; at home, at office, when visiting family, in holidays, in travel, everywhere I had all my whole stuff, all my work documents, family or travel photos, all my cookies working. No more synchronizing, no more looking for docs or wondering for PWDs to log on sites.

In Oct 2003 I bought another PDA (iPaq h2215), just to make me up to date; I also bought ~$300 of additional software to complete it. I use it to carry everywhere contacts, tasks, calculators, encyclopedia, Atlas, dictionaries - just like my old paper pocket book.

Now I am to replace my old notebook with a still smaller one: 12"Wide, i.e. A4 sheet format (30x21cm, or 11.8x8.27"), Pentium-M 2GHz, up to 2GB RAM, all usual connectivity.

I am still completing my iPaq with Wikipedia and a 2GB SD card, and still planning to use my PDA, and perhaps even to upgrade it with another model with WiFi and GPS; but it will remain for a significant time a secondary tool - just like a real paper pocket book compared to a real paper notebook.

Finally, I think Mr Al Delattre of Accenture just did something like me in 1998 (converting his main stuff from PC to PDA), and will probably eventually continue to do like I (and so many others), by converting back his main stuff from PDA to a real PC, by making that one an Ultra-Portable (with keeping PDAs for just the secondary stuff that belong to pocket).

Paris, Wed 3 Aug 2005 16:31:00 +0200; Posted by: Michel Merlin Posted on: 08/03/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use