Good Timing
My ancient PDA (a Handspring Visor from circa 1999) finally gave up the ghost. It was actually my fourth one. You could say that I was a loyal customer. About a year ago I told myself that when the Visor died, I would upgrade to a newer piece of technology to replace it. That time finally came yesterday morning. Fortunately, I have everything synched to my laptop, so I won’t lose any data.
The two bummers about this is all of the data entry that I’m going to have to do when I get a new PDA, and saving up the money to afford a replacement. One of those problems was solved yesterday when I got home from work. There was a check there waiting for me from Regis University. It was my student loan dispersement check for a little over $1000. Yay! That means that I can afford a new hand held as soon as the check clears. I went to the bank this morning and deposited the check, so I should have the funds tomorrow.
I looked at the HP iPaq PDAs, but they are very expensive, and run Windows Mobile. I think part of their higher cost is the licensing of Windows. The Palm PDAs looked niced, but the Z22 was too small. It was much smaller than my old Visor. I felt like I would be taking a technological step backwards if I bought the Z22. The TX was really nice. I liked the interface, the lack of a dedicated grafitti pad (which made the available screen space bigger,) and the color screen. After living in greyscale for so many years, seeing a PDA with color was amazing.
I also did some research online and talked to Fred about his Sharp Zaurus. I got to play with his Zaurus right after he got it a few years back, and I was very impressed. It also runs Linux as the operating system, which tickles me to no end. He has a 5500, but I’m going to shoot for getting a 5600. It has a slicker interface, and a larger battery. The bigger battery provides almost double the life of the 5500. I’ve found a few 5600′s on eBay, and I’ll probably purchase one of them sometime this week.
I’m really looking forward to the new toy!
