Re: A PDA in every pocket?

[TekEDIT / Judy Stitt <jstitt -at- tekedit -dot- com>]

I've been a PDA addict since 1994, or perhaps a bit before. The Psion 
3a (clamshell) was literally a dream come true for me -- eliminated 
many small scraps of paper scribbled with my notes and also my bulky 
"pocket" calendar; I've not missed them, and my home has felt more 
orderly. Before-Psion, I would make to-do lists organized by time or 
location, but was always running out of space between the lines and 
close to the margins, and my lists would become unreadable with all 
my insertions and scratchings-out; I also was very much tiring of 
writing -- and erasing and moving, as needed -- entries for meetings, 
and to-do's I had not finished on any given day so would need to push 
back to the following day or week ... so I found myself dreaming of 
having a little hand-held word processor and electronic calendar that 
I could take with me wherever I went. Seeing the Psion 3a sitting up 
so smartly like a charming Baby computer in the electronics 
department at the Harvard Coop (when there was still an electronics 
department at the Coop) was Love at First Sight. The clerks amazingly 
allowed me to take one out on trial for a few days (I think I could 
have returned it with a money-back guarantee if I'd been 
dissatisfied) -- and I never looked back.

I very much have appreciated the fact that my Psion Calendar "talks 
back to me" in the form of alarms of different sorts: an urgent 
phone-like bbrrriinnng for critical events, church bell for religious 
events, bell chime for personal/family-related events, soft bells for 
just-nice-to-be-reminded-about events, and trumpet fanfare for 
early-morning wake-ups, for example. And the Repeat Entry feature for 
events in the Calendar (e.g., by either date or day of the week or 
month) has saved me so much time. I've also been able to check on 
which day of the week a certain date was or will be -- even years ago 
(as needed for an editing project just last month) or in years to 
come (e.g., doctor's appointments).

The Data function has been a lifesaver; I've been able to find so 
much information within seconds, including many more phone numbers 
for various departments of my bank and investment companies, and 
various account numbers with their codes (for ATM, phone, and online 
access) than I would have been able to keep in my old pocket 
calendar. And when I have limited time to shop and do other errands 
before businesses start to close, I check their closing times that 
I've entered in my Psion, to know which places to visit first, then 
visit the later-closing ones afterward.

I often use the calculator with its percentage function for financial 
questions, including restaurant bills.

I used to use the Word processor much more than I do now ... I still 
use it to log my medical history, e.g., blood pressure / pulse (a 
nurse told me it's essentially that of a teenager -- I'm 50 ... and 
one hospital attendant, after taking my pulse, asked if I run 
marathons. I don't). My PDA also keeps many different sorts of 
passwords and codes in one handy file.

Psion Tech Support acknowledged me a few times as being a "power 
user" when they learned how many kilobytes I had used in my Psion, 
and my dentist told me once (when I was busily planning the rest of 
my day on my Psion when he walked in for my appointment) that I'm the 
only one he knows who actually knows how to get the good out of a PDA.

And if I had left my pocket calendar on the airplane instead of my 
Psion one memorable night four years ago, I would have been very 
worried indeed that someone might be privy to LOTS of information 
about me ... but all that information was password-protected in my 
Psion. Also, its alarm alerted the stewardesses to the fact that it 
had been left behind, even though it was hiding under a seat ... I 
called the airport and learned it had been found that night while the 
cabin was being cleaned between trips, so I returned to the airport 
and found it waiting for me under the desk attendant's counter after 
having traveled to New York and back to Boston again, chiming 
plaintively all the while because (the desk attendant said) nobody 
knew how to turn it off.

I was so delighted with my Psion ten years ago, I bought one for my 
mother; but we learned after just a few weeks that she was past the 
time of life when she could be patient enough to learn how to do many 
things with it, so it ended up being a very expensive alarm clock to 
wake her each morning (she often mentioned to me how nice it was to 
wake to its soft chimes) ... until I dropped my Psion too hard, at 
which point she kindly offered me hers.

Now I'm steeling myself to "bite the bullet" and buy a replacement -- 
probably a Palm Treo 650 -- because I'll need a speaker phone soon to 
conference in my home between a roomful of graduate students and a 
client out West ... also because my cell phone contract ends within a 
few days, so I need to decide on a new wireless plan anyway -- and 
I've been thinking for awhile that it may be advantageous to go with 
a service that also happens to include the Treo in its phone 
offerings. My computer consultant loves his Treo.  I'm just hoping it 
can live up to my trusty and much loved old Psion.

By the way, does anyone happen to know if/how to transfer data from a 
Psion 3a to a Treo...? I usually use a Mac, but I also have a Dell 
Latitude.  Offlist replies would be fine:  I doubt such info would be 
useful to others since the Psion 3a is obsolete, but if it might be 
helpful to you, too, just let me know.

-- Judy in Cambridge, MA