Back to the basics of handhelds

Rohdesign Weblog: Back to the Future: from Zire to Clié
Jim's Tips | PDAs: Back To The Basics
PDA 247 | In Praise of the Z22 by Tom Stoneham

Here's 3 articles on the basics of PDAs: personal information managment. It's intresting that most people don't get it that Palm PDAs are first and fore most electronic organisers.

Yes they can play music, they can surf the net, they can view documents, they may take pictures... you name it. But it's core function is to organise, an evolution of your dayplanner, your pocket notebook. It remembers your appointments, remind you of them; it saves all your contact information, all your notes; it has a list of the things you must do but haven't. PDA stands for "Personal Digital Assistant", it manages your information, your appointments, just as a real assistant should. It s not just a synoym for "flashy toy that does everything". Everyone asks me if it does phone calls, or GPS. What's so important about those two? Isn't your normal phone enough? Don't you know where you are going? Can't you ask your friendly pedestrians for directions?

Yeah, it could play games, it could play videos. But the one single function that make it indispensable is the PIM functionality. It's the important things that count, it's the zen of Palm.