A better pda . . .

[Bobbleton]

Today I searched for something I believed to be entirely possible: a better pda.

Hear me out:

Specifically what I'm looking for is a digital all-in-one. A handheld pc with wifi, gps, mp3 playback, video playback, multiple forms of hardware interface, and most of all -- lots of storage.

But forgetting all the initial details--storage is most important. Why is it that i can buy a 60GB ipod to play hordes of pirated music, but i can't even FIND a mobile pc with more than 6GB of storage. Or worse--they mostly use flash memory . . so the best is can do is maybe a 4GB sd card, which you can't even get in stores. This is the first time i've looked into this technology in a while, and i'm honestly disappointed in the lack of progress.

The main purpose for this device would be a medium for picture storage--something to dump my pictures onto on long trips without having to lug around a laptop. Wouldn't that make a nice addition to all our backpacks?? Well I guess not anytime soon it won't.

Up to this point its only been whining, but I did have an actual purpose for this post. Does anyone know of such a device? Perhaps i'm searching the wrong way or someone knows what I don't. So . . do you??

-Bob

 

[BEHR655]

Specifically what I'm looking for is a digital all-in-one. A handheld pc with wifi, gps, mp3 playback, video playback, multiple forms of hardware interface, and most of all -- lots of storage.


-Bob

What? No coffee maker?

Steve

 

[Ben Ruset]

I have a T-Mobile MDAIII, which is a PocketPC PDA phone that runs Windows Mobile 2003 SE.

No device has all of what you're looking for, but mine has most.

It has 802.11b Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS, quad band GSM, a 240x320 color screen, slide out keyboard, SDIO/SD card slot (so you can have up to 2GB of storage, or get a SDIO GPS or something).

I am actually selling it because I want to get an hp 6515 which has all of the above minus Wi-Fi (since I don't use it much) and a smaller screen but has GPS.

MP3/Video playback is pretty awesome on my phone, although I still prefer my iPod.

 

[Bobbleton]

see--some of these come so close . . . but without massive storage its pointless. I have a 2gb card in my camera already, but that won't get me through a week of herping. (or coffee making) not by a long shot.

i mean--isn't an ipod just a laptop hard drive with media playback firmware? well why they hell not make a hard drive based pda? it seems like common sense. are the technological developers really that retardedly short-sighted? or is there some crucial bit of information about this subject that makes me the ignorant one?

 

[Ben Ruset]

an ipod has a special hard drive that is smaller than a regular laptop hard drive. it's designed so consume less power. an ipod gets maybe 5 hours out of it's battery. all it does is decode mp3's (and aac's, or play videos) with a relatively slow CPU. besides that - and a game of breakout - that's all it does.

a pda requires a much faster CPU. which in turn eats more battery. throw a hard drive into the mix and you'll have a pda that MAYBE gets 5 hours. sure, it doesn't need to spin the disk the entire time, but if yours checks email every 5 min like mine does, that disk won't stop spinning.

palm makes something along the lines of what you're looking for. it's called the lifedrive. http://www.palm.com/us/products/mobilemanagers/lifedrive/ - it has wifi and bluetooth, but isn't a phone (which besides the fact that it's a Palm kills it for me) and is only 4gb.

 

[onehand]

wow ! does the instruction manuel come in 10 volumes