From: Mark Benson (markbenson_at_mac.com)
Date: Mon Oct 20 2003 - 10:00:46 PDT
On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 05:26 PM, Mark Rollins wrote:
> http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2143700
>
> I have to agree from the standpoint that a PDA as a stand-alone unit is
> "dead".
>
> I use a Handspring VisorPhone. When needed, I've popped in a GPS unit,
> camera, WiFi card or the aforementioned cell phone. My next PDA
> purchase
> must have WiFI, BlueTooth, and camera, as well as being a cell phone
> all-in-one.
Without reading the above article...
The power of modern integrated CPUs like Intel's X-Scale have meant
that the PDA has expanded greatly in the last 2 years. It really
started as the next logical progression from the pocket calculator. The
Newton introduced the concept of the pen powered 'pocket notebook' that
allowed users to carry their whole schedule and address book around on
a device that fitted in the hand and wrote on just like a pad of paper
(and gave you arm ache). Today's PDA is no longer just a pocket file
for notes and schedules, but instead a pocket sized computer capable of
multimedia presentation and desktop computing more analogous to that
that takes place on the desktop computer. Popular introduction of large
scale Wireless technologies for low level and high-level networking
such as Bluetooth and 802.1, as well as integration of GSM and GPRS
data functions, have launched the modern handheld to the status of a
computer in it's own right.
The PDA is dead - long live the handheld computer....
-- Mark Benson AIM - SilValleyPirate MSN - mark.benson_at_hot-toast.com Visit FlatPackMacs online: <http://fpm.68kmac.com> Visit my Homepage: <http://homepage.mac.com/markbenson> "Never send a human to do a machine's job." -The Matrix -- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
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