Matt Meola
ex KCØDXW
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Matt Meola ex KCØDXW |
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PDA StuffPersonal Digital Assistants (PDAs) have become quite the rage. Not that there's anything wrong, or even trendy about them; I have one, and I find it indispensible; I've come to rely on it quite heavily. PDAs can be quite useful in Amateur Radio work, and this web page focuses on the utility for ARES and other public service work. For those not generally aware of such things, there are two basic flavors of PDA: those that use PalmOS, and those that use Win/CE. PalmOS is the name of the operating system that Palm, Inc. wrote for their very first offering. It has been upgraded and enhanced continuously along with the product line. PalmOS has the distinction of being a rather bare-bones OS; however, it also allows program to likewise be quite compact. Among the offerings in this line are Palm's own, Handspring's devices and Handera's. All have their own fairly unique features, and all run PalmOS, or some variant of it. They all use a Motorola Dragonball processor running in the neighborhood of 30Mhz. Don't let that speed fool you; these machines are quite powerful, for what they run. You can't (nor would you want to) run Oracle on them, but heck, it's designed as a personal orgainizer. Win/CE machines are all those that use Windows 2002. Sony and Compaq, among many others, make machines in this line. These devices will use one of three processors: a StrongARM at 206Mhz, a Mips at about the same, and the third, I can't recall right now. Because the use a Windows OS, they often come with much more memory; 32MB seems to be the standard, nowadays, and 64MB is not at all uncommon. I own a Handspring Visor Deluxe. Since I haven't (yet) acquired a CE machine, I'm only able to discuss software for PalmOS. Follow the links to your left for the software write-ups. |
