[ILUG] [OT} Mobile Phone/PDA

[David Cathcart]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 03:02:08PM +0100, Ken Gilmour wrote:
> Hi David,
> 
> <snip>
> I have a separate email account which only four people on earth know about! I use it for my XDA2 so if there is an emergency and i am on the road i will receive the detailed email (or the first 1k and download the rest later) I never receive spam into it. GPRS is always on and checks it every 10 minutes. I also have MSN Messenger on it so that i can live chat on the road but that's just a "cool feature" it would be easier to make a phone call, however i deal with NOCs in Dublin, London, Costa Rica, Vancouver etc so it's cheaper to use MSN :-). For other things (such as temperature alerts or outage alerts) i get them SMSed to me and a graph is sent to my normal email address. All on one machine.

Yep procmail + o2sms + (if you're really cheep Lingua::EN::Squeeze) = good

> You can have handwriting recognition... however for those of us who type faster (and neater) than they write; a keyboard is better... i agree, there is one also built into the xda2 :-)

I've lots of experience with palm's grafitti, i have trouble reading my
own handwriting. Keyboard all the way. 

> 
> What kind of apps would you really need for a PDA? everything you really "need" and others are already on it, such as spreadsheets, wordprocessor and powerpoint, other things like pocketputty are free. If you want to do anything else you should really get a laptop in my opinion. You can use a wifi / bluetooth connection from your lappy to your phone to get some connectivity... Although XDA is an O2 phone i have an unblocked one which works on the vodafone network and they provide 28kbps connectivity i believe. Pretty cool for a mobile... pretty crap for anything else though.
> 

Why am i only allowed apps that i really "need"? I spend a lot of time
using my Toshiba Libretto 60, that's got a small screen (4inch) - i
don't even run x on it, just terminal stuff, it's also slower than most
smarthpones at 100mhz. It dosent even have a hard drive anymore, it's
got a compact flash card. It's keyboard is probably in the same catagory
as a nokia 9210/9510. I dont carry a handbag, and therefore not a
laptop. I don't feel limited on my crappy old libretto, because it's
running a free operateing system, i don't see why i should pay over the
odds for a faster phone that does less.  

What apps would i like on it? Well a webserver would be cool, an rss
reader, a deacent mail client, ssh is a must (i spent 20 dollers on one
for my palm and it's got a lousy interface), streaming media player
would be nice (if it's got wifi, why not use it to listen to the radio).
A jabber client. I could just about get most of these for a palm, but i
could only use one at a time. Palm have also become very unfriendly to
devolopers of late, refusing to give out devoloper roms. 

> >
> >?Using a cable to sync is not cool, i use a cable to charge that's
> >?awkward enough.
> 
> That's the cool thing about the XDA2, it has integrated bluetooth, IRDA, CSD, USB and optional Wifi, you don't really need to connect it with USB but i prefer it because it's less likely someone is going to be monitoring your USB connections than your airwaves (let alone bluetooth)
> 

Yeh the new XDA with the slide-out keyboard looks nice. Though I have
reservations about buying a phone with a closed os, espically if
i'm going to be spending a fair amount of money on it. 

> >
> >?2 Devices just dont fit in my pocket, i don't carry a handbag.
> 
> A case comes with it with a beltclip and it fits in well with standard toolbelts
> 

I don't wear a toolbelt, I pay for my trousers to be made to fit my
waist, thus negateing the need for any belt. 

David Cathcart