Doug seems to face never-ending torment with his PDA, and he asked (challenged?) me to list what I use mine for. I briefly considered creating the list on the Palm itself, but a whack to the head quickly brought me back to reality (and was likely less masochistic than actually creating the list using Graffiti 2). Anyhoo, here are some of the things I do with my Palm:
On reflection, what I find most interesting is how I actually use my Palm vs how I thought I would before I got my first one. I anticipated using the Palm to manage appointments and tasks, with the potential to eventually replace pen and ink as my note taking tool of choice. Instead, I really treat my Palm as a portable viewer for documents, appointments, tasks and notes that I primarily create and manage on my computer.
[PS] If you use a blogging service or engine that is supported by Writely , consider trying it to create blog entries. I've posted my last few entries using Writely 'cause I like the WYSIWYG interface and whole-screen text area.
- Reading articles and papers. I started with iSilo several years ago, but have been an avid fan of Plucker ever since trying it about two years ago. I use the Sunrise offline sync tool and Firefox extension to quickly grab content for Plucker to display.
- Read MS Office and PDF docs offline. As I've mentioned in a past posting, Documents to Go has excellent support for native MS Office files, and the latest version adds support for native PDF files as well.
- Offline calendar with alarms. The original "killer app" that got me interested in PDAs in the first place. A 15-minute alarm prompting me to get to a meeting I've forgotten about has saved me more times than I'd care to admit.
- Offline Tasks with alarms. I use Outlook Tasks to track the stuff I have to get done, and alarm ticklers for these tasks sync'ed to my Palm mean I'm bugged at least three times more often than I otherwise would be. The jury is still out as to whether or not this is a good thing, and whether this has any impact on task completion rate [grin].
- Offline contact list. Now what was that phone number again? With my Palm at hand, I can quickly look up phone numbers and email addresses when I'm away from my computer. Hey, Doug, it even synchronizes photos embedded in Outlook Contacts!
- World clock with time zones and alarm clock. World Clock lets you set up a simultaneous display of the time in several locations around the world, and I've found the alarm clock more reliable than many of the clocks (and wake-up calls) I've come across in my travels.
- Carry around pictures, audio and movies. My Palm TX does come with a reasonable amount of internal memory, but a 1GB SD card gives me the space needed to carry around some mp3 tunes, podcasts, a selection of photos, and even try out the odd video. The open source TCPMP player can handle nearly any audio/video encoding, and video support on the new iPod has done much to increase the availability of digital videos formatted for smaller screens.
- Pass the time with games like Bejeweled 2 (which I'm finding to be a seriously addicting game).
On reflection, what I find most interesting is how I actually use my Palm vs how I thought I would before I got my first one. I anticipated using the Palm to manage appointments and tasks, with the potential to eventually replace pen and ink as my note taking tool of choice. Instead, I really treat my Palm as a portable viewer for documents, appointments, tasks and notes that I primarily create and manage on my computer.
[PS] If you use a blogging service or engine that is supported by Writely , consider trying it to create blog entries. I've posted my last few entries using Writely 'cause I like the WYSIWYG interface and whole-screen text area.
My killer app is the same as yours -- offline calendar with alarms. It's the reason I bought my Zire 31, and it's still the best reason for continuing to use the Zire. I have tried to GTD with the to-do lists, but that keeps falling flat (every so often I try to kickstart myself but I can't keep it going). But I agree, just having the alarms when I'm away from my desk is worth it.
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