Technology iPhone as a viable PDA?

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panerai1

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Taking the third year plunge to get a smartphone, and I'm beginning to question whether the iphone would work or not. Obviously since it is not out no one can really answer this question yet, but I question I can ask now is as follows:

Does anyone use online resources rather than downloading programs to their PDA? I ask because with the iPhone running Mac OS, I suspect none of the usual programs will work for the time being. In doing some research however, I found examples of most of the major ones (Merck, UCSF, medcalc, hopkins abx) all free in an online form. Since the phone has Safari, and I've got WiFi access at University hospital, I figure it may work...opinions? Thanks in advance and good luck to all those slogging through Step I studying.

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I would not go with the iPhone as your PDA solution for clinical work on the rounds. Who knows whether it will support medical software compatibility, let alone what the performance will be in terms of expected battery life.
 
While the online version will be nice, you'll have to make sure that the phone's browser would still support any apps that the online version needs to run. For instance, Java won't be supported and Flash may be supported. If any of the online versions of your programs need to use either of those (probably not Flash), to deliver their app, then the phone still won't allow you to do what you need.

I say - either research the software programs that you're using and make sure that they'll be able to run successfully on the iPhone or stick with something that allows you to install third party apps.
 
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TurtleNeck Dude™ announced that the iPhone will support third party apps. Not supporting Java would be a travesty…
 
According to Pepid technical support, there is no compatibility with iphone. Im sure many/most of the medical apps will be the same way at least for a good while. I thought apple came out a while ago and said the iphone is NOT a smarphone although i could be mistaken.
 
...Im sure many/most of the medical apps will be the same way at least for a good while. I thought apple came out a while ago and said the iphone is NOT a smarphone although i could be mistaken.
Apple has changed their tune on that when they opened up the ability to run 3rd party widgets through the Safari interface. Although, almost all of the current medical tools would have to be pretty much completely re-written from scratch in order to be compatible with this interface. The only exception to this would be the iSilo program and the various files it reads, it wouldn't be very difficult for the makers of iSilo to re-write certain parts of it and make it compatible with the iPhone. I would expect an iSilo version for the iPhone within 6 months or less if they think it has a market.
 
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