The skinny on handhelds

[doctor jay]

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Hey
Wanna give your 2 cents on Palm vs Visor vs Pocket PC etc. Trying to figure out which one to blow my $$ on and why $450 vs $170. Give me your take?

Thanks and stuff!

🙄

 

[bustinbooty]

run PDA through the SDN search engine. there are various thread addressing these issues. There is a particular one that greatly influenced me to buy a hanspring platinum visor.

 

[doctor jay]

Thanks, I'll check out the past threads. BTW, how do you like your Visor and what types of things are you doing with it? Did you look at any of the HP models?

 

[John DO]

if you purchase your visor platinum directly from handspring this week (www.handspring.com), you get the PDA, a leather bi-fold case, and a visor phone for $199 w/free shipping! i searched high and low and decided this was the best value; it is not as nice as the prism, etc, but costs a lot less. it has the same bones as the best PDA, so will grow with you . . .

 

[beakerbetty]

I had the Palm 505 ($449) and exchanged it for the Sony Clie 610 ($399). The color screen on the 505 was very dim and for $50 less you get a better screen and picture capabilies on the Clie. Also, for those of you that want mp3 on a PDA the Clie 710-$499 can provide you with that. If you are interested in purchasing a PDA you first need to decide what platform you want. (PalmOS or Windows) I personally like Palm OS that is why I had no problems going from Palm to Clie; they both run on Palm OS (as does the visor). I believe that HP and Compaq both run on Windows. The choice after that is deciding on what features you want. Color is nice but some can do without it. I love my PDA and the neat things that you can do with it. Your best bet is to research and ask questions. Look around and get some prices then compare.

Good luck shopping! 😉

beakerbetty

 

[Amra]

I am going to kill 2 birds (PDA/Laptop) with one stone... I am puchasing a Sony Vaio Picturebook. It is a subcompact laptop (6" x 9" x 1" @ 2 lbs) - basically a tad larger than a paperback book.

-A

 

[doctor jay]

Amra,

Hello -- can you get most of the useful medical software in an application that will run on your Sony?

J

 

[ryanpj]

I need some free PocketPC (Windows) software for my HP Jornada 548.

 

[Amra]

The Sony runs regular Windows operating system (WinME or Win2000), therefore it runs everything. I have a PDR, Harrison's, and a Merck on my laptop now. If I need a specific Palm program (there are a bunch out there for doctors), I can run a palm emulator.

It is a great little system. If you are interested, eBay has them for $1400-$2000. Also check Price Watch.com for pricing.

Hope I helped!

-A

 

[efs]

My 2 cents.

I tried a WinCE (Pre-Pocket PC). It had various "lite" versions of MS software - Word, Excel, Etc. Worked OK as far as that goes. But there was not much other software out there. I think you will find the same with Pocket PC.

Picked up a Handspring Visor (Palm OS). Less expensive. Lots and Lots and Lots of FREE software is available. Lots of medical stuff. Some better than others. There are also some that you pay for. Harrision's, 5 minute consult, Merck, PDR, Tarascon, EPocrates, and so forth are availible too. I think the Palm offers many advantages over the PocketPCs.

 

[Diane L. Evans]

I have a Palm M505. You can order it through Dell online at www.del4me.com for about $360 then get a 10% discount plus free shipping buy a 64Mb card for $60 while you are online too for about $60 Simpletech 64mb card.

Free programs go to lwwmobile.com down the free recall sampler you'll need advant go which you can download from here as well

epocrates.com has lots of good drug programs

I like the skytell.com products
5min consult and its link Dr. Drugs which let you look up a disease then cross link its drug dosage etc info.
Good for the quick differetial diagnosis that
I get pimped on all the time.

What to buy?I bought the Palm M505 b/c I wanted color to store pics etc
You'll need some sort of palm when you start your 3rd year.
🙂 Diane Evans
MS3 UHS-COM

 

[roo]

I'd recommend you give it a good research first. That said, I would recommend a PalmOS device, as the free software available is great. Here is a sample runthrough of some of the free software on my PDA currently:

Apps:
BigClock (clock, stopwatch, calendar, etc)
CSpotRun (liteweight DOC reader)
MedCalc (formula calculator)
MedicalMnemonics (mnemonics)
Progect (project tree outliner)
Tarascon (drugs. ePocrates was a bit better technically but they were deleted off my PDA after they changed their privacy policy to start selling my individually identifiable information to drug companies and other interested parties, after originally promising they wouldn't.)
Reminder (countdown reminder)
Diddlebug (quick note draw/reminder)

Hacks:
MiddlecapsHack (graffitti over the alpha/number line to make a caps)
ContrastButtonHack (PalmV: map an app to the contrast button)
McPhling (switch between apps without going to launcher)
VirtualKB (custom mappable keyboard popup, with nice cut/copy/paste/multi undos, and allows grafitti while keyboard is displayed for pre 3.5 devices)
FontHack (replace fonts by apps or across the system. The useful one set is "Tall Fonts" and "Tall Fonts Bold" as they use the same amount of physical space as the built-in fonts, but are taller and easier to read since they use the extra space that is normally reserved over the capital letters for the international language accents)

Good luck and have fun --roo