PDA phone

[cucumber]

Hi
I'm a medical student in Dunedin, NZ and would appreciate some advice about which PDA phone to purchase please? I have been doing a lot of reading and came to the conclusion that the treo 680 would be a good option as the hospital is not wireless and I have heard that palm software is easier to transfer and more plentiful than PC software. Is this the case?

If you dont think palm would be a better option in terms of software, then I would like to know which PDA phones would be in your top list? I have seen some very nice ones from O2 and Dopod also.

I really dont know what to get, whether the QWERTY keyboard is worthwhile. It is really only the palm OS which is swaying me towards the treo 680, if medical software is just as available for PC then they do seem to have some superior features including wifi although I am unsure how useful this would be?

Thanks for any of your help.

[nicker]

I am new to the medical side of technology, but have much experience with technology including PDA's. I would recommend looking into what handheld software, if any, the physicians use in your particular location and check to see if they have a palm or windows version. Assuming that is not an issue, I prefer the Palm platform for a broad selection of third party software and slightly more mature product.

On the flip side they do not have out of the box WiFi like many windows smart phones. This can actually be overcome by making sure you get a PDA with either 3G or EVDO Rev. A depending on which carrier you go with. These data transfer methods are very fast and will work (at some speed) as long as you have phone coverage.

Good luck on your search.

[Admin]

Hi cucumber, you can get medical software for both Palm and Pocket PC devices.

I personally think a full keyboard is very useful as I write a lot of emails and texts on my phone.

I use a iMate K-JAM but I think the Palm Treos (both Palm OS and PPC) are very good.

Chris

[cucumber]

Thanks Chris
So I've basically decided on the treo 680 now since its a reasonable size, has a full keyboard without any sliding or flipping and most free software seems to be widely available and transferable on palm.

do you think that the lack of wifi would be a hassle? In Dunedin we dont have wireless and I dont think I can really afford to be using the internet via the phone dial up method. I imagine that anything I may need to download I could do from a computer and simply transfer to the PDA anyway and I dont think I have ever seen anyone using the net on their PDA at work. I just wish there was something available that was a phone-PDA with wifi and keyboard. I guess there may be better options than the treo out there that satisfy these needs but nothing from palm which I had heard was probably a better option as a medical student.

I'd be keen to hear from anyone who has any advice as to the perfect combination or the usefulness of wifi. Thanks guys

[Admin]

I don't personally use wifi much - I do use GPRS a lot though and it is fairly expensive.

You can use the phone just for phone calls though and use the PDA as you would a non-phone PDA - just be careful you don't get addicted to checking email and websites on the move as you will run up costs like I do.

You can get pretty much all the medical software you need for both Palm and Windows Mobile nowadays so if you see a windows mobile model that suits you better than the Palm you might want to consider that as well.

Cheers,

Chris

[cucumber]

Can you please tell me which of the many latest treo updates would be able to be used in New Zealand?