Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls PDA

I was just thinking yesterday about how hard I treat my PDA. So, I was wondering...

What kind of PDA or Pocket PC would Superman have if he had one?

Of course I would incline to think it would be the Sony Clie because of the steel case that would protect it from his "Super-Strength".

Well, I don't have a PDA and what I know about them you could fit into a thimble, so I couldn't vote on this one.

But I'll await the results with interest, in case I'm ever in the market for one. If it's good enough for Superman, it'll be good enough for me.

LabRat

Or, alternatively, would he bother buying one at all?

We've experimented with them at work and I can't say I'm hugely impressed. If I want to write and I'm not near a computer, it's quicker and easier to write longhand than faff around with character recognition or a stylus and that fiddly on-screen keyboard. Also, a few pieces of paper are a darn sight lighter than a PDA. If I want contact names and addresses, my diary is lighter and more compact than a PDA. Maybe if I bought it a modem, it might be a little more useful, but once I've downloaded my email, what am I going to do with it? Sure, I can read it, but if I want to reply, I'm back to the horrible stylus etc. Also, if I'm somewhere where I can connect to a telephone line, then chances are there's a computer around that will be a lot more useful than my PDA.

As my guinea-pig user at work summed up, it's *great* for playing solitaire on the tube.

Yvonne

Actually, YConnell. Your talking about a Pocket PC which has a connection free internet acess. Which works pretty much like a cellphone. You can also get connectors to connect your cellphone to you PDA for wireless internet accesss.

Probebly because it is to keep his Super-duties together or because he wants to save some trees. Normal diaries and address book takes up paper and paper comes from trees. In today's age, we are short of trees to produce oxygen accordingly to the number of humans are on the planet earth. For each and every human on Earth, you need a tree for him or her. But currently, we're extrememly short. Which is what I've believe as the sole purpose of the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide and monoxide in the atmosphere is the cause of the increase of the problem with heat wave and the irregular geographical whether patterns. Which in the future, as experts will say will increase the drought. With human bodies made out of 2/3rd of water, humans cannot live without water or tolerate the amount of temperature increase in our atmospher.

Here in Chicago, where I live the summers were usually not that hot. Temperatures usually don't get beyond 68 to 70 degree 'F'. But with the increase in air pollution, the normal temperature here in Chicago has increase to that of 90 to 105 with humidity. Being a warm blooded type of person, I often found myself suffering from the heatwave. Heatwave has been a common thing here in Chicago, now.

I believe that we should stop developing land and flattening swamp land. Destroying all those trees has caused atmosphosere problems and flattening swamp lands had caused the mosqito problem and causing extinction of animals that usually eat mosquitoes.

Okay, I'm going to stop rampling. Am I getting too technical? Besides, I always make a mess out of my address books and diaries to a point where I cannot even read it.

Just saw the results. Wow! Palm. I wouldn't think that it would be a palm. Personally, it didn't stand up to my, roughness. My old Palm had a complete melt down only after two years or three of usage.

Well, I voted for a Palm. I was so happy with my first one, that when it died, I did a huge amount of comparing and shopping around . . . and finally bought another Palm.

But there are so MANY options now! And one can buy keyboards for them, if one plans to use them for a lot of writing, Yvonne. Although I find the onscreen keyboard very comfortable to use, once I got used to it.

For me, the greatest advantage of my Palm over a paper equivalent lies in its abilities to copy and sort. (The games I have on it -- and now the fic I read on it -- are a pleasant bonus. )

Copy: That is, I could give it my schedule for a particular Monday, tell it each class was a repeating occurence up until a certain date (or with no end-date, if I preferred), and have all my classes for the year scheduled. Any holidays or other exceptions, I could delete and tell it that only that one day should be affected. When my classes got fiddled with halfway through the year, I only had to change it once, tell it to apply to all future occurrences, and voila.

Sort: I can find people in my phone/address book by name or anything else, move them around from category to category with ease, create new categories easily, etc., etc. Paper listings get crumpled, torn, must have things erased, run out of space . . . and the "find" command when I am trying to remember WHO it is I know who lives in Culver City (for example), doesn't work with a paper one.

As for standing up to Superstrength, heavy-duty cases are readily available for all the common models. Sadly, I doubt any screen or stylus would -- and they are all made of very similar polymers, with no one brand having much of an advantage.

Perhaps StarLabs can come up with something.

I agree. I use to use the paper version until I find that it was hard to even read my own writings because it got so heavily abbreviated and a mess that I can't read it even. I like the "repeate" event the best.
I didn't even know that. My handspring visor was made out of plastic casing.
That's probebly why I'm more gentle on the screen then on the other buttons.

I think it all boils down to your lifestyle and whether a PDA fits into it. I like your diary example, Rivka - that sounds like an ideal application for a PDA.

Me, I'm fairly deskbound at work, so don't need a roving contact list or diary. Outlook on my computer is just fine. At home, paper-based methods suit me best. I don't need to put my friends into categories, and I can't think of a reason to search for them under anything but their surname or organisation name.

I know you can buy keyboards for PDAs, but if I've got to lug around a keyboard *and* the PDA, I'm going to need to buy a much bigger handbag <g>. Not only that, but the PDA would just be one more electronic device I'd forget to re-charge. I hardly ever use my mobile phone, for example - partly because I just don't need to, but also because whenever I *do* decide to use it, it's run out of battery power <g>.

Kitty, I'd dispute your environmental argument. At least paper is biodegradable. A PDA, on the other hand, is made of plastic and metal, neither of which are biodegradable - and they also use precious natural resources and energy in their manufacture. I'm sure I've heard that batteries are particularly unfriendly to the environment.

I'm not a Luddite - heck, I'm an IT Manager, so I wouldn't last long in my job if I was! I'm sure PDAs are a useful and valuable tool for some, but I'm also wary of technology for technology's sake.

Yvonne

Truth be told, I don't worry about trees that much in the sense of oxygen supply. I mean, I'm not saying that we should have Chop Down a Tree Day once a year or something, but diatoms provide 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere anyway. So I figure as long as we keep our little algae friends happy, we're in ok shape. But I still want to keep trees around so the stupid squirrels go there and not into my bird house.

But biology aside now, I'm your basic Post-It note gal. True, half of them have gotten lost over the years so I probably haven't returned about half the phone calls I've received. But oh well. I sort of figure if it's important enough, people will call me back.

Superman seems like a Post-It note guy to me for some reason. Scribble it down and keep on movin'.

Jen

I don't write anything down -- either on a PDA or in a notebook or on post-its. Never have, never will . People used to tell me it would always come back to me first in jr. high, then in high school, then in college . . . well, I'm in my second year of grad school, but I have still never written anything down . So I have no knowledge of PDAs -- actually when I see PDA I think "public displays of affection" .

- Alicia

I've tried both major kinds of PDA's, Palms and Pocket PC's. I never could get used to them. For a while, I used my iPAQ as an MP3 player and book reader, but it was too inconvenient to carry around all the time.

So no PDA's for me.

As for Superman, where's the pocket? Plus he has a photographic memory. If there was a choice of none of the above, I'd take it. So I didn't vote.

I know. The main reason that I use it is because my phone book always turns out to be a mess. It's so messy that I can't even read it.

Sure if it stays put. If he super-speeds around the house while it's posted, it would become super-un-post-it .
I don't know about that. I mostly play games on mine. I keep downloading games that my PDAs keeps melting down.
I don't know about that. I think it is pure speculation. I have poor memory, even worse audio memory.

PDA is an abreviation for Public Display of Affection -- I didn't mean that you use a PDA for public displays of affection. I am just saying that I didn't initially make the connection to those little computer things.

And as for you having a poor memory, that doesn't mean that *Clark* has a poor memory. Actually, it's been well-documented in the show that Clark has a photographic memory. Isn't the poll about *superman* needing a PDA (which I don;t think he really would) or is the poll really about *kitty* needing a PDA -- and you do have one and like it. I believe that has been established. But I don't think you can answer for Superman -- it is merely speculation from all of us.

- Alicia

I would think he could use a PDA. After all, in AKA Superman, Lois found out that not only did Clark have an organizer, but Superman had one, too. A PDA is just the next logical step.

Nan

Yeah, Nan. I agree. Instead of having two. He should put it as one and use the security too.

I like my Sony Clie. It hasn't melt down on me yet. And I'm very rough with my electronics, I guess I've learned to to use my super-strength on it. Evertime I use graffiti on the screen with the pen I have to think "now Betty don't be too hard, be gentle".

That's what I was thinking too. In the Air Force you could get in trouble for this kind of thing.

TEEEEJ

Honestly, I was thinking that too. PDA was frowned upon at the Southern Baptist College that I attended.
James