Classical PDA Usage

Last time I asked what use a classical computer might have to you, and I would like to add some more uses that I have for my old PDAs. You see I am that guy who has a cellphone that only gets used to actually call people. I have gone as far as having texting blocked off my phone because of all the spam I had been getting. I do not text and that means that a texting plan is a major rip off for me.

To say that I don't have a smartphone is sort of a lie really though. I have a few old Palm Treo devices after all. I have a Treo 600, a Treo 650, another Treo 650 with a broken screen and a Treo 680 that is now longer in one piece. I use these as a normal PDA. I have no reason to use them as a phone even though the two that I actually use are on Verizon network. I would find them much more useful if they had WiFi though.

The reason I like to use the old Treo devices is mainly for the fact that they have a good keyboard on them. In fact, I have typed this all up Treo 650. I do some minor work on the netbook after I get the main stuff typed up when I ready to post them. I use the netbook to spell check everything and make sure all the editing that may be required is finished up. Plus when you use the netbook, you have a much better spell checker, and you also have a grammar checker which can be very useful when doing something like this.

Another reason that I use the old Palm devices is for playing games. Even my oldest Palm, the Pilot Pro can play some games like Hard Ball, which is a breakout style game. I can also play basic card games such as Black Jack and Video Poker. While these games may not be as fun as say Fallout New Vegas, which is one of my favorite games, but they can pass the time very well when you need something to do.

Some of the newer ones that I have, such as my Palm M500 or Handspring Visor Pro can even play some better games despite the fact that are still not in color. I can play a very good solitaire game on them for example. Acid Solitaire is in my opinion the best solitaire game for Palm OS. I can even play some games like Bejeweled that have an older monochrome version floating around online.

The better of my Palm devices as far as games go would be the Treo 650 since it has a high resolution screen, Palm OS 5.4 and a 2GB SD card. I can play a lot of games on the Treo 650 and you can still find a lot of good software for the old Palm devices. You can easily find software for OS 3 and 4 on sites like www.freewarepalm.com as well.

The main usage for my old Palm devices has to be for reading EBooks though. The older of mine, such as the Visor, make for great EBook readers since they have monochrome screens. The Visor has to be the best though since it also uses AAA batteries. This means that it gets great battery life, even when using the backlight, with simple NIMH batteries. I can easily keep a set of spares charged up as well.

One of the other uses for them is that I have a full size keyboard for almost all of them. I have one for my Visor, Clie, and Palm universal connector. I also have two Bluetooth keyboards as well as one IR keyboard that only works on Palm OS 5 and Windows Mobile.