I often have discussions about what kind of PDA or laptop or phone I use, there is something about the technology industry which seems to equate personal status with the gadgets you seem to carry around. My own preference is to stick with stuff that works for me. For the record, I've posted "My Rig" here:
- Laptop: Toshiba Tecra M2
- PDA: Palm Tungsten T
- Phone: Nokia 6822
Laptop: For a recent open-source event, I re-installed the laptop with Solaris Express Community Edition ("Solaris NV 5.11 b35" to be precise) and OpenOffice 2.0.2, FireFox and Thunderbird. I used to have Java Desktop System (JDS2, based on Suse) but swapped for Solaris 10, now the one from OpenSolaris.org. Gives me Wifi, VPN, USB, Sound, etc but I would probably prefer a smaller form factor, provided it had WiFi and video output. Also runs Firefox & Thunderbird.
PDA: My trusty old Palm Tungsten T, used mainly for Mail, Calendar, bit of Google for company searches - and now drafting Blogs! I switched to SnapperMail recently, which has a better security features on email. It's not SyncML, maybe the next one. Next PDA will have Wifi *and* BlueTooth.
Phone: Until recently, I had a plain old 6310i. very solid, but the Nokia 6822 has greatly improved data throughput to link through to the PDA. Good enough for Google, BBC, Ananova, MetCheck & paying for my parking at the station. recently started trying out Mobyko for SyncML backup. I like playing with the latest fancy smartphones, but I still prefer separate phone and PDA. What I really need is a phone which acts as a secure mobile router, while I am away from a WiFi PoP.
Category: Personal
Posted by Stuart Oliver on September 29, 2006 at 11:02 AM GMT #
Thanks Stuart - the XDA Exec looks very fancy - I still prefer to spread the risk and have separate phone & PDA. (comments welcome!) Having said that, I heard that they are working on getting Linux onto the XDA Exec which might be fun: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3647920562.html
However, there needs to be a focused support community to run an open source OS for that kind of device in the mass market, and it's not clear to me that smartphones have a market window long enough to support a *secondary* community-driven OS. It would be more efficient for the original manufacturer to put a community-driven OS on the terminal as the *primary* platform.
P, ...Posted by Paul Wallace on October 02, 2006 at 08:43 AM GMT #