Trumping Analog6 January 2003 My Pocket PC Phone Edition in its protective Vaja case weighs about 7 ounces and goes with me literally everywhere I go. I started thinking recently about my pre-digital days in the mid-90s and what I'd have to carry to duplicate what I can do with my Pocket PC Phone Edition: Day Planner: Okay, this one's obvious. I used to carry a leather day planner, the size that used 4x6" pages. It did the job, but in no way was it considered pocketable. It had the standard sections for calendar, address book and tasklist, and inserts to keep business cards people gave me. It weighed easily three times what my XDA weighs, and wasn't as convenient to carry. Still, before PDAs, it was essential gear. I also stocked it with loose leaf paper and used that to write fiction, which I then transcribed into my PC at night. On my Pocket PC Phone Edition, I have Pocket Informant 3.45 to keep track of appointments, contacts and tasks, with the added benefits of alarms, easy rescheduling (no more scratching out and rewriting!) and the ability to dial phone numbers directly from my contacts. I use TextMaker to write both fiction and nonfiction, so I no longer have to waste time typing in my written words later. Cell Phone: As mentioned above, my Pocket PC Phone Edition does a great job doubling as a cell phone. I used to carry a Qualcomm PCS phone that weighed as much as my Pocket PC Phone Edition, and I had to remember to change a number in the phone's internal number list when I had to change it in my day planner. Now that I have my contacts list and my phone in a single device, I only have to update one list when someone's number changes. I can also make call notes prefilled with the caller's name, number, date and time, and optionally record conversations (great for interviews!). CD Player: I love music. I especially love listening to music while I write, tunes specifically chosen to mirror the mood of the scene I'm writing. Hey, everything needs a soundtrack. In my pre-PDA days, I carried a portable CD player and headphones to keep me in mood music whenever the writing bug happened to hit me. With the Pocket PC Phone Edition, I have Windows Media Player built in and I can listen to music via the same stereo earbuds that I use as a hands-free phone headset. I have better control of playlists, and can freely mix and match from different CDs. CD Travel Case: Of course, a CD Player doesn't do a lot of good without CDs to listen to. I had a plastic casing about an inch thick that held ten CDs in an accordion-like inner fold-out section. The travel case was as big as my CD player itself, but you gotta have tunes. Now I can encode my favorite music into Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, which is half the size of even MP3 at the same sound quality. I put these WMA files on a 256MB Secure Digital (SD) card about the size of a postage stamp, which stays in the SD slot on my Pocket PC Phone Edition. I have three full CDs on my device right now, mostly because my card is full of other stuff (see below). Post-Its: I used to carry a stack of yellow sticky notes. I used these to jot down quick reminders. As these notes often do, they had a tendency to breed, growing all over my monitor, refrigerator door, etc. If I didn't use them, though, I'd invariably forget important stuff. Pocket Informant has a feature called Alarm Notes that does a great job of not only duplicating the "jot something down" convenience of sticky notes, but adds the ability to assign alarms to each note. Alarm Clock/Watch: Okay, I only carried an alarm clock with me when I traveled, but I wore a watch every day. Having a busy calendar means that it's crucial that you know what time it is. I'm one of those people that's almost pathologically early. If I'm on time, I feel like I'm late. Needless to say, you never saw the tanline caused by my watch because that particular band of skin was never left uncovered. Now I don't wear a watch at all. My Pocket PC Phone Edition is always either in my pocket, on my belt or in my hand, and it has a clock constantly visible on the title bar. But even that is almost superfluous. As far as staying on time for appointments is concerned, each appointment has an alarm set to notify me with ample time to prepare. I also use the alarms to wake me up in the morning, so I don't need a separate alarm clock anymore either. Newspaper/Magazines: I read a lot. I like to stay informed about my favorite topics and the world in general. I used to have numerous magazine subscriptions and bought a newspaper more often than not. Now I sync the latest news and articles to my device via AvantGo. Not only do I know I always have the latest info, but it's free. I also keep up on the PDA world by syncing mailing lists and web discussion forums to my device for offline reading. Pager: I didn't always rate a cell phone. For a while there I had to carry a pager. This assured me that the office could get in touch with me if they needed to, although it also gave me the freedom to get back to the office when I wanted. SMS text messaging on my XDA provides much the same service. I'm reachable anytime, anywhere, even if I can't (or don't want to) answer the phone. Even better, I get an SMS message whenever I get an email, so I can reply to emails as quickly as I get them. Checkbook Register: I used to carry a checkbook register around with me everywhere. I have to keep track of what I spend, or I have a tendency to spend money I don't have (from what I understand, the American economy is based on people having this problem). Even though most of my purchases are by debit card, I still had to record them and the balance on my ever-depleting checking account. Now I keep track of this in Microsoft Money on my XDA. Not only does this synchronize with Money on my desktop, but it has a really big advantage for me even in the admittedly limited mobile version. I don't have to do the math. More than once I ended up spending money I didn't have anyway because I forgot to carry a 2. This doesn't happen anymore. Calculator: I had a solar-powered calculator that I kept in the day timer. In retrospect, it would have been useful for the checkbook register thing, but I used it for other stuff. Figuring out which can of peas was really cheaper, that sort of thing. Let's face it, arithmetic is a lost art in the 21st century. On the Pocket PC Phone Edition I have an input panel called RapidCalc from Developer One. This gives me a calculator on any screen I happen to be in on my Pocket PC. Now I can figure out which can of peas is cheaper while I'm looking at my shopping list. Shopping List: Speaking of shopping lists, I keep lists for all kinds of stores in my day planner. For recurring trips like grocery stores, I took to printing out checklists from my computer and keeping them in the day planner until I checked them off. Of course, infrequent items still had to be written out by hand every time I needed to get them. I have a program called VOShoppingList on the Pocket PC that keeps track of multiple stores, remembers recurring items, calculates how much each trip should cost, even factors in sales tax. Now I only have to enter each item once, and I'm better prepared when I go to the store. Paperback Books: As I mentioned above, I'm an avid reader. I always had a paperback book on me. When I was in the Air Force, I wore fatigues as much as possible because of all the baggy pockets I could shove books into. I usually went through a book a week, although a book a day wasn't unheard of. I have over 300 full-length books loaded on the SD card in my Pocket PC Phone Edition. Not only do I always have something to read, I always have a choice of what I want to read. Quick science fiction? Nonfiction science? Humor? Process improvement? More slogging through the Tolkien Ring Saga? I have it all available at a moment's notice. And no bulky pockets! I can also listen to books while walking or driving thanks to Audible and Microsoft Reader. Wallet: Much like the watch above, I carried a wallet with me everywhere I went. It had a tendency to be a fat, overstuffed "George Costanza" special, packed with tons of paper scraps, cards, and whatnot until I could barely close it. Even though I try to carry as little cash as possible, I still had trouble trimming the wallet down to a size that didn't give me a 20 degree list to port when I sat down. I no longer have that problem. I no longer have a wallet. I keep my driver's license and debit card in the Vaja case for my XDA. Amazingly enough, all the other myriad contents of my wallet I've been able to simply do without. It's simpler this way, and I don't have to see a chiropractor. All in all, I currently carry a roughly 7oz package that does all of the above and then some. The above list would fill a backpack and weigh at least twenty pounds. Which would you rather carry? Jeff Kirvin
Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today! |