About 4 years ago I got my first PDA. It was an HP with Pocket PC 2002. I thought it was really neat, but it was like a stand alone computer. A computer with no network access can only be so fun. I thought it would be neat if PDA's had wireless networking built in. Also, I thought it would be neat if they had mini-keyboards on them to make typing quicker for me. A few years later, you could buy PDA's with built in wireless, and mini-keyboards. Very cool. I bought myself an iPaq with 802.11b, bluetooth, mini-keyboard, a memory card, and Pocket PC 2003. I brought it around to work a lot, kept it sync'd up with my calendar, etc.. but it is big and you can't really cary something like that everywhere you go unless you are a girl and have a purse.

Later I bought myself a 2GB flash memory based MP3 player. I loved it! I could fit most of my CDs onto this one device that fit in my shirt pocket. It was like a pocket juke box. Again, this is another device you have to remember to take with you.

Later my mom showed me her new cell phone with built in camera. I was very impressed. I went out and bought one too. A cell phone, a digital camera.. something I DO carry around with me everywhere no matter when and where. It's my phone. If I see something neat and want to snap a picture (such as an old man on his scooter going through the Tim Hortons drive thru with big SUVs in front and behind), I can pull it out and snap a picture. However, I have to pay $0.50 to email the pictures off the phone to myself. Or, I can buy a $50 cable.

For years I thought it would be really neat to have one device that has everything. The past few years devices like that have been around but I didn't get my hands on one until last week. At work we got a Palm Treo 650 with Palm OS. It is a cell phone, mini-keyboard, digital camera, web browser, email, calendar, contact lists (all sync'd with Exchange server at work), put a 2GB media card in and you have an mp3 player, a stylus for the touch screen PDA if you want to use it, etc etc... This is almost perfection! I can replace 3 devices with one, and since it is my cell phone I will always have it with me.

The one problem I have with it is that it is Palm OS. We purposely chose this device because we wanted to test one of our web based programs using Palm OS, and using a cell phone PDA device. Palm OS works, but I much prefer Pocket PC (Windows). It is more featureful, more software, and looks nicer. Luckily there is a Windows version called the 700w which Bell Mobility will carry at the end of September 2006. I think I'm going to hold off until then, and pick up one of these PDA's. I swear, this device with Windows Mobile has reached perfection. Everything in one device, everywhere you go. The windows one even supports push email (like Blackberry).

When I'm ready, I'll be writing j2me applications for it. I need ideas though, and to learn NetBean's mobility pack. I've read that .NET CF is better for programming Pocket PC apps. I believe it, since MS made both the OS and programming platform. However I think I'll be quite happy with Java still. Speaking of Java, I was at a wedding this weekend and met a friend from college. He's big into VB.NET and MySQL now and was borderline Java bashing. If he only knew how the whole thing about the java "religion" is focus on architechture, best practices, etc... and understood what I now understand. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise. I think there is still at least one more year of stuff to learn before I'm satisfied. Everything I learn and try is very exciting. Even though the learning curve for Java is a lot larger, I'm very very pleased with it. I told him I have equal respect for the .NET platform, except when people bash Java.