iPod Touch – a replacement for your old PDA?
Suppose you were a PDA purist who doesn’t want to go down the convergence pathway. If you have an old Palm TX or Dell Axim which is about to die, what are your options today? Very limited indeed. I think HP has a few models, but Dell and Palm have stopped making PDAs.
I was thinking, perhaps, in the shadow of all that iPhone 3G hype, the iPod Touch might make a suitable replacement PDA for some? After all it has basically all the features of the iPhone 3G, minus the camera and phone functions, at the fraction of the cost of an unlocked model.
The key applications which make a successful PDA suitable for doctors are:
1) PIM management. I believe the iPod Touch can sync Calendars and Contacts with your Mac or PC (e.g. Outlook). However in the Memos and Tasks area, I think it is lacking (Mac Heads please correct me here) but perhaps third party applications will make up for this deficiency.
2) Reader – once iSilo for the iPhone/iPod touch is available, that should be great for all the medical e-references in iSilo format
3) Third party medical applications. Many are available in PalmOS format. That will mean you will have to wait for Styletap to come up with their iPod/iPhone version, but it also will mean you will have to jailbreak your iPod touch
4) Native medical applications. Right now only a handful – notably Epocrates – are available. But watch this space as more developers are jumping onto the iPhone bandwagon.
5) Browser – Safari on the iPhone/iPod is great. If you have Wifi available at most places then the connectivity will get you various medical applications which reside in the “cloud” rather than on your device.
So will the iPod Touch make a good replacement for your aging PDA? It depends on your needs. If your PIM requirements are not stringent, and you need only Epocrates as a drug reference, then you could get it now. Otherwise I think you should wait at least until iSilo and Styletap are released.
If you already have a smartphone such as the Palm Centro but wish you had Wifi and the larger, better browser that is Safari, then perhaps you could also consider the iPod Touch as a mobile companion.
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About the author, Alan: Alan Teh is a Malaysian Physician who specialises in Hematology-Oncology & Stem cell Transplantation. He has been using Palm PDAs since 1997 and is absolutely reliant on them. His current PDA is a Palm Pre and is a strong advocate of the webOS platform, Palm's latest operating system. Caught the blogging bug in 2004 and has been addicted ever since… |
I have something to say here… hmmm.. but bit sensitive.. iphone has lots app for medic especially from modality such as those netter’s atlas.. but each will cost $40! palm and Windows Mobile have lots cracked app so i think is better..iphone hard to get cracked app and troublesome to transfer files.. not direct copy and paste though windows
I’m not a doctor (nor do I play one on TV) but I came across your site while searching for information on iSilo for the iPhone.
I just picked up an iPod Touch 32 gig from the Apple Store the other day, and it is definitely the way to go. It holds twice as much stuff as the biggest iPhone, will not kick your monthly phone charge up to smartphone rates (if you do not already have a smartphone) and does pretty much everything an iPhone does except snap photos and make calls. And you can get it for $500 new, or $400 refurbished.
(You may want to wait until September, though. There are rumors that something new will be coming out then to drive iPhone/iTouch prices down further. I probably should have waited, too, but I wanted my new toy.)
I’ve written a comprehensive review of the e-book reading options currently available for the iPhone/iTouch:
http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/08/23/iphone-e-book-review/
It doesn’t include iSilo, but I used to be a big iSilo user on my old Palm, so you can bet I’ll be reviewing it when it comes out!
P.S. Battery life is a lot better on the iPod Touch, too, especially if you remember to keep WiFi turned off when you are not using it. Experiments by the founder of e-book vendor Fictionwise have found it to be good for an average of 8-12 hours’ reading time at normal backlight levels.
Thanks for the feedback and your ebook roundup for the iPod/Iphone is really good!
I am not a doctor, but I came across your site via Google search.
I have a Palm T|X that has been sitting in my desk draw for over a year. It was always crashing, the web browser was pretty much useless, and then it stopped syncing to my Windows computer at work. Mac syncing at home was always tenuous at best, but when the Windows sync started to fail, that really took it out of commission.
What finally got the Palm placed in my draw at home was the touch screen getting so far out of alignment, that it became unusable. Since then, I’ve been using my phone which I sync to my Mac. The calendar and address books sync, but entering new information is tedious at best.
I started looking at the iPod Touch since it came out as a replacement for my Palm T|X. I would have gotten an iPhone, but I don’t use AT&T service and I didn’t want to switch. Besides, there is something to say about having your PDA separate from your phone. How many times do you get a call, and you can’t jot down a note or look up your calendar because you’re PDA is sitting next to your ear. Many times, I have to tell the person I’ll call them back just so I can look up a phone number on my phone.
I didn’t get an iPod Touch because it was missing several important features. First of all, it was missing the ability to jot down notes or a ToDo list. It would be nice if these sync’d to my computer, but that’s not a deal breaker. Unfortunately, the iPod Touch didn’t have these applications.
When the Apps store came out, I took another look at the iPod Touch. I then realized that there was no speaker on it. That meant it couldn’t notify me of an up coming meeting. Not good for a PDA.
However, the latest model of the iPod Touch does come with an external speaker and it can now beep when you have an appointment. Plus, even more applications have now come out making it even more useful.
Even better, I can sync my Google calendar to both my Windows Exchange calendar and my iCal calendar on my Mac. That means syncing the iPod Touch to my Mac, and have all my work and home items on it.
At $299, it’s the same price of the Palm T|X, but with 16Gb of memory instead of only 128Mb. And, it syncs to my Mac without any problems, has a better browser, and will be more dependable.
I bought my first Palm back in the Palm III days, and had bought a new Palm almost every other year. I use to joke about my Palm III, “This is my brain. This [my Palm III] is my brain on two AA batteries.” I depended heavily upon my Palm, but my experience with the Palm T|X has soured me on the company.
I will be picking up a new iPod Touch in a few days as soon as I can get down to the store. I was thinking of waiting for Apple to start selling refurbished models, but I can’t wait that long.
“How many times do you get a call, and you can’t jot down a note or look up your calendar because you’re PDA is sitting next to your ear”.
David, if making a phonecall with the iPhone, you can switch to the speaker mode (keep talking normally) and go to another app such as notes, contacts, safari, calculator, etc without loosing the call.
Kevin987,
You can do exactly as you suggest, be on a call, swithc to speaker phone and then go to whatever app you need including the web browser on the 3g.