Organizing your life with PDA's

October 8, 1995
Web posted at: 2 p.m. EDT

From Correspondent Lori Waffenschmidt

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Personal digital assistants -- PDA's for short -- are helping organize the lives of people on the go. The powerful pocket-size computers are designed to go anywhere and do many of the things a bigger PC can. Here's a look at several of these miniature computing marvels.

The Marco and The Envoy are both "wireless communicators" made by Motorola.

The Marco is compatible with Apple Newton devices. It's about the same size and has the same function as a paper organizer. You can take notes, file them for future reference, keep track of your appointments, and maintain an index of business cards that look exactly like business cards. The Marco can send and receive radio mail, and it has handwriting recognition. Rather than typing in notes or other data on its tiny keyboard, which is tedious and time- consuming, you can use a stylus to write them in. The Marco then translates the written words into typeface.

But as it turns out, handwriting recognition (15K JPEG image) is both a Marco selling point and its biggest disappointment. It doesn't recognize handwriting all that well -- in fact, the little keyboard turns out to be the fastest way to get words into the Marco, after all.

The Envoy is similar to the Marco except it's compatible with the Sony MagicLink. It won't recognize your handwriting, but it has a lot of features to help you organize your life and communicate. On the screen of the Motorola Envoy is a desk with a telephone, a card index, "in" and "out" boxes, a notepad, a calendar and a filing cabinet. Using a stylus, you can activate any of these, like making a phone call, with a simple light tap on the touch-sensitive screen.

To send a written message to someone, activate the Envoy's wireless feature by tapping the antenna to switch the power on, which links us to the RadioMail network. Next, choose a recipient from the index. Now a fax message can be sent by regular phone line or, by clicking on the stamp icon in the corner, by radio signal. The Envoy tells you the transmission is under way and whistles when it's done.

It is a lot of work, even without the frustration of trying to use the tiny internal keyboard to type the message. Unless you absolutely need to have the latest toy, give some thought to getting a laptop computer instead. You may get more done.

Sharp Electronics calls its Zaurus a "K-PDA," describing it as keyboard-enhanced. It has one of the biggest small keyboards around and it's almost easy to use -- the keys have a sure touch and are widely spaced. The Zaurus tries to combine the best of both keyboard and pen computing with the inclusion of a stylus.

The software in the Zaurus doesn't recognize your handwriting, but the stylus helps to navigate and is useful for drawing diagrams and taking quick notes. The Zaurus links together different records, keeping track of activities, contacts, notes and documents.

The Hewlett Packard 200LX Palmtop PC will run off-the-shelf DOS software. It's about the size of a checkbook and weighs in at just under 11 ounces. This tiny wonder answers the demands of those who want a hand-held organizer with the functions of a compatible personal computer. The 200LX also has a built-in keyboard. The keys are small, with the same look and positive feel of the popular HP calculators. The Palmtop comes with an impressive collection of popular pre-loaded programs, including Lotus 123, Quicken and cc:Mail. A PCMCIA slot lets you plug in a modem (18K JPEG image) for data communications or add a flash disk for more storage capacity. As a compatible computer, it stands alone in the personal digital assistant category.

Organizing your life with PDA's

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