Paradigm Shift

Well, the inevitable has finally happened — my PDA has died. The battery won’t hold a charge more than an hour or so, after which point it promptly loses all data. Oh, I can restore from my laptop, of course, but after doing that three times (and hosing my mailing lists once again as the hacked-together assemblage of syncing tools tries to merge data), I’ve come to accept that it ain’t coming back.

So now I’m in a bit of a quandary. It’d be easy if the iPhone were here already (and had passed through its initial growing pains), and I hadn’t just dropped a decent chunk of change on a new RAZR V3i, but that’s not the case. So any real solution is probably a year down the road.

I suppose I could go out and get a low-end PDA. Or try something with GPS capability (a gadget I’ve pretty much figured is an inevitable investment at some point), which even the amazing iPhone doesn’t offer.

But really, I think I might try going without the PDA for a while. Yes, it’ll mean looking at my calendar via iCal a lot more — though my phone does have limited calendar functions. And I’ll find myself taking notes on old-fashioned paper a lot more — though I find that, as a manager, I have more credibility that way anyway). And I’ll lose some of the cool PDA apps I’ve been using — though I don’t really look at pictures or (bad) video that often on it; I don’t cook enough to use the cookbook app (or at the least I could get one for my laptop, as I only cook at home anyway); the old Infocom Hitchhiker’s Guide game is available online (and we have high-speed access at home); and if I really apply myself, I can probably find a decent Java-based Sudoku game for the phone.

Still, this is a really tough decision for me. We’re talking a major lifestyle change — at least emotionally, if not practically. So if I start calling on you people for support, please be understanding. I’ve lost my assistant, and it looks like we’re not planning to backfill the position.