BYTE.com > Chaos Manor > 2004
Tools of the Trade
By Jerry Pournelle
October 11, 2004
(Tools of the Trade
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Column 290 (Continued from the Previous Week)
A PDA for the PhD
My daughter Jennifer recently was awarded her Ph.D. in Archaeological Anthropology. She's working with the State Department to help the University of Iraq restore its program in antiquities, so I knew she would soon be going over to the Middle East. I asked what she wanted for a graduation present.
She indicated that she needed a PDA, and any old PDA would do. I thought about that for a while, then consulted some of the BYTE gurus, including Ernest Lilley who spends a lot of time looking at such things. After some consultation I got Jenny the HP iPAQ h4155 Pocket PC and some accessories including the folding keyboard.
She was in Baghdad and Jordan for several weeks just after that, and the unit got a pretty thorough field test; and her reports are enthusiastic. It functions as a PDA, but she also finds that with the folding keyboard it's possible to take field notes in a bouncing Humvee when it wouldn't really be possible to do that with a pen and paper logbook. You can also use "tap the on-screen keyboard" to take notes in situations where you wouldn't be able to do pencil and paper logs; and the system works wonderfully for recording expenses in Pocket Excel.
You can also write on the Pocket Computer, embed voice recordings in that file, and later transcribe all of it. The voice recording capability turns out to be one of the more useful features, and she hadn't expected that since she has not habitually carried a tape recorder in the past. She was able to record a lot of notes, both voice and written, while at the Temple of Artemis, so there will now be captions for her digital photographs.
The wireless system Just Worked: while she was in Baghdad they set up a wireless network at their headquarters in Jordan. When she got there, the system informed her that wireless was available, and without consulting manuals she was able to turn it on, log in, and instantly be on the Internet, complete with mail.
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