Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Who Or What Is A Personal Digital Assistant?

By Owen Jones


A personal digital assistant or PDA is an electronic item a lot like a standard laptop computer, but smaller, normally the size of a book or magazine. They are like diaries or organizers but far more capable. They may be Wi-Fi-enabled in order to transmit and receive files, send and receive email and go on the Net.

in fact, not all PDA's are precisely the same size or have the same features, but they are all fairly comparable. People use them for taking notes, recording lectures, doing homework, writing pieces and reminding themselves of appointments among a hundred and one other jobs. The PDA is the tool of preference for people leading a busy career.

Some PDA's have full Net access and others will permit you to connect to a laptop or desktop computer in order to download or upload files for processing later. With these machines, you can download all your email, for instance, process it on the bus or the train on the way to the office and then plug your PDA into your office computer to send them once you arrive in the office.

More sophisticated PDA's will also connect to your office and home computers, but will actually go on the Net themselves. This means that you ought to synchronize your home and office computers with your PDA so that all your files and computers have the same copies of all your data. MS Windows has been using this notion for many years and called it 'Briefcase'.

The electronic briefcase is now reality and has been for a while. In fact, the laptop was the original PDA and what you can purchase now as a PDA is a cut-down version of the laptop-cum-notebook computer.

Some PDA's are really like notebooks in that you are able to take notes on the touch sensitive screen. A software program can read your handwriting, after being taught it, and convert it into typed text.

It can also convert typed text into your handwriting. Setting this feature of the PDA up may be quite tedious though with numerous errors taking place in the early days.

The PDA is like a desktop with all the tools that you would expect to find there and near it, such as a pen and pad, a calculator, a diary, a to-do-list, a calendar, a telephone book, an address book and even a cell phone or even VOIP, if it is connected to the Internet. Apart from these 'physical' desktop items, the PDA will almost certainly have a database and the ability to read ebooks.

Some PDA's will also record voice messages, take photos and even read ebooks and messages back to you. A PDA is a most helpful device if you have need of one.

They are handier than a laptop and lighter. They are not a substitute for a computer but rather should be regarded as an accessory to a computer to save you lugging the computer about.




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