Choosing the right PDA

GIZMOGEEK

Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are a confusing breed. With prices that range from Rs 30,000-50,000, these are the ultimate accessories for high-flying executives.

These are meant to help with personal information management functions like email and calendaring and read spreadsheets. Here's comparing three debutantes:

O2 Atom Exec
The O2 Xda Atom Exec is an upgrade from the original Xda Atom with speed and performance being the priority. With a price tag of Rs 41,990, O2's Exec is expected to deliver.

Menu navigation is either through a stylus or the few hardware buttons that lie just below the 2.7 inch, 240x320 touch screen. As there is no built-in keyboard, writing lengthy emails takes significantly more time, but nevertheless, the unit's handwriting recognition is in top condition. The Exec uses a 520MHz Intel processor and 192MB of ROM. Connectivity options include 802.11b Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 1.2,

Infrared and tri-band (900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM/GPRS/EDGE. The battery life, however, is only around five hours.

The other main addition to the Atom is O2's Media Plus application. This is a music player, FM radio, picture viewer and video player all in one. It's almost identical to Windows Media Player and is very easy to use.

Dopod C800
Dopod's C800, a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE device worth Rs 45,101, is based on HTC's slide-out. The QWERTY keyboard is comfortable and spread widely.

Very much like a 3G phone, it has a two megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, with stereo audio, 240 x 320 display, 802.11b Wi-Fi, 64 MB of RAM, 128 MB of ROM and a MicroSD card. What seems worth a mention is the sturdy battery life that gives excellent support up to 7.5 hours.

The phone is topped by Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0's DirectPush Technology, Outlook Mobile, MS Office Mobile , Adobe Reader, IE Mobile, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile and Web surfing.

i-Mate JAQ
This phone is very affordable at Rs 25,000 considering that it does not compromise on the features "" well not much. It has a 320x240 screen, 64 MB of RAM with a mini SD slot for expansion, Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera and a 128 MB ROM, that runs Windows Mobile 5 unhindered.

It does not have a quick-dial feature however, which means you have to enter the "contacts" screen and then begin typing, which is one step too many.

On the whole, the JAQ is a terrific internet device but the performance of the TI OMAP processor is low, especially under moderate-to-heavy multi-tasking.