Whispers from the Myth Teller

A couple of years ago, I picked up a Palm Pilot m130. It's got a color screen and is useful for phone numbers, notes, and has a couple of games. Last week, on ebay, I won a Logitech keyboard for it. I figure this keyboard will make it easier to take notes when I do interviews with folks.

But being on ebay again, I spotted some decent deals on more advanced PDAs like the Compaq and HP iPAQs. They've got WiFi, MS Office apps, Bluetooth, and just more power overall. Gak... such temptation.

But I don't know if I need all that power. I barely use my Palm m130 as it is (although that might change with the keyboard), but if it had more power, would I use it more? With my laptop, I do presentations (with a projector), work on documents, surf the web, and play a few games. But it's freakin' heavy and a more powerful PDA could handle a few of those things quite well.

So I keep checking the ebay listings, searching for that good deal. Any PDA users out there? How useful are they to you and is more power necessarily better?

I've been suffering for the past few months because my old cell phone got water damage during the summer, so I had to borrow someone else's phone until November (I would then qualify for a new phone).

So I walked into Ma Bell's shop to get my new phone. I had already checked a few phones out online and picked the Motorolla. It had all the bells and whistles (I thought) and the price wasn't bad (I thought).

When we finally rang the whole thing up, it was going to cost twice the amount I expected to pay. I winced at the price, but I thought it might be worth it for all the bells and whistles.

Getting the phone home and going through the manual, I found out that I'd probably have to drop another $150 to get the bells to ring and the whistles to toot.

Geez dude... I walked in to get a phone and instead you sold me the Ginsu Knife Set of phones. I don't need it to play MP3s, take pictures, take videos, do my taxes, raise my children, and destroy my enemies by burying them in an ocean of long distance text messages.

I have 14 days to exchange it, so I'll be exchanging it for a phone that costs about $200 less. Still, being a gadget guy, I'll miss the bell/whistle potential this phone had.