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Welcome back. This is Part 3 of a multi part series on Choosing a PDA. Here’s a list of the top 10 things you should consider when choosing a PDA:

1 - Standalone PDA or all-in-one smartphone?
2 - Wireless connectivity?
3 - Touchscreen or non-touchscreen PDA?
4 - Graffiti or on-screen input or keyboard/keypad input?
5 - Palm, Pocket PC, Blackberry or other similar devices?
6 - Screen resolution
7 - Memory (RAM)
8 - Battery (life and removable or non-removable characteristics)
9 - Processing power (clock speed)
10 - Expandability and accessories

So, we’re now on #3: Touchscreen or non touchscreen PDA

Most PDAs (not all) are touchscreen input PDAs. That means, your method of inputting data or information into the device is via the touchscreen, or the glass/plastic screen, the place where you also view the contents of the device. So, the screen acts in two ways: to provide you with a visual representation of what you’ve stored as well as an area where you can input data into the device. Most (not all) PDAs that have a touchscreen may not have a QWERTY style keyboard/pad since it’s expected that you can input most of the data via the touchscreen. This can obviously allow the device to be a lot smaller in size, or even allow the viewable area to increase in size without physically making it too big to hold in the hand.

Having a touchscreen can have its advantages and disadvantages, as with most things in life.

Advantages of touchscreen include:

- possible larger viewable area and input since the device doesn’t need any space for a keyboard or keypad. Also, the device size may be smaller since there’s no need for keyboards.

- ability to use your finger, or your fingernails to tap or input data into the device (nice when you don’t want to fiddle with getting the stylus/pen out)

- sleeker and sexier looking without rows of keys sticking out.

Disadvantages of touchscreen include:

- learning the inputting method (ie. Graffiti, Graffiti 2, Block recognizer, etc) to input characters correctly in the device. Surprisingly, you do have to learn to write your “A”s a little bit different than you are normally used to. Some may find it frustrating to learn

- scratched screen may affect accuracy of data input and character recognition. It’s always a good idea to protect the input area/touchscreen with a screen protector so that you don’t scratch the surface over time and find that it isn’t recognizing your stylus taps or touchscreen input as well as it used to

- may be costly to replace the glass and/or the sensitive digitizer when it is broken

That’s about it regarding the touchscreen. It may seem strange to be scribbling a plastic pen on the same screen you’re looking at, but normally, most of us get used to that very quickly. Alternatively, there are some PDAs that do not have a touchscreen and the glass/plastic screen is just that, a visual screen to view the visual representation of contents in the device.

Here are the advantages of a non-touchscreen PDA device:

- Scratching the screen will not affect the inputting or accuracy of data input since you are not inputting via the screen. Of course, having a scratched screen isn’t nice when you have to look through it, but in terms of inputting, it doesn’t affect it.

- your view of the screen is not obstructed when you are inputting data since you aren’t writing or touching the screen.

Here are the disadvantages of a non-touchscreen PDA device:

- Sometimes it can be very easy to just use your finger to tap a few things on the screen to do a few simple things. Not having a touchscreen requires you to press the hardware buttons. Depending on what you’re doing, you may have to press quite a number of buttons before you get to where you want to be.

- Obviously, with a non-touch screen, the PDA will need the extra space to add in the QWERTY keyboard/keypad so the size of the PDA may be larger than a similarly sized touchscreen PDA

That’s a wrap on the Touchscreen or non touchscreen PDA. We will continue on with Part 4: Graffiti on screen input or keyboard/keypad input

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