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Welcome back to Palm Discovery.net. This is Part 9 of Palm Discovery.net’s 10 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

9 - Processing power (clock speed)

Processing power, as it sounds, is the speed or power of the processor of the device. Think of it as the motor of a car. The more horsepower it has, the faster and more powerful the car is. The same can apply to PDAs. With respect to PDA, we are referring to the processor and more specifically, to the clock speed of the processor. Just as similar to horsepower, the higher the number of the processor, measured in mhz (megahertz), the more power or faster the PDA can run.

Now, as with practically everything, there are advantages and disadvantages with having a faster or more powerful processor. Think power and you must think electricity, or more specifically, battery supplied electricity power. So, that means, the more powerful or faster the processor, the faster the battery will drain.

With that in mind, you may want to try to balance out between having a powerful PDA which will have a shorter battery life or a less powerful PDA with a longer battery life.

In my view, having a powerful PDA, if you use an over/underclocking app, can be very helpful. This way, you can maintain the power and speed of the PDA for tasks and applications that require the powerful processor but also be able to still have a better and longer battery life by underclocking the PDA during times when you are not using power intensive programs. If you settled on a less powerful PDA, you may be able to overclock it to a specific degree but it may be minimal at best and may cause your PDA to become much more unstable.

So, again, the choice is up to you but generally, the more processing power a PDA offers, the faster programs will run but that also means that the battery life will be shorter compared to that of a less powerful PDA.

That’s the end of this part on 9 - Processing power (clock speed). Please continue on to Part: 10 - Expandability and accessories.

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