PDA Buying Guide

Why should you be considering purchasing a PDA for third year?

PDAs (personal digital assistants) have evolved in recent years from fancy electronic organizers to small handheld computers with significant computing power. They have become ubiquitous in the medical field and are heavily relied upon for their ability to store large amounts of useful information that can be quickly accessed in a small form factor.

There are several different PDA operating systems to choose from including Palm, Pocket PC (PPC), Symbian, and Linux. I will focus on two, Palm OS and Pocket PC because they are the two operating systems that have the most software available, particularly medical software.

Palm OS based handheld devices (Palm, Handspring, & Sony CLIÉ) have long enjoyed dominance in the medical field because they preceded Pocket PC devices, have tons of software available, and were relatively inexpensive compared to the Pocket PC devices.

That has changed recently with the availability of several new Pocket PC devices (Dell Axim, HP ipaq H1910, etc.) that are priced similarly to Palm devices and the availability of a considerable amount of medical software for the Pocket PC (including the popular ePocrates Pro drug database).

So in the present market I think that either Palm OS based devices or Pocket PC based devices can be considered similarly good choices for a PDA to use on the wards. For most of you your choice will be determined primarily by these three factors: price $$, what capabilities you desire, and personal preference.

A reasonable approach to your purchase

1. Realize that this technology is rapidly advancing and that what you buy today will be relatively outdated soon in the future (you may be in the market for a new PDA when you are starting your residency).
2. Also realize that although PDAs can be very powerful computing devices, they are not intended to be used as stand alone computers (they need a personal computer to synchronize with to back-up data and access the internet).
3. Determine what you want to use your PDA for:
   1. Simply as an organizer?
   2. Simply as a platform for a mobile drug database?
   3. Mobile drug database plus collection of reference titles?
   4. Connectivity options?
      1. E-mail
      2. Wireless Web
   5. Picture viewer?
   6. mp3 player?
   7. Other uses (which there are many!)
4. Consider platform (Palm vs. Pocket PC)
5. Consider what type of OS your home computer has (compatibility issues)
6. Consider amount of device memory and expandability
7. Consider recommendations from current students and faculty members
8. Consider price
9. Based on 3-8, decide which PDA will offer the utility that you desire.

Let's talk bout memory

Memory is an important consideration when choosing a device for two reasons. The first reason is storage capacity and this is important for both Palm and PPC devices. The second reason is for operating system use and this is pertinent mostly to PPC devices.

Storage capacity is a pretty straightforward concept; if you want to keep more info on your PDA, you need a place to store it = storage memory. This can be greatly augmented by the addition of a storage card (SD, MMC, or CF; depends on the device), which can provide huge amounts of room for data storage. There is one caveat though, not all applications will run correctly from storage cards; this applies to both Palm and PPC devices. Therefore you should always check with the software vendor and see if an application that you are purchasing will run from a storage card, especially if you plan on running it from one! For medical applications, Skyscape (http://www.skyscape.com) is one company that offers nicely integrated medical applications for Palm and Pocket PC devices that run natively from storage cards.

System memory, the memory that the operating system uses to run the programs on your device, is handled similarly on Palm and Pocket PC devices, with a few differences.

Some newer Palm devices always sequester a minimum amount of memory and use more when needed. For example, the Palm Tungsten T always utilizes 2 MB of the onboard memory for the operating system and thus only makes 14 MB of the 16 MB of onboard memory available for storage. Other Palm devices don't sequester such a large amount of the onboard memory and only use the amount necessary to run the open applications.

Pocket PC devices, by default, dynamically try to balance the amount of onboard memory between a storage block and a program block. Users can override this dynamic allocation and determine how much of the onboard memory is used for storage and how much is used for programs.

One thing that you will notice is that Pocket PC devices have considerably more onboard memory (up to 64 MB) than Palm devices (up to 16 MB). This has some advantages, but does not necessarily mean that Pocket PC devices are better than Palm devices. The principal reason for this difference is the PPC operating system is significantly more complex (not necessarily more efficient though!) than the Palm operating system and PPC programs are significantly bigger than similar programs on Palm devices, therefore the PPC needs more memory to do the same job as the Palm. The advantages of this difference are the PPC has a slightly more advanced user interface than the Palm based devices and more memory onboard for program and data storage.

The bottom line on memory is if you plan on storing large amounts of data or programs (ebooks, medical applications, drug databases, etc..), make sure that the device you purchase has enough memory for what you intend to use. I would recommend devices with 32-64 MB of memory for the Pocket PC platform and devices with 8-16 MB of memory for the Palm platform. Don't forget to consider storage cards!

Operating System: Palm vs. Pocket PC

Choose a Palm OS 4.0/4.1 based device if you would like a simple, easy-to-use electronic organizer that will enjoy significant compatibility with other medical professionals and has a very broad repertoire of software available. These devices also have great battery life and are very friendly to the budget.

Choose a Palm OS 5.0 based device if you want to be on the cutting edge of the Palm community as far as new technologies and more features that will be enabled because of the new ARM-based processors used in these devices. Beware though, they are slightly more $$ than Palm OS 4.0/4.1 devices. They retain much of the simple easy-to-use Palm interface. Also, not all Palm OS 4.0/4.1 applications will run on OS 5.0.

Pocket PC has lots of powerful features beyond a simple personal information manager. A Win32 based operating system, PPC is designed to work only with MS Windows based computers. There is no native Mac support (You can run Microsoft active sync under the Virtual PC program though). The operating system is designed to take advantage of the many connectivity options that are available for the platform. A specific example of the powerful networking features built into the operating system: The ability to access your personal folder on the doctrina server at school through a wireless networking connection to the WUSM wireless network. If you like Microsoft Windows, would like to have Microsoft networking access, are interested in wireless networking, or would like to take advantage of the constantly emerging repertoire of powerful software for the PPC platform then you will find a PPC device to be a good fit.

If you are not sure which type of operating system you would like I would encourage you to go to one of the retail establishments here in town, either Best Buy or CompUSA, and play around with the different devices and see which operating system that you like. Both of the stores that I mentioned have a pretty decent selection of PDAs in stock and available for customers to play around with.

Wireless technologies

Wifi is here! If you haven't heard, the medical school is currently investing in expanding the coverage area of the current high-speed wireless network (802.11b) to include the entire medical school campus (this does not include Barnes-Jewish or Children's Hospital).

I have asked them to explore the idea of setting up a few wireless hotspots in the Wash U computer stations in Barnes that are maintained by ITLS. This would provide to students wireless network access for Wifi equipped laptops or PDAs. Currently, the Pocket PC platform has significantly better Wifi hardware and operating system support than the Palm platform. Sony has released two new Palm OS 5.0 based devices that are Wifi capable with a proprietary Sony Wifi card. However, at the present time the Wash U Wireless network only supports the Pocket PC Platform! A Palm solution is in the works and may be implemented later down the road if development is successful.

If you are interested in learning how you can use Wireless networking with a PPC based PDA, please contact me personally and I would be happy to speak with you about it.

Some Specific Devices to Consider

Palm based

• Sony CLIÉ family of handhelds
  (nice range of features from $ to $$$$, 16 MB memory, expandable)
• Palm Tungsten T
  (Palm OS 5.0, fast processor, nice screen, 16 MB memory, expandable, $$$)
• Palm m500/m515
  (capable, popular, 16 MB memory, expandable)
• Palm m105/m125/m130
  (more budget friendly; 8 MB memory, m125/m130 are expandable)
• Handspring Visor and Visor pro
  (good values; 8 MB/16 MB memory respectively, springboard expansion modules)

Pocket PC

• Dell Axim X5
  (300/400 MHz processor, 32/64 MB RAM, Pocket PC 2002, great screen, expandable, great value)
• HP ipaq H1910
  (200 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, Pocket PC 2002, great screen, smallest PPC, expandable, great value)
• ViewSonic V35
  (300 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, Pocet PC 2002, compact size, expandable)
• HP ipaq 3800/3900
  (200/400 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, Pocket PC 2002, 3900 has bright screen, expandable, expansion sleeves)
• HP ipaq 5400
  (400 MHz, 64 MB RAM, Pocket PC 2002, Wireless (802.11b and Bluetooth), great screen, expandable, expansion sleeves, $$$$$)
• Toshiba e330
  (300 MHz, 64 MB RAM, Pocket PC 2002, expandable, small size, great value)
• Toshiba e750
  (400 MHz, 96 MB storage (64 MB RAM/32 MB NAND), Wireless (802.11b), great screen, dual expansion slots, $$$$)
  • (Toshiba e740 is a similar slightly older model that suffered from having a particularly bad screen)

These lists are not by any means all inclusive, are not organized in any particular order, but represent some of the different models available that provide a range of capabilities from budget models to power models with lots of features. Please see the websites below for more comprehensive lists of available devices.

Medical Software

There has been a large amount of medical software available for the Palm OS for quite some time. More recently there has been an explosion of software available for the Pocket PC that has almost brought the platform up to par with Palm for medical software availability.

There is a mixture of freeware and purchasable software that can be found on the web. It is usually cheaper to purchase the software online and download it verses buying it packaged at the medical bookstore for example.

I'll mention a few software titles here that you should be aware of specifically. Look to the end of this document for a fairly comprehensive list of web sites that have lots of medical software available.

http://medicine.wustl.edu/~wumpi/buying-guide-wu.htm