inessential by Brent Simmons

Thinking about the Palm TX, maybe

I have a cell phone—but it’s a basic, plain phone. Not a Blackberry or Treo or anything.

I was thinking it would be cool to get something where I could get my email, read my (synced!) feeds, even browse the web.

But then, I was looking at these cool phones, and from everything I’ve read they sound slow and under-powered.

One option was to go with the latest Palm PDA instead. The TX includes Wi-Fi support, so it would actually be relatively fast, which is important. It wouldn’t connect to the Internet when I’m out of range of a network, but that’s not that big a deal.

(I’m a long-time Palm OS user—my current PDA is way old, though: it’s a Handspring visor. Yes, Handspring.)

I think that, eventually, the smartphones thing will be the way to go, and PDAs won’t exist as separate products anymore. But I’m just not sure the phones are ready yet for people like me who are so profoundly impatient.

But I’m just thinking out loud. What do you think? Are any of the current phones good to go? Or is there some other PDA that’s better? Or...?