PDAs Touch Almost All Aspect Of Life

It was in 1984 that PDA first came into being with Psion in United Kingdom. A new genre in handheld computer was defined and emerged with this launch. Apple and Palm Computing joined soon by launching their own versions. By the end of 1990s Palm Pilot established itself as the most popular PDA. Word processors, Games and web browsing were included.

Personal Information Manager applications including a notebook, diary, some games, address and phone book, common reference material and handwriting recognition software were what were incorporated into the PDAs earlier. Programs such as To-do list, Diary/scheduler, Drawing application, Notepad, Calculator, Finance software, Alarms, Organizer, File manager, World time, Data synchronization, Voice recorder and Printer connection were added. With wireless connections web browser and the Email were added. The other programs that were included were Spell checker, Word processor, Spreadsheet and Custom dictionary. Tracking of movement as well as planning of trips whether traveling by sea, air, or land irrespective of the means of transport, and customized maps and directions were possible with the addition of Global Positioning System (GPS). Travel plans could be detailed with the Route Planner application launched by Palmtop Software. This could be done merely with the starting as well as the destination points. Or this could be done by pointing and simply clicking on a map on the places of visit or places to be avoided in order to produce a precise route map. All you need is a few clicks with the fingers to make the route map as well as the travel plan ready. Applications such as the Word, Excel and PowerPoint from Microsoft joined the assortment of functions.

PDAs available in the market included Palm TX, HP iPAQ hw6515, Dell Axim X51v, HP iPAQ hw6900 Mobile Messenger, HP iPAQ Pocket PC 2215, HP iPAQ h6315, HTC Advantage X7501, Palm Tungsten E2, Palm Treo 755p, RIM BlackBerry Curve (8300), Apple iPhone and many more.

The PDA application expanded to cover other aspects of life such as shopping, specialized Internet services like stock quotes, weather, foreign exchange rates, maps and sports scores, and mobile banking,. The PDA transformed into an e-book reader, a mobile web browser, a photo wallet and an alarm clock amongst others. PDAs became smaller, versatile and compact with the convergence of technologies along with programs covering almost all dimensions of practical life.