Current mood:	frustrated
Current music:	Keane - Bend and Break

The search for a decent PDA

* - vs typical clothing (school uniform up to '02)
(✓) - yes, but not used
~ - unreliable / complications

The columns of this table are capabilities I would like to carry in a device on my person, in approximate order of current priority. Obviously, some of these aren't supplied as standard on the devices in question, and I also haven't tabulated some defining features that they all have, such as a calendar, nor things that are harder to quantify such as ease of input (the last three rows have QWERTY keyboards, a clear advantage). As you can see, it's a long and continuing search, and there will probably always exist better devices than what I have. It's not helped by the Palm devices, which I think have the best UI for this sort of thing, being chucked around between companies so often and having had a somewhat messy transition between processor architectures.

What's would really best suit me is the Access Linux Platform, on which you can run the numerous existing Palm (and J2ME) apps, and for which GTK apps can be easily built, but the first devices won't appear until at least June, so by the time something reliable in that family is affordable, my patience with the 9500 will definitely have long since worn out. Hence the Treo.

Something the table doesn't cover is the ease with which I can write my own apps. I have fond memories of dabbling in OPL on the Psion; unfortunately since then the only mobile development I've done has been in J2ME for my fourth-year project. I've investigated Symbian (e.g. the 9500) a bit as a development platform, but it seems much too dependent on Windows. It does at least seem possible to write my own Palm apps easily on Linux without any Windows emulation, assuming I can get my head around their APIs. This is something I look forward to doing once I get a Treo, and it appeals more because there are so many Palm devices already out there, and apps built now should, if I'm careful, run on most of them.

In conclusion: Dear Lazyweb,

• Given that I refuse to buy a Windows Mobile device, I think the two main contenders are Palm and Nokia, and am fairly sure that the Treo 680 is the best of those two manufacturers. Does anyone want to vehemently disagree / disrecommend on the basis of experience of a similar device?
• Do you know of any others that are useful? I know very little about BlackBerries, I don't suppose they're any good?
• Have any of you already written anything non-trivial for the Palm? If so:
  • How would you rate its developer-friendliness?
  • Do you have any relevant guides / HOWTOs / websites you could recommend? I have no problems building a Hello World app and running it on a device; what I'm after is something that walks through a semi-useful application, explaining how best to do things like UI, storage and, ideally, Bluetooth/networking.
• Do you know anywhere where a Treo 680 could be had more safely/cheaply/promptly than eBay?

Thanks.

Edit: I now have a Treo. :-)