Guest harbourf Posted June 8, 2005 Report Share Posted June 8, 2005 Your suggestions and recommendations on what PDA is appropriate for clerkship will be appreciated. Also, is now a good time to get one, or wait until September? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest CoconutSmasher Posted June 8, 2005 Report Share Posted June 8, 2005 Hey, I'm not a med student (yet), but have some experience with PDAs. I've also done a bit of info/tech stuff with evaluating PDAs in medicine. Anyway, my suggestion, from others in medicine, is to make sure that you go for function in the PDA. The bells and whistles of multimedia devices are really not worth the extra. I currently use a Palm Zire 72 and it is great. I would go for a T5 if I could as it has tons of memory, is very fast and doesn't have the camera and stuff. If you go Palm, definitely try the T5 or some other power tungsten device. If you are going the PPC route, then you have less of an issue as most of the devices are combos and include the multimedia stuff regardless. Major factors: Memory--make sure the RAM is high and that it is expandable of course. Battery life--PPCs suck batteries dry. The Palm units are generally better. Screen quality--you must try the units out at BestBuy or something to see how your eyes feel. Platform (OS)--most applications are now made for both platforms, however, the Palm platform has SO much stuff available already. Personal opinion: The palm OS is designed to be a PDA from the ground up. It is smaller and more efficient code because of this. Therefore=function. The PPC is windows which is @#%$ code and is huge. The new PPCs are definitely better, so it would be personal preference. I prefer the Palm as I have a laptop to cover those needs. I hope something was useful. As for when to buy, check Palm's site and the Microsoft site and some PDAbuyersguide.com to see if new models are coming soon; if so, then wait, if not then do some research and you'll be ready to buy in a month or so. Peace, Stuart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hash Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 How necessary/useful is a PDA in the preclinical years? And I mean strictly in terms of its medical applications. The calendar, contact book, etc... aren't too important to me as I use my cellphone for contacts and my university-issued ''agenda'' book for scheduling. Will I need to look up drug names etc..and whatever else its used for in a medical setting in years 1 and 2? Or should I just wait till clerkship? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TimmyMax Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 Hey, Personally, I'd hold off on the PDA until clerkship or slightly before- in pre-clerkship, you have all of your textbooks sitting around your place to look stuff up with and the information in there will be more complete and easier to read than on a PDA. Unless, of course, you are somebody who can't wait until they get home and has to look something up immediately, then sure, go ahead and buy a PDA, but just bear in mind that the sooner you do take the plunge, the greater the likelihood that your model will be obsolete by the time clerkship rolls around! Best of luck! Timmy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hash Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 thanks for the insider info there. i guess the computer geek inside me just wanted a new little tech toy to play with. 8o i think i'm going to hold off till year 3 rolls around. hmm... maybe an ipod instead... although it has nothing to do with the pda really Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest harbourf Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 Knowing nothing about PDAs, I'd appreciate if you could please provide a list of 2 or 3 that I should be considering. Dell's Ad in yesterday's newspaper listed an Axim X50 416MHz at $359. Dell's Rep suggested buying the Axim X50V instead which is at a higher price. He also said to customize it (cover, headset, anti-virus software, upgraded memory card, games, and many others I didn't take note of). What, if any should I buy with a PDA? And would this still be useful for residency? The Rep said insurance for $138/2 years, or $79/1 year is important because the PDA only comes with very limited warranty. With insurance, he said their tech will come and pick up the PDA instead of the customer sending it out (!). That sounds really good, but our recent experience with insurance on tech products (laptop/different company) was quite disappointing. Would you buy insurance for a PDA? Are there any products out there that combine PDA and Cell Phone? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest peachy Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 I bought a Dell Axim x50v yesterday for $389 CAD, as part of the "Dell 10 Days of Deals" sale. They feature one set of products each day for much-reduced prices, eg the x50v was $210 off. They have these several times a year, and I wasn't in a particular rush, so I waited until I could get it on sale. I would avoid buying most accessories at Dell, because you can get them for a better price elsewhere. I especially wouldn't buy memory or software from them! Software is usually try-before-you-buy on the web, and memory will almost certainly be overpriced on the Dell site. I did buy an extended battery from them because you need to be careful with 3rd-party batteries and I didn't want to worry about it for the $30 or so that I could have saved. I didn't get any extended warranty. I don't think it's worth the money on a product that becomes obsolete so quickly, particularly when they're charging 1/3 of the price! There are lots of products that combine PDA and Cell phone. The Audiovox one that Telus was selling recently (don't know if they still have the promotion on) was an amazing deal. It was $399-ish on a 3-year contract. I would have gotten it if it wouldn't have meant giving up my phone number! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest harbourf Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 Thanks for your replies. How does the Dell X50V compare to the T5? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hash Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 The HP iPaq's now combine phone service + PDA functionality (PocketPC). Rogers has them available for about 500bucks i think (on a contract). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TimmyMax Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 Hey, Another thing to consider, which is what our class and other classes have done, is to wait until you are in medical school, get a bunch of people together and decide on a PDA model you all can agree on and then approach a dealer about a mass purchase- sometimes you can get great deals on accessories, carrying cases and other little goodies if you act en masse as opposed to on your own. Just a thought! Best of luck! Timmy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wattyjl Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 omg peachy... that is a ridiculously good price... how did you find out about it? one day doesn't seem like much time to let people know.... i'm banging my head as now of course it's only a mere 60 bucks off.... and i agree, i rarely if ever buy extended warrantee's, etc., as a lot of technology these days is disposable. i might consider it if i was buying a tv i was going to keep for 8yrs, but on a computer or anything computer related? no point... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest swedeboy Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 Hi peachy, I just wanted to make sure you knew about this other special that CMA members receive. Special offers for cma.ca Members on Dell Computers and Peripherals. Personal Computers: Buy a Dell Dimension PC or an Inspiron laptop from Dell Canada and receive 3 years of onsite service ($159 value) absolutely free.* Business Systems: Buy a Dell Optiplex network PC or Latitude laptop from Dell Canada and receive a 10% discount on your purchase price.* Peripherals: Get a 10% discount on all Dell Peripherals (e.g. printers, projectors, handhelds).* * In addition to any existing specials and discounts. You'll need to log in to cma.ca > Store > Specials in order to find the contact info for the gentleman at Dell that will give you this deal. Just thought I'd let you know so you can save another $40-$50. I'm just hoping this isn't too late. Have a good one. swedeboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest peachy Posted June 9, 2005 Report Share Posted June 9, 2005 Wow, swedeboy, I had no idea about the cma discount! I emailed the contact person there; maybe there's something they can do about it now. Thanks for letting me know! Now I'm going to have to go through the whole store to see if there are other deals I'm missing out on! Watty, Dell from time to time (maybe 3-4x a year?) runs a promotion called "10 Days of Deals". Each day they have a separate item on sale for a really good price, and there's always a day with a handheld (as well as a day with a printer, with a hard drive, etc). I knew that I wanted to buy an Axim, so I waited until this sale, and snatched it. I always watch redflagdeals.com as well. I know, it's a great deal - and with the extra 10% off from the CMA?? That would be just about the best price you could possibly find it for. Harbourf, I won't compare the specs of the T5 vs x50v here, because you can google them as well as I can. But it seems to me that the x50v generally has better specs (VGA screen, larger screen, more memory, faster processor, etc) but that the T5 looks nicer and probably doesn't need as much processor speed etc because Palm OS runs faster. I really think it boils down to which OS you want. I think that the most important thing is to decide what you want it for, and then pick based on that. Personally, I had no illusions that I needed this thing in any way I bought it because I wanted to be able to watch movies, listen to music and audiobooks, and play games when I travel. The fact that I can download cool medical applications is just a bonus! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Icarus Posted June 10, 2005 Report Share Posted June 10, 2005 The CMA store also has deals on other PDAs and software that you might want to check out. If you have just been accepted to medical school you'll need to send in your CMA membership form before you can sign in to the store. Definitely worth checking out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Koppertone Posted June 10, 2005 Report Share Posted June 10, 2005 I did a bunch of research to decide what PDA to get. I eventually decided to get a Palm Tungsten E2. I haven't gotten it yet so can't say much but I'll tell you why I picked it. First Palm has more software support. If you get a PPC you'll be fine for software, but Palm just had a bunch of neat little apps that I liked. There are some Palm problems though.. OS6 has been put on hold and there are rumors that Palm might be moving over to Windows software, effectively making the existing OS5 irrelevant. But I thought I'd chance it (since it is just a rumor). I picked the E2 hardware for two main reasons. First the battery life is supposed to be incredible. Second it uses flash memory, which unlike the memory in other Palm Pilots, doesn't erase itself when the battery dies. The last thing I wanted was to be on vacation for a few weeks, come back and have everything on my Palm gone because I forgot to leave it charging (and judging from my cell phone, I know that I would). However if you want cool features I'd say go with the Dell or possibly the new Palm Lifedrive. They're designed more with multimedia in mind, so if you really want those features that's the route to go. I've heard negative reviews about the T5, so do a little google research if you're thinking of buying that model. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest cheech10 Posted June 10, 2005 Report Share Posted June 10, 2005 Although the Palm memory is erased when the battery dies, there is a backup on the computer that you hotsync with, so it is all recopied the next time you hotsync. The only thing you lose is whatever was added since the last hotsync (usually 1 day to 1 week of appointments depending on the frequency of hotsyncing). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Icarus Posted June 10, 2005 Report Share Posted June 10, 2005 I've been doing a lot of research on Palm products as well. I'll certainly be buying a Palm over a PPC. A few points to consider when thinking about Palms. . . The LifeDrive has 4GB of memory. That is significantly more than any of the other Palm options and probably it's biggest selling feature for me. I'm pretty confident that this is what my next major purchase will be. The Tungsten C has a built in keyboard which I thought might be nice but since I have a laptop I don't really expect to be doing much typing into my Palm. It's limited in built in memory but you can buy expansion chips to solve that problem if you really want to. I actually like the T5 as well. The only thing that I wish it had was the voice memo feature that the LifeDrive and C have. I'm way to lazy to write out all the memo's that I make throughout the day. The Palm site has great comparison features if you're thinking of buying a Palm. www.palmone.com/ca/products/compare/ And the CMA's price for a LifeDrive is about $50 less than Future Shop or Best Buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Icarus Posted June 10, 2005 Report Share Posted June 10, 2005 Someone mentioned the Tungsten E2 earlier. It is a great economy option if you don't want to spend quite as much. You will be limited to only 32 MB of memory so you might want to anticipate buying an expansion card in the future. Also, the processor isn't as powerful as the higher end models so if you're looking to run any resource intensive programs it will be slower. It'd definitely be the better buy if it does what you need it to do and you don't need the extra bells and whistles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest strider2004 Posted June 10, 2005 Report Share Posted June 10, 2005 I picked a PPC because of UptoDate. It's only available on the PPC. The Axim x50v is also way cool. Yes, I got the $389 deal too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest uteng Posted June 12, 2005 Report Share Posted June 12, 2005 The extended warranty question has already been covered, but I'll just add another tidbit. About two years ago I puchased the extended warranty for my PDA when I got it from future shop. It wasn't super expensive, but definitely not worth it. Basically, the sales guy said they would give me a new pda if they couldn't fix my pda. Now, I'm having problems with it, the digitizer gets out of whack every couple of days and it takes some fiddling before you can get to the digitizer function and reset it (because it doesn't know where you're pointing) So, I bring it to future shop. dum thing #1 - they will take my pda for 4-6 weeks to repair it, with no loaner - what do I do in the meantime? dum thing #2 - if they can't reproduce the problem they will charge me $45 or something ridiculous like that. That warranty is @#%$ as far as I'm concerned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest scrubbed Posted June 12, 2005 Report Share Posted June 12, 2005 CBC Marketplace had a good show about them. www.cbc.ca/consumers/mark...arranties/ Personally, I had the adaptor from my laptop start to make a high pithced sound. I took it into Future Shop and they replaced it after a 2 week wait. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JSS02 Posted June 12, 2005 Report Share Posted June 12, 2005 A lower end PDA (like the Tungsten E2) should be great for most med students' uses, unless you're watching videos or using it for something else that's memory/processor intensive. Skyscape, ePocrates, Tarascon's, etc. will run more than fast enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Scared in the Woods Posted June 27, 2005 Report Share Posted June 27, 2005 I just got accepted to Western (Yay!) but my Plan-B was starting a small company making high-end toolbelts for doctors and nurses. I figure I may as well continue to see if the idea works, who knows, it might decrease those LOC bills! One of the main purposes is to carry a PDA, along with a lot of other stuff. I'd be interested in hearing what people think. medibelt.ca Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest uteng Posted June 27, 2005 Report Share Posted June 27, 2005 I've seen docs clip a cell phone or pager to a belt, and I've seen some residents wear a PDA on a belt, but no nurses or staff physicians. Some physicians carried a small PDA in their pocket. I think the general rule of thumb was if it didn't fit in their pocket, they didn't want it. Hmm... personally, I think I'd rather have something small that fit in my pocket as well, rather than something on a belt. It looks like a great design though, I'm sure you can find a niche market for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Scared in the Woods Posted June 28, 2005 Report Share Posted June 28, 2005 Thanks Uteng, I'm thinking of incorporating a clip so that it clips to pants a bit more easily, similar to a cell-phone holder. thanks to everyone for their input! Warren Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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