The Hunt for a PDA

I was on a meeting with quite a prospective client, when my pen suddenly ran out of ink. It’s pretty embarrassing to borrow pen from your client’s secretary. She gave me that peculiar condescending looks and probably thinking what was I doing meeting with a torn white peace of paper and a rubbish pen to a big boss like hers. Luckily when it’s my turn to present the pages in computer the clients (and the secretary) were pretty impressed so I think I can save my ass a bit there.

It has always been a habit, going to an important meeting without pen or organizer. I had a decent memory so almost all the requirements and data from any client sticks to my mind. But these last few weeks the need to have a decent organizer or PDA is beginning to mount. The budget is there but first I had to ask permission from my wife because she had a veto for any expenses after all. Following several persuasions process, she agreed, but with side note, try and find the cheapest one there is.

At first we thought, it would be just great to pair the PDA with CDMA phone, there has been plenty of recommendation to use Esia, for it’s very cheap and cost effective. Most of the PDA Phone in CDMA Technology was way out of our budget, save one, Audiovox Thera. I search reviews in forumponsel.com etc, all of them said that it’s a decent buy but with major issue in battery power. We took a gamble and got ourselves one. Apparently all Thera in Indonesia is a refurbished product and on top of that, they are from black market, so no warrant available unless the local vendor gives you.

I’ve been playing with the Thera all-night and got very disappointed when I realized about the battery problem. I charged it full for eight hours yet when I woke up the next morning it’s reversed to empty again. We decided to return the PDA Phone and get our money back with slight reduction. I thought it was only fair, than end up with a rubbish gadget, which we have to charge every time we want to use it.

We browsed ITC Kuningan and Mall Ambassador once more for PDA Store and met this kind lady in Palm Point, who offered us a brand new HP Ipaq RZ 1710 for only 1.9 million rupiah, the only problem is that they’re out of stock. She’ll have to call us if its ready stocks once more. She let us browse for a while just in case we could find one with a better price. Apparently not, the others offered no less than 2.4 mil rupiah.

The lady called me in the next two days and asked whether I was still interested. I hurried went to the store and finalized the transaction. She also told me that she had to endure wrath from her boss for letting the Ipaq go at that price (which is very low indeed especially with the rupiah plummet that day). I thanked the lady for her kindness and got home anxious to have fun with the new toy.

Ira was pretty excited too. We had the PDA for two weeks now and it has been a great help and quite a decent investment. Considering the price and functionality, it's a steal really. She’s been to half a dozen meetings with it and found it pretty handy and useful. The 65K TFT resolution is crystal clear. And with Windows mobile 2003, landscape and portrait view is available to almost all applications. Synchronizing with my mac and pc is easy and with the 512 MB SD Card I bought, I can fill it with plenty of mp3s, medium sized movies, and programs so I won’t be looking like an idiot the next time I had to wait for two hours in Plaza Senayan. Basically, in the end it’s considered money well spent.