Although the palmtop computer, also known as the PDA(personal digital assistant) has been with us since the early 80s, it is only in the last few years that they hit embellish a favourite mass market product. The reason for this has been the convergence of ambulatory phone and machine technology, exemplified by products much as the Blackberry and the Nokia N97, which are basically small, internet capable multimedia PCs that crapper also be used as ambulatory phones.
The prototypal PDA, although it was not termed as much at the time, was the Casio PF3000, released in 1983. Although this might hit looked like a pocket calculator that had gotten too big for its boots, it was in fact a direct replacement for the paper based organiser, and was an immediate hit with busy people everywhere. More digital organisers followed from firms much as Psion and GO, and by the end of the eighties, the bulging Filofax was an increasingly rare sight.
The term organiser was prototypal used by Apple to describe their new digital organiser, the Newton, in 1992. The marketing hype described it as The Computer of the Future, which in some ways it was, as it did away with the keyboard to make way for a large touch sensitive screen and a small plastic stylus.
The concept was well aweigh of its time, and huge sales were expected. Unfortunately for Apple, and even more so for those who bought one of these items, the handwriting recognition was somewhat less than reliable, making the entry of even simple information via this method something of a hit or miss affair. They did make subsequent revisions to the design which improved matters somewhat, but the negative publicity surrounding the initial models meant that the Newton was never destined to be a commercial success.
The prototypal compounded organiser and ambulatory phone, the Nokia 9000 Communicator, was launched in 1996, and went on to embellish the large selling organiser ever made, although modern equivalents much as the Nokia N series and the RIM Blackberry are fast catching up.
The organiser of today uses a variety of input devices much as trackballs, holograph wheels, thumb keyboards and touch screens. They also hit a memory card slot for storing and retrieving information, and crapper ingest all manner of wireless subject technologies including Bluetooth, WiFi, and Mobile telephony.
One of the most useful things that a modern organiser crapper do is called synchronisation. In a nutshell, coordination is the instant distribution and updating of information between two devices, much as PC and a organiser or ambulatory phone. This ensures that you hit up to date information, much as contact info and calendar entries on both devices, and that you hit a backwards up of this valuable data should something happen to either machine.
Modern PDAs crapper do virtually everything a PC crapper do, much as run duty software, wave the web, play video and frequence files and act as satellite navigation systems, and new applications are being developed all the time. Not bad for a technology that is less than thirty years old!
