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Personal Digital Assistant, an
electronic device that helps people manage information. Pads take many forms,
but all include an lcd screen for displaying telephone numbers ,
diary dates and e-mail. Some, such as Psion's popular machines, have
their own built-in keyboard. Others, including 3Com's Palm range, rely on a
simple form of handwriting recognition for data input. A customised version
of Microsoft's windows operating system has for some years powered
machines made by several vendors under the Pocket pc brand
Increasingly,
pdas are being used as fully fledged information appliances, and are
equipped with e-mail software and web browsers as standard. Such
devices now routinely include software for playing music files in mp3
format, and can even store and play video clips. A new generation of pdas
is emerging that can connect to the internet and corporate networks via
wireless technologies such as wi-fi and gprs.
According to Dataquest, a research company, over 13m pads
were sold worldwide in 2001. But sales declined by 9% in 2002, and only 30%
of pdas are currently bought by business users, who cite the high
cost and complex deployment of wireless versions as a good reason to stick
to more mature technologies. |
