A bunch of you wrote in to ask what kind of Pocket PC I'd purchased. I bought one of these — the Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 2495. So far, I'm pretty happy with it but I'm not looking for a lot in a PDA so I'd probably be happy with about 85% of all the ones manufactured these days. The main thing I need it for is taking my phone book, calendar and "to do" list with me, and having a way to jot down notes and play games.
I picked this one because I've had good luck with H-P products, including my previous PDA which served me well long after it had become an antique. I also wanted something that accepted Compact Flash cards because my digital cameras all use them and I have quite a few here. And of course, it was being featured by Costco and I'm easily hypnotized by Costco. They sell coffins now and I'm thinking of stocking up, just because I love buying things from that place. When I see them selling hand sanitizer in ten barrel lots, it's all I can do to not purchase an eighty year supply.
Why, someone asked, didn't I get one that integrated a cell phone? Two reasons. I think those are a little clumsy to carry around and also, I'm really happy with the "hands free" cell phone hook-up I have in my car. I have a little dashboard cradle and I can just pop my Motorola cell phone into it and drive about, keeping my hands on the wheel, talking (when necessary) on the speakerphone. When I reach my destination, I pop out the cell phone and take it in with me. If I'd switched to a combination cell phone and PDA, none of that would work. I'd have to get the guy out again to install a completely new cradle/holder in my car.
Now then, a query: I use Microsoft Outlook for my contacts, calendar, task list, etc. — everything but e-mail. I want to stay with Outlook since it interfaces so neatly with almost everything but I find its task list clumsy and close to useless. You just list tasks and check them off when they're done. You can't mark something as high priority, can't mark a task as started but not completed, can't even (easily) connect a date or time to a task.
Does anyone make an add-on that will add that kind of functionality to Microsoft Outlook, allow you to sync with a handheld, and then have all that data available to you in both places? I need to have a task list on both my desktop and my handheld that can manage that trick. I'm willing to go outside Outlook if I have to. So far, the Personal Information Managers I've tested on the Pocket PC are also useless. They're as cluttered as a cable TV news screen and the extra info you enter into your task lists there doesn't seem to make it back to the desktop when you sync up. Anyone have any suggestions of what might make Mark happy?