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Personal digital assistant

Palm IIIxe PDA

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. A basic PDA usually includes a clock, date book, address book, task list, memo pad and a simple calculator. One major advantage of using PDAs is their ability to synchronize data with desktop, notebook and desknote computers.

Overview

The term "personal digital assistant" was coined on 7 January 1992 by John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton.

The currently major PDA operating systems are PalmSource's Palm OS, Pocket PC (Windows CE) from Microsoft, BlackBerry from Research In Motion, Linux, and Symbian OS (formerly EPOC)

According to a Gartner market study, the overall market has shrunk by 5% in the first quarter (Q1) of 2004, compared to Q1 2003, and the shares are:

• Palm OS - 40.7% (stable)
• Pocket PC - 40.2% (slightly increasing)
• BlackBerry - 14.8% (strongly increasing)
• Linux - 1.9% (stable)
• Other - 2.4% (strongly decreasing)

The usually cited reason for this decline are the growing capabilities of communicators — mobile phones with PDA-like communication functions.

Popular PDAs

• Apple Newton
• BlackBerry
• Casio Cassiopeia
• Casio Pocket viewer
• Franklin eBookMan
• Handspring Visor
• hp iPAQ Pocket PC (Originally Compaq iPAQ until HP merger in 2002)
• Nokia Series60
• Palm Pilot, Tungsten, Treo and Zire
• Psion 5
• Sharp Wizard and Zaurus
• Sony CLIÉ
• Tapwave Zodiac
• AlphaSmart Dana
• Xircom REX 5000 and REX 6000
• Dell's Axim

You can download AskFactMaster.Com to your PDA:

See also

• Ebook
• Information Appliance
• Laptop
• Microbrowser
• Personal area network
• Personal Information Manager
• Smartphone
• Sub-notebook
• Toothing
• Wearable computer

External links

• port of Linux for the Nintendo DS (http://dslinux.com/)
• PDA Hotspots (http://www.wacklepedia.com/pdahotspots/pda_hotspots.htm) Sites suitable for small screen PDA's
• Linux on PDAs (http://tuxmobil.org/)
• Repair and upgrade instructions for PDAs (http://tuxmobil.org/disassembly_pda.html)
• medPDA.net Medical application reviews, news, discussions. (http://medpda.net)

ca:Ordinador_de_butxaca da:PDA de:PDA (Computer) es:PDA fr:Assistant personnel ja:Personal Digital Assistant lt:Delninis kompiuteris nl:PDA sv:Handdator zh:PDA

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This article uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.