PDA docking station solution (Score 1)

I found this article which might be of interest to you.

... Blue Dock, a PDA docking station that allows a PDA to function as a primary computing platform in a desktop environment, without the need for an additional workstation or laptop.

I used a Palm V, a collapsing keyboard, a lame sprint cell phone and an annoyingly long pda-phone cable as my primary "system" for about nine months back in, um, 1999? 2000? I was traveling a lot, working as a freelance journalist, and it was a perfectly acceptable solution. Except for the smallness of the screen text.

Slow transfer speeds, web pages broken by minimalist small screen browsers, truly limited functionality, even the two bit color--I became accustomed to all of that, along with my slowly worsening eyesight. Small PDA text is really brutal over a long period. Unless you can find a way to expand the screen (even if it just mirrors the cramped pda screen display), using a pda instead of a computer is not a long-term solution if you care about your vision.

Then again, if she really just sends a handful of brief emails a week, and doesn't do anything extensive online, she might be perfectly happy with a hiptop. Despite their proprietary approach, I think they have the most comfortably usable keyboard of any of the small pda-phones I've used.

-- H