Well, I've been into computers as a hobby or a profession for 23 year now. I've scoffed at many things that later turned out to be extremely popular: Video Games, MTV, the Mouse, Microsoft Windows... and PDAs.

I disdained the little things now for a few years. Lets face it, until just recently, they were pretty crappy little machines that didn't do anything that I needed to do. I'm not exactly certain when it was that I made the decision to "get small," it just kind of crept up on me.

I guess it started when I was forced out of my automobile and into cabs, buses and onto the sidewalk. Lugging that bitchin' Dell  Laptop got old really quick. I sent that 8.5 lb Dell backbreaker to my brother in Colorado and went out and bought a Sony Superslim 2.2 lb (Very Nice) laptop.  With a docking station to leave at the home office and by chucking some items formally considered essentials, my backpack is fully transportable.

The bad part was that I decided to redeem my time on the bus by learning a bit of new technology... from fat books. Backpack went quickly back to bloated. I started leaving out things like the bank bag and brush, going about broke and disheveled from client to computer store, to client.

Then, one of my client's suggested that, rather than giving his employees laptops to login to the office network with, he wanted to see if PDAs might do the job via an .aspx  database linked setup. So, faced with having to format web pages for the little devils, I shopped around and finally settled for a Dell Axim X5 with all the accoutrements and Pocket PC 2002 (because Microsoft has some development tools for it that intrigued me).

Heck, soon as I realized  that it had power, and many software features that I wanted, I dove in. Every bit of my office XP that I need. Other things I need from time to time, but wouldn't open my laptop for: e-books to replace those technical tombs, Pocket Money to replace the bank bag, pocket streets, Adobe Reader, RealOne Player, etc, etc... Oh! My.

I even solved one of my worst look-up problems with a web server and a couple of hours of coding. I may eventually be able to leave the house with no backpack at all! Now the imperative is clothing with big pockets.

C-Ya

Ned