PDAs: Making the right choice,

Part 3: Will my handheld keep me up to date, will it keep itself up to date?

Internet capability
This area currently has three technologies fighting for your dollar, thye offer three ways of Internet communication. Here they all are summed up quickly:

AvantGo,
A piece of software that updates everytime you synchronise your PDA with your PC to offer you the latest headlines, sports scores, TV guide, movie listings and whatever else you might need. This can also be updated on the move via a mobile phone but becomes rather fiddly.

WAP,
Wireless Application Protocol, as seen on many mobile phones it offers a wireless version of a 'cut down' Internet. Where some websites reproduce their website for this format. It requires mobile phone connectivity and has less support than AvantGo in my experience although it is open standard. This may be a better method for some although I find it very flawed, as you cannot for example download cached pages like with AvantGo.

Internet,
A few high-end PDA's come with an aerial full HTML browser ready to browse the real Internet. Although before you get too excited this is a very small resolution browser and you have to do a lot of scrolling to see normal full websites. This method also does not allowed cached pages.

Personally I'd go with AvantGo as my method of choice although this typically comes down to personal taste. AvantGo is available for most PDA's (PalmOS based and Windows based PDAs) and can be download for free from http://www.avantgo.com/

Updates
Finally, it's always a good idea to check if your PDA's OS can be updated and wether or not you can add additional programs. All PalmOS based handhelds can do this and have thousands of programs online. From now on Windows handhelds can also do this although be warned that not as many programs are available for download.

Part 4: Conclusion