The Gardener
Senior Member
- Reaction score
- 25
Okay folks, I've reached a point where I give up. Work has really picked up pace, my bandwidth is maxing out, and between that and me just plain getting older and developing an increasing inability to have any patience in dealing with the minutiae of planning, I need help.
Time for Gardener to enter the 21st century and embrace technology. I badly need some sort of PDA handheld system to help me keep everything straight and orderly, and I thought I'd ask the crew here if they have any advice.
Let me first tell you what I'm dealing with now, what kind of functionality I am looking for, and what is and isn't working for me:
Right now, at the office, I have a Lotus Notes system for email and calendar, and it works brilliantly. I have a Blackberry (an old one), and its great for getting my email on the run... but the calendarization interface it has with Lotus is horrid. Scrolling between "big views" of, say, a month, and then doing drill downs into particular days is awkward and a b*tch. So much so that I've given up using the task "to do" list on Lotus and resorted to using post its arranged on my desk to keep track of phone calls to return, and keep track of to do items and issues. I like the post it system on the desk, because it allows me to arrange tasks and thoughts graphically in space, grouping them, ordering them, etc. The only problem is that this system does not translate well into the Blackberry PDA I have because of the shiite Lotus functionality on it. I suppose its not the Blackberry per se that is at fault, but rather a poor cross-interface between it and the Lotus software on my laptop. Add to this the fact that none of my personal stuff is on it, and I wish I could use the Blackberry for my personal stuff, but I don't want to invest all the time to convert it into the work blackberry because of the poor Lotus interface.
So, I suppose I'm not really looking for a certain "brand" PDA that has powerful speed or technology per se, but rather, I'm really looking for a good scheduling and task ordering interface that's not going to give my hand cramps turning dials and having to push five buttons to do a calendar drill down, then push another button to confirm that I want to do a calendar drill down, then having to hold "alt" and spin the dial to select an item, then push another button, then confirm that, etc etc. I want a nice graphically-friendly, object oriented interface (if possible) that allows me to do dragging and dropping, like I can do on my Lotus at work.
Do any of you have PDAs? If so, do you have any feedback about how easy the interface is? Is it easy to scroll between task lists and calendar appointments, easy to move things around, etc? I'd like a PDA that I can, literally, put my entire life on and have it sync up with my home computer.
Thanks in advance for any advice or insight!
Time for Gardener to enter the 21st century and embrace technology. I badly need some sort of PDA handheld system to help me keep everything straight and orderly, and I thought I'd ask the crew here if they have any advice.
Let me first tell you what I'm dealing with now, what kind of functionality I am looking for, and what is and isn't working for me:
Right now, at the office, I have a Lotus Notes system for email and calendar, and it works brilliantly. I have a Blackberry (an old one), and its great for getting my email on the run... but the calendarization interface it has with Lotus is horrid. Scrolling between "big views" of, say, a month, and then doing drill downs into particular days is awkward and a b*tch. So much so that I've given up using the task "to do" list on Lotus and resorted to using post its arranged on my desk to keep track of phone calls to return, and keep track of to do items and issues. I like the post it system on the desk, because it allows me to arrange tasks and thoughts graphically in space, grouping them, ordering them, etc. The only problem is that this system does not translate well into the Blackberry PDA I have because of the shiite Lotus functionality on it. I suppose its not the Blackberry per se that is at fault, but rather a poor cross-interface between it and the Lotus software on my laptop. Add to this the fact that none of my personal stuff is on it, and I wish I could use the Blackberry for my personal stuff, but I don't want to invest all the time to convert it into the work blackberry because of the poor Lotus interface.
So, I suppose I'm not really looking for a certain "brand" PDA that has powerful speed or technology per se, but rather, I'm really looking for a good scheduling and task ordering interface that's not going to give my hand cramps turning dials and having to push five buttons to do a calendar drill down, then push another button to confirm that I want to do a calendar drill down, then having to hold "alt" and spin the dial to select an item, then push another button, then confirm that, etc etc. I want a nice graphically-friendly, object oriented interface (if possible) that allows me to do dragging and dropping, like I can do on my Lotus at work.
Do any of you have PDAs? If so, do you have any feedback about how easy the interface is? Is it easy to scroll between task lists and calendar appointments, easy to move things around, etc? I'd like a PDA that I can, literally, put my entire life on and have it sync up with my home computer.
Thanks in advance for any advice or insight!
