Christmas is looming large, so I guess I should actually start my shopping.

Karen wants a PDA. I know she actually wants one, because apart from mentioning it when I asked what she wanted for Christmas, she's kept me posted on low prices that she's seen in the newspaper.

But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint her.

She wants me to buy the least expensive model for her, and I really can't do that. Back in 1994, I bought a "Zoomer", an ironically named first-generation PDA. It was cutting-edge for its time, but it was painful to use. The CPU was woefully slow, it had only a megabyte of RAM, and it chewed through batteries like they were candy. So I eventually quit using it, and it now gathers dust on the shelf; I don't want Karen to have a similarly bad experience. Besides, she's my wife; she deserves better than low-end!

Recently, then, I've been comparing features and trying out the various brands of PDAs. I really like the PalmOS-based machines; they're fast, they're lightweight, and (what I find most exciting) there's a free software development kit available. (Palm even provides an emulator which can be used to test PalmOS software on various PDA models, even if you don't actually have a PDA.)

So I've arrived at two conclusions: firstly, Karen's just going to have to settle for a better machine than the one she's asking for; and secondly, I'm eventually gonna have to get myself one too. PDAs have come a long way since the Zoomer.