Recommend a PDA-type device to me!

[erikjg63]

Hello all, I have a collection of books and other documents saved as PDF and text files. I'd like to be able to slap a few on a cheap device (< $50) and throw it in my briefcase for when I'm traveling and have time to kill. I'm picturing a Palm Pilot (remember those? ) or something similar. I haven't kept up on this market segment, or even know if it still exists, but I figured someone here might have a suggestion. I've been poking around fee-bay and found a few possibilities, but nothing that is clearly better than the rest. This device does not need to serve any other purpose.....just read PDFs and text files.

Anyone have a suggestion?

Thanks!

Erik

[nemowolf]

Get a Kindle?

[AnakiMana]

I use a Palm TX for eBooks using eReader (free) and Adobe Reader for Palm OS v3.05. Text files are easily readable using the included Documents To Go software by Dataviz. There are undoubtedly tons of other free programs that can read text files. It has a nice big screen, wireless networking, bluetooth, and SD card slot (2gb limit unless you buy a 3rd party SDHC driver). The bad thing is this device is not nearly as cheap as you'd like. But it's been around since 2005 (but still the current gen of PDA from Palm, still has full support). So you will likely find great deals on it on the internet.

~Andy

[erikjg63]

Thanks guys. I just scored a Palm m500 on eBay for $35 shipped. It's a refurb that includes the charge/sync cradle....not fancy, but certainly usable as a simple document reader. It's only got 8mb of onboard RAM, but the SD slot means I can keep loads of docs easily at hand.

Andy, thanks for the tips. I'll see what kind of software (who am I kidding? GAMES) I can find jsut in case I get bored with reading.

[AnakiMana]

Yeah, that should do it. I recommend Brighthand.com for info and help. Check out this link:
Palm - Brighthand.com Smartphone and PDA Discussion Forums

They have different forums for PalmOS and also for each model, which you'll see in the above link. For games, I recommend searching Brighthand's forums (create a login to get the search feature) and search for "games palmos" or "games m500". There are many threads with recommendations, with links to download.

~Andy

[erikjg63]

Will do, Andy.

Thanks again.

Erik