My previous employer put out a message to all employees. The company would not authorize any employees to purchase PDAs at company expense. However, the company did routinely purchase laptops and had a very expensive program in place to support laptops.

Many companies do not realize the potential productivity gains PDAs offer. Most view PDAs as Gameboys for grownups. It is unfortunate that while PDAs are more powerful and more readable than before, sales of laptops are growing while sales of PDAs are declining.

The PDA of today bears little resemblance to PDAs a few years ago. My first PDA was a Palm Pilot with 1/2 MB RAM. The original Palm was very handy for keeping almost any information you can imagine. I managed my address books, appointments and kept my “To Do” list on the original Palm Pilot.

I later upgraded to the Palm Vx. The Vx had a whopping 8 MB storage. I amazed people years ago by using my Vx with my Ericsson Cell phone to pick up e-mail. Back then I was accessing e-mail at the expense as using voice. While expensive, the mobility I gained was worth it. I was able to send and receive e-mails while waiting in airports or traveling in Taxis. Using a PDA offered me two advantages: 1. PDAs offer much better battery life than most laptops and 2. PDAs are far more portable.

I would probably still be using the Vx but I started having problems with the touch screen. My next PDA was the Palm 515. Having a color screen was much easier to read. The 515 also offered SD modules for greater storage.

I bought my daughter a Palm Zire 71. She loved it because it could play MP3s and had an integrated camera. After seeing the quality of the Zire 71 screen, it was difficult to return to the Palm 515.

I now find that I can do almost all my work with my Palm, a GPRS enabled cell phone and a portable keyboard. I actually prefer the feel of the Palm Portable Keyboard to the keyboard that comes on my laptop.

For those on a budget, the best choice is the Palm Zire 71. The Palm Zire 71 includes a camera that while not very good is surprisingly handy, and stereo headphone jack for playing MP3s. What interested me was the Zire 71's high resolution screen. The screen on the Zire 71 is really impressive.

More expensive Palm's offer more memory, integrated Blue Tooth, or WIFI. While Blue Tooth would be nice, an inexpensive GPRS phone with IR provides me with all the flexibility I need to connect to the Internet.

I selected Data Viz's Documents to Go as my Palm's Office Suite. Documents to Go allows you to work on Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point Documents on your PDA. The documents can then be HotSync'd back to your desktop.

It is possible to save documents in .doc format directly to the SD memory module and then use an adapter to load these documents to any PC.

Another very powerful business tool for the Palm is Expense Plus from Wallet Ware. Expense Plus makes doing expense reports simple.

My total investment for my Palm Zire 71, Palm Portable Keyboard, 128 MB SD Card, Documents to Go and Expense Plus was 22,500 baht in Thailand (less than $500 USD). A laptop without software would cost me about twice that.

In order to complete my mobile office, I added a SonyEricsson T68i. The T68i is one of the least expensive GPRS enabled phones that also features IR and Blue Tooth. I was able to get a special rate from UCALL, that gives me one year unlimited access to GPRS for 856 baht (about US$21) per month.

I can now work from just about anywhere at any time. Using a PDA and a GPRS phone allows me to be connected for long periods of time without worrying about my next charge and I can keep everything in my pockets.

This article was written on my Palm Zire 71 and then e-mailed using my GPRS enabled phone.