Use an Ipod as a PDA

Having bought an Ipod Touch to keep me occupied on the long haul flight to Cuba at Easter, when I got back I decided to see if it could replace my PDA (a Dell Axim X50v) for diary functions. The answer is a resounding YES.

The pros:

• Wifi on the Touch is way better than using Windows Mobile. It was always a pain on the Axim to even get connected, but the Touch just finds the network and logs in, no bother. It recognises whether I'm at home or at school, remembers the settings and just works.


• The on screen keyboard is better than handwriting recognition, if not perfect.


• Itunes is happy to sync with Outlook on my school PC whilst syncing music, podcasts, movies etc at home.


• It's smaller, lighter, sexier and the battery lasts a lot longer.


• I can do basic editing of documents with a free App.

The cons

• I can't use my IR keyboard that worked really well with my Axim. This meant that I could have a device in each jacket pocket whcih, when unfoilded and combined, gave me a mini laptop. Come on Apple - give us Bluetooth!


• Document editing isn't as capable (though it might be with the paid for version of the App I got - I don't know and don't need it).

And that's it. The Axim is off to Ebay.

If you're not sure how to go about synching an Ipod with two PCs, the key is to select "Manually manage music and videos" on the "Summary" tab for the device in Itunes on the work PC, then enable Outlook synchronisation on the "Info" tab. More detail on manual syncing here: Manually manage...

Ipod Touch

I love my Ipod Touch and today went looking for a free blogging app. This post is therefore being written with Lifecast! It was dead easy to configure with Blogger an option from the start-all I had to do was enter the username and password. So, it's free, easy to use and gets the job done: I recommend it.

I'll write a proper post at some stage about the Ipod touch - it really is a brilliant device and OS3 looks likely to bring some killer features like Copy and Paste and bluetooth: the latter would enable an external keyboard which would really remove the need for me to even consider a netbook.

I can see us looking at the Touch (or even Iphones) at school for SLT. We already all use Outlook for email and calendars (but don't share our calendars properly) and Itunes is happy to sync with Outlook; we also have mobile phones so we can ring each other in emergencies. As we've got wifi I could see us using something like the touch to access web apps like the school review / lesson observation system I wrote (which I'll share with you in a future post). This would be much more unobtrusive than a laptop but would save people typing in their written notes later.

Do you have an Iphone or Ipod Touch in use in school? I'd love to hear if others are using these devices already...