Wireless PDA - Palm

Before buying the needed parts, I tried to research for any articles on the usability of a WiFi enabled PDA Without much success researching the subject I purchased a Palm Tungsten E2 and Palm WiFi card.

A Linksys WRT55AG wireless router was already in place serving 802.11a for the Dell 700M notebook, and 802.11b was setup for the wireless pda.

During my research I came across plenty of blog comments regarding the installation of drivers for the Palm WiFi pda card. As instructions indicated, I downloaded the freshest drivers from the website and ran the installer on the freshly hard reset Tungsten E2. Once the drivers are installed I would hotsync to restore the Tungsten E2 from my old non wireless pda.

With the drivers installed, the WiFi connection program could see my network, but it couldn't connect. The Linksys wireless router was using MAC address filtering for security. A MAC address is a unique set of numbers that identify every device that uses an ethernet network. With filtering turned on, I could ensure that only devices I knew about could connect to the wireless network.

After adding the WiFi SDIO cards MAC address to be allowed, I could connect without problem. Connection yes, but data no. Even with an excellent signal and connection, I could get no data to move over the WiFi network.

I took the wireless pda to a local hotspot at a mall and it worked fine there, so I know it wasn't the pda. I decided to turn off WEP security to test, and wallah, data starts moving freely. I can ping and browse. Turns out that other had reported the WEP problem on the 802.11b radio of the Linksys WRT55AG wireless router.

Without WEP, my 802.11b network would be unsecured, and anyone could listen in on, or use my network. Not good. Three things leave me not terribly concerned about this.

MAC Address Filtering - No one can connect without my say so unless they really want to hack my router.
SSID turned off - if people can't find my network, they can't get on.
The range - it's not very good. You would have to stand on my lawn to get a week signal

Wireless PDA usability

Overall, usability is not bad, it's about what you might expect with a small screen. You do wind up scrolling a lot but the joy pad on the Tungsten E2 makes scrolling easier.

You certainly would not want to do any serious browsing or research in this way, but it can be very handy for quick checks of news, stocks, maps, whatever. And with some metropolitan cities looking at blanketing their cities with WiFi availability, a wireless pda could become extremely useful.

Because the wireless pda does not have any bootup time like a normal computer, it's also very handy impromptu web searches when your not near your regular computer like early morning, late evening, or even your lunch break - provided you have a hotspot you can access.

I use the WiFi pda daily each morning while getting ready for work. I check the status of my server, traffic reports, and anything else in my Palm ToDo list from the night before. I'm ready to got, without ever turning on my notebook or desktop.

Obviously the convenience of checking and replying to email without having a conventional computer running requires no explanation. Most of my email is spam, even though my server blocks 99% of spam, I personally do not feel the urgency to check my spam with a wireless pda. I can also check my employment email account, but I'm not in much of a hurry to do that outside of work either - go figure.

Overall, I'd rate the wireless pda a 'nice to have'. It gets a 10 for productivity and handiness, but is certainly not a necessity. If you have or are planning on getting a pda which has compatible Palm WiFi card drivers, then the cost of the card is well worth it in convenience and productivity.

WiFi PDA Pictures: Wireless PDA Top