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Personal Digital Assistant: Devices
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High-end personal digital assistant and organizer devices (PDA) systems are evolvingas communicators. The ability to connect to the Internet with data capability is an essential aspect of 3G systems. The installed base of wireless handsets at 1.2 billion dwarfs the installed base of 31 million PDA systems.
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Since their introduction in the last decade of the twentieth century, personal digital assistants (PDAs) have become useful tools for personal information management. For healthcare professionals, these devices can increase productivity by providing ready access to large amounts of clinical and reference material. Yet, the wide assortment of available PDA styles, brands, and models can make the job of selecting a device that will best suit a particular clinician's needs quite challenging.
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PDAs and handheld devices have recently allowed for digital note taking. This has increased student’s productivity by allowing individuals to quickly spell-check, modify, and amend their class notes or e-notes. Educators are currently able to distribute course material through the use of the internet connectivity or infrared file sharing functions of the PDA. With concerns to class material, textbook publishers have begun to release e-books, or electronic textbooks, which can be uploaded directly to a PDA. This then lessens the effort of carrying multiple textbooks at one time.
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A personal digital assistant, such as a Palm Pilot, next-generation cell phone or Blackberry, is a handheld computer that serves as an organizer for personal information. Such devices combine computing, telephone/fax and networking features.
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As with personal computers, it is possible to install additional software on most PDAs. Software can be bought or downloaded from the Internet, allowing users to personalize their PDAs to their liking. An example of this would be the display theme for the PDA. Almost all PDAs ... allow for adding some form of hardware. The most common is a memory card slot, which allows the users to get additional and exchangeable storage space on their handheld devices. There are also miniature keyboards that can be connected to most mainstream PDAs for quicker text input.
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PDAs offer built-in appointment, memo and address books, but are capable of much more than just personal information management. They can run a wide range of programs, document readers, databases and calculators. Many programs and data files can be found on the Internet, available at no charge ("freeware"), a nominal charge ("shareware") or commercially. These resources allow PDAs to function as sophisticated reference, organisation and communication devices.
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