Personal Displays of Affection

Dana fantasizes about his idea of a perfect PDA – fortunately for him, most of his wishes are already commercially available (and the laser keyboard is coming soon).

I hate PDAs. There is something banal about using a plastic stick to scratch tiny characters onto a small patch of plastic while peering into a murky plastic screen just doesn’t grab me.

What I want, does not yet exist:

1. Ultra-high contrast, ultra-high resolution true colour screen
2. Make that a flexible e-paper screen
3. Or a projector screen. I’m not picky.
4. WiMax or FireWireless access, or some other newfangled broadband wireless standard
5. User design is built around a portable web browser
6. Voice recognition; so I can just say “Weather for Toronto” and go straight to that webpage
7. Open document format – because I don’t feel like having to pay for some proprietary locked copy of Alice in Wonderland, thank you

PDALive showed a concept of the PDA of 2010 by Popular Science. Yeah, that’s kinda what I’d like. Until then, I’m lugging this notepad with me. It doesn’t lose charge, and I can even use it as a coaster.