PDA Designed for the Great Outdoors 257
Paul Bawon writes "A company in UK called Node has developed the world's first consumer PDA designed for use specifically in outdoor environments. The device is fully waterproof to 3 meters, has a 8 hour battery life, built in DGPS receiver and 1 Gig of storage. Bluetooth and WiFi come as standard as does a touch screen and either a PocketPC or Linux operating system. I bumped into them at a tourism conference in Edinburgh where they were demo'ing the unit and I was impressed. It's smaller than a standard postcard."
Excessive features? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh yeah? (Score:2, Insightful)
No it's not. Two of the three dimensions are smaller than a postcard, but so are the flag pole I have in my back yard. Comparisons like that are useless.
first Consumer PDA (Score:4, Insightful)
The industrial ones are very expensive as the customers can afford to buy them.. is this the difference between them and this new Consumer model?
Field charger? (Score:5, Insightful)
These are invaluable (Score:0, Insightful)
In this day and age with computerized everything, sometimes it feels good just to get away from it all. This device doesn't let me do that. It does let me use GPS which I guess would help when I get lost, but so does my watch which is smaller, lighter, and less to think about when hiking.
This device is sans value.
Dancin Santa
Is it just me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or do people ususally go the the great outdoors to get away from this kind of stuff.
Schedules, appointments, who cares! My favorite part of backpacking is not knowing or caring what time it is!
RTFA yourself... (Score:3, Insightful)
8 Hours = Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
A PDA with 8 hours of battery life is useless. A GPS with 8 hours of battery life is dangerous.
Eeew.
-Peter
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck kind of camping is that? (Score:3, Insightful)
The campsite advertised wireless Internet access.
To me, electronics and wilderness are almost always mutually exclusive. Other than GPS and maybe a cell phone, I can't imagine the need to be connected. It would be like taking my laptop to the Bahamas so I could read Slashdot. Sorry, but a vacation isn't a vacation if you're still doing work.
Re:Field charger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on what you are doing on the trail... How about geocaching (logging, cache page loading, etc)? How about photo blogging from the tail so that people can track your progress with only a small delay? How about tracking/sending information about the trail/terrain conditions live?
I could go on.
A PDA with a network connection doesn't necessitate email.
8 hour battery life?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it just me? (Score:1, Insightful)
No replacement for outdoor skills (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an avid hiker/backpacker, and have run into 'yuppie' types who have their PDAs, GPSs, cell phones etc., with them on their trips; and consider themselves 'experienced' hikers. Problem is they couldn't navigate their way out of a paper bag with a map and compass, let alone tell me what 'mean declination' means.
After college, I worked at an independent bookstore for a bit, including the map department -- once had a hunter looking a topo map, point at the contour lines, and say 'they sure have a lot of roads there'. And to think the man owned a gun...
I do think there's some place for this kind of thing, but it's no replacement for knowledge, esp when you break it or the batteries die or you find yourself needing to think quickly without assistance.
But I'm also something of a purist, I backpack to 'get away from it all' including the digital realm, I really don't want this kind of gadget interfering with my experience. And please people be considerate of others - don't yammer on loudly for 15 min on your damn cell phone when others are trying to enjoy a little peace and enjoy what nature is offering. Thanks.
Outdoor ready? Not in my book. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not nearly enough. I can't think of any outdoor trek that lasted only 8 hours. Maybe the intent is to only turn the device on when you actually need it, but you can bet that anything in cold weather is going to bleed that 8 hours down to something much less. Any serious outdoor-ready device needs to have several days of battery life, especially if the customer would like to use the built-in GPS to do something as novel as finding their way back to civilization after getting themselves hopelessly lost.
Re:8 hour battery life?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me a Palm Pilot anyday.
Steve
Re:Interesting - but can you read it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:8 Hours = Useless (Score:1, Insightful)
A PDA with 8 hours of battery life is useless. A GPS with 8 hours of battery life is dangerous.
A person who would consider the GPS failing to be "dangerous" doesn't belong outdoors. (Not bashing GPS use, I use one all the time. But I wouldn't stake my safety on it)
Hint: Don't go anywhere that you can't make it back from without batteries.
Re:Where's the GPS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:8 Hours = Useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everyone goes outside for weeks. Unless you would be using it nonstop for those 8 hours, it would last a few days. My PDA has an official battery life of about 12 hours but I charge it once a week. Besides, if you're planning on using it for 8+ hours straight, why not just stay home?
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very good point.
I enjoy hiking. A while ago, I was way out in the woods hiking with some friends of mine. A buddy of mine, had his Ericsson R310s phone [about.com] with him. Now, this phone is ugly as hell. It's also not available here in the US (and seeing that it's a GSM 900/1800 phone, probably wouldn't work here either). But it's rugged. His phone was the only one that survived the trip.
Most of our phones just died for no apparent reason (I assume it was due to the rain -- and it rains a lot in GB, believe me). After performing "cell phone CPR" on them (taking them apart, carefully cleaning them with alcohol, and letting sit in a warm room to dry), most of them eventually worked again though (which of course doesn't help if you're in a tight spot and need your phone to call for help).
The point is, if you're outdoors and choose to rely on any electronic device (1) make sure that it works (test it; bring extra batteries; etc) and (2) always have a backup plan (if you have a GPS device, bring a map & compass anyway).
Technology is very useful if you know what you're doing but you need be able to survive without it.
Re:8 Hours = Useless (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Contradictions here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excessive features? (Score:3, Insightful)
But if it *didn't* have WiFi, you'd see
This is not a GPS for explorers, it's a tour guide (Score:3, Insightful)
It's intended to be used as an interactive tour guide at historical sites, outdoor museums and the like - popping up information about what happened 200 years ago where you're standing now and that sort of thing.
It's clearly designed to be bought by institutions.
Re:Nice (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it will spend 95% of its time in a standard environment, doing regular PDA tasks but looking "rugged" - just like SUV's.
Re:8 Hours = Useless (Score:2, Insightful)
-Peter
If you HAVE TO depend on your GPS (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice (Score:4, Insightful)
If *ever* there was a slashdot storyline that profoundly demonstrated how stupid the slashmob mentality is, this is it. The mob has grumbled about