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PDA Power: Add-Ons for Your New Palmtop

Did Santa bring a personal digital assistant? Then you'll want some of these downloads and add-on accessories.

Cameron Crouch, PCWorld.com

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You Can Grow Your PDA With Hardware Add-Ons

Hardware add-ons abound for Palms, Pocket PCs, and especially Handspring Visors. Handspring has made some strides to get its modules into brick-and-mortar stores, but, like PDA software, hardware accessories are more readily available on the Web. You'll find most at PDA vendor sites, PDA portals like Handango.com and PalmGear.com, and some online electronics retailers.

Popular add-on categories include storage, input, connectivity, and entertainment. Also available or coming soon are a host of global positioning system add-ons for location-based services.

Extra memory is particularly useful for large applications that you only need occasionally; you can store them on the memory add-on instead of in the device itself. Pocket PCs boost capacity through CompactFlash cards or, in the case of the Cassiopeia EM-500, MultiMedia cards. Handspring offers 8MB backup and memory modules, and Sony's Clie accepts Memory Sticks.

If you're not into handwritten text input (via Graffiti for Palm-based PDAs or Jot for Pocket PCs), several keyboard add-ons let you enter data the old fashioned way--by typing. One of the most popular, Think Outside's Stowaway keyboard, is available from Palm.com for Palm handhelds. Visor and Pocket PC owners can nab a Targus keyboard, which goes for about $88 at online retailers such as Amazon.com.

Both Handspring and Palm offer digital camera add-ons for taking and viewing pictures. The $100 Kodak PalmPix snaps onto the back of a Palm; IDEO's $146 EyeModule, a digital camera for the Visor, fits into the Springboard slot. EyeModule owners can also download new EyeContact software. It lets you take a picture of a person, then associate it with that individual's entry in your address book--handy if you're the type who can't easily link names with faces.

Make a Wireless Connection

Wireless and connectivity add-ons can truly expand the capability of a PDA, but you do have to pay air-time fees that typically run about $30 or $40 a month. While Nextel offers a CompactFlash modem that fits most Pocket PCs, some modems are designed for specific devices such as Compaq's IPaq and HP's Jornada Pocket PCs.

Besides the wireless Palm VII, Palm's main wireless add-on is the OmniSky service for Palm V, which includes a Novatel modem. You can also get a Mobile Connectivity Kit that lets you use your mobile phone as a wireless modem for the Palm. Check out Palm's add-on site for more choices.

Handspring users have more wireless choices. Three services use the Novatel Minstrel S module: OmniSky, GoAmerica, and YadaYada. Glenayre offers a messaging module, and the $299 VisorPhone turns the Visor into a Global System for Mobile Communications-compatible phone.

"Handspring's wireless modem services are easier to set up than the Palm service because you don't have to install software," Hurst says.

For musical entertainment, you can choose between two MP3 player modules for the Visor--the $269 SoundsGood MP3 Audio Player, and InnoGear's MiniJam, which comes in $199 32MB and $259 64MB versions. The main difference is that the MiniJam has removable memory. Although Pocket PCs can play MP3s out of the box thanks to the Windows Media Player, Boosteroo has a nice Audio Amplifier add-on for Pocket PCs that offloads the amplification of music to save battery life. It also has three audio output jacks so you can listen to tunes with a couple of friends, Suwanjinder says.

Software and hardware add-ons let you use your PDA as a compass, a camera, an MP3 player, and even a game console. The versatility makes PDAs feel more and more like super-small PCs. Let's just hope they don't crash as much.

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