After I got my wife a Nintendo DS for her birthday and experienced first hand how nicely it plays and works, I needed one of my own. With the DS’ touch screen and flash cart tools, I saw that it was entirely possible to use the DS as a PDA as well as a gaming machine. I’ve typically shunned PDAs because they seemed a hassle and never offered much use in my daily life, but I have a hunch the DS could change my outlook.

I’ve had my share of PDAs in the past. I had a classic Palm back in the day, an HP PDA, and several Nextels with WindowsCE. All of them had calendars, calculators, internet, address books…and of course, solitaire. Every time I got a PDA/phone I made an attempt to use it as an organizer and every time it failed. It failed because when I got home the device ended up on the kitchen table or on the dresser. I had no reason to use it at home as well as at work. The only time I used the devices beyond their phone abilities was in the bathroom. Hey, it passed the time nicely.

The Nintendo DS lite is a handheld designed to play games. It can do almost everything your standard PDA can except be a phone, but I don’t need a phone anyway. Plus, you can use the DS touch screen as a note-taking tool, something many smartphones don’t offer (yet). I’ve longed for something to come along and replace my system of post-it style note taking for quite some time. My first hope was a digital tracking pen, now called the ZPen, and while it looks promising, it’s expensive for a single-purple tool and I have my doubts about how well it actually works. Then there are tablet PCs, but those are really just laptops and don’t exactly fit in your pocket. And none those things can play games very well, and I like my games.

Because the DS plays games I’ll be more motivated to carry the DS around with me wherever I go, even when I’m just sitting around at home. The gaming is the hook that got me. I’ll carry the DS around because of the games and then by default I’ll have my notes, calendars, and everything else right there. Games first, organizing second. That’s the key, but the challenge is keeping it up.

My challenge: To use the DS at work for organizing and note taking, and at home for all the same plus games.

I’m not sure how it will turn out, but right now I think using the DS as a PDA has a better chance of working with me than if I had a full blown PDA. And if it doesn’t end up working, well, then I still have a nice portable gaming system, and we all know I won’t let a video game go to waste.

And to help me improve as I go, I’ll be logging my DS PDA Challenge experience over in the forum. I’ll talk about what software/programs I use and will do my best to post images of notes and other things. I’ll also use it as a link dump for things I find on-line may help the cause.

Let the challenge begin.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 5:39 pm and is filed under All, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.