PDA for a School Bus Driver

[maddoxdy]

That narrows it down a little for me.

I'm looking for a PDA (used/refrub), that has BlueTooth, and can handle atleast 2,000 pages of documents.

Can PDA's handle extreme environments? Until the bus gets warmed up, it is cold in winter (down in the teens around here), and in the late spring, the temp up front can rise over 100 degrees (imagine 250 lbs of ugly greeting kids in shorts and a tee-shirt).

I saw one reviewer liked the Palm Tungsten E2. That seems to be going for 100-150 on eBay. Any thoughts?

Doug

[SGosnell]

The E2 should work. My T3 takes more heat abuse than that. I like the T3 much better than the E2, but I guess it's personal preference. The T3 is very fast, and has lots of memory, and runs mapping programs much better than any later model, at least according to Mapopolis.

With an SD card, you can have almost unlimited document space. Doing it that way isn't the way I would do it, but whatever works for you. You're the one who has to get the bus along the route. If you do go with a bluetooth GPS, you'll need some sort of mount for the PDA, so you can see it while driving. There are lots of designs on the market.

[maddoxdy]

That's the thing. I do NOT want to be reading this while driving. I want something that can refresh my memory before I start the run. We are not allowed to use anything that will distract from driving, the kids are enough of a distraction. Not to mention that there is no place to mount the PDA in a school bus, especially since, I drive a different bus each time.

I'll check out the T3.

Doug

[mmaestro]

I'm wondering if maybe people are shooting too big here. Something as simple and cheap as Palm's Z22, if maddoxdy is willing to copy and paste all of his route information into the memo app (how long are each of the routes? There is a character limit that I'm sure someone else can remind me of, but if these are fairly short then it shouldn't be a problem). Sure, there's no Bluetooth or Wifi, which would be nice additions, but for a simple PDA for sorting and reading route information, a Z22 should be all that's needed.

[maddoxdy]

The runs are generally divided into AM, Mis-day, and PM. Anywhere from 2-5 pages each.

I think I would really like to be able to edit Word & Excel files. Small db of the buses would be nice too, but not neccessary. My PC's at home already have Blue tooth and Wifi.

Also, I currently keep a lot of my data on a USB Flash drive. Will this work here? And the other bit a tech I have is a Samsung A900 cell phone. It's transflash chip fits into a SD adapter, will this also be readable?

Anyway, thanks a lot for all the help. You guys have helped me get sorted out a few things. I'm afraid to go low with the Z22 as I don't think it's quite powerful enough. The E2 or T3 seem to be the appropriate level. Anybody got anoy other brands/models to mention?

Again, thanks,
Doug

[SGosnell]

The E2 should work for you. I think it comes with Docs2Go, which opens, reads, and edits Word and Excel files. The flash drive won't work, but any SD card will. If the cell phone card has an SD adapter, it should work, but I don't know how you're going to get the files on it in the first place. You can get an SD card reader for ~$10, which will let you use it and an SD card as a flash drive, and then put the card into the E2. That's what I use, and I don't even have a flash drive other than the card reader, because the reader is much more versatile.