wendy7 wrote:
Kathy, I am still following this thread & wouldn't it be easier just
to have a laptop with you?


Well. yes, I have a laptop. I use it for shows where I have a table to
set it up at. And (dare I say this out loud?) I need to use a mouse
with it. I just can't get used to the dang finger board. So. That's
not the problem. One would (in a perfect world) like to have this at
one's fingertips, like a tricorder from Star Trek. Granted, if I was
into orchids when I was 9 yrs old I'd have the capacity to learn all
this stuff for myself and carry it in my brain, however I can't remember
anything anymore, so I need help.

Laptops - even today - weigh a ton. Sure there are ones that weigh 2.9
lbs, but imagine carrying around 1/2 a bag of sugar all day and imagine
what that would do for your arm or back. And they are bulky. You'd bump
inot plants and knock them off benches. PDAs weigh ounces and fit in a
pocket. Most require a stylus in order to operate their keyboards, and
I understand the screen gets dinged up from all the typing, but there
are ones with mini keyboards available.

I wonder about screen brightness in a GH situation (Lord knows the LCD
screen on my digital camera is worthless in a GH) - but that concern
would hold true for either a laptop or a PDA.

And as for whomever said a smaller version of OrchidWiz (or Wildcatt for
that matter) without pictures or most of the functions could indeed work
on a PDA. I'm pretty sure Alex has that (or can come up with it), since
he was working on a PDA type program to begin with. But the functions
are what you want in the first place.... so why bother?

As to whomever said any geek could take apart the program and work on it
themselves. Indeed. I know a person who has done that with Wildcatt.
I know 2 people who have done that with the old AOS award CD. No doubt
someone's already working on OrchidWiz, LOL!! That's not the problem.
The problem is being creative enough to know what functions one would
like and making it work. So then it becomes an exercise in 'what
features can you live without?" and then 'what features do you
absolutely need?' and one gets stymied and gives up to go get a glass of
wine. Let's face it, creativity takes brains and vision. I ain't got
neither.

I have asked out of work silicon valley programmers if they could
rewrite Wildcatt for a PDA and they have told me the operating systems
for a PDA, either PalmOS or microsoft's OS are a real bear. However if
one was dedicated one could write a program to allow Wildcatt to work on
a microsoft OS PDA. (There's that word again - dedicated...) I have
wondered, what with everything else getting outsourced to India, why I
couldn't hire a programmer to do this for me. Which got too
complicated, and I went and got a glass of wine. Probably some brie, too.

I understand the size of the program won't fit on a PDA. I understand
there's not enough memory in a PDA to move data around in order to make
it work in a rapid fashion. I understand the chips aren't fast enough
in a PDA to handle the speed at which one would want the data moved and
accessed. What I don't understand is why one can't carry OrchidWiz on a
512 memorystick and access it via the PDA. Like an outboard harddrive.
I think the answer is because PDAs don't have a USB port in which to
plug the memorystick. Even still, the computer runs so slowly you'd
probably die and vultures could pick your bones clean before you'd
access the data you want.

Ok, I've written enough and there are leaves to rake.

K Barrett