Kathy, this is getting scary! I can relate to almost everything you wrote.
The only differance is that you are younger than I by a decade!
I too could not get used to the fickle finger board and the laptop I
borrowed had a huge battery as well.

I poked the Palm III to death! (A cheapie, $29)
I could see the screen ok but just searching on my data base of about
2500 entries, I could run back to the house, grab a cup of coffee & get
back in time to just see the record I had called up appear.
I've got orchids to pot! *g*
--
Cheers Wendy

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K Barrett wrote:
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