- A cell phone;
- A digital camera;
- A personal digital assistant (PocketPC PDA); and
- A music player (iPod MP3 player).
They all do one function very well. Unfortunately, now they’re weighty in my pockets, and my computer desk has a mess of cords needed to synch them up with my computer.
I decided that I would pay good money for one device that’s both compact and can do all of these well. Sure, there are devices on the market now that do some of these functions. For example, my PDA plays music, and some such as the Palm Treo also double as cell phones. Some cell phones have digital cameras, of course. And soon Apple Computer will introduce the iPhone, an iPod cell phone. The disadvantage of these dual-function units is that they lack capacity. For example, the digital camera on most cell phones offers low megapixel resolution, and the storage capacity on a PDA is too small to store hundreds of songs. If a company can produce a compact product that functions as a cell phone featuring a PDA with a full operating system plus productivity software (e.g. Microsoft Office) plus a 30-80GB hard drive that functions as a music player and 5.0 or more megapixel camera. The technology is available to build this device, but it would be too big to be practical. I imagine that in about five years or so technology will progress to the point where this kind of device will be on the market. For now, I will continue to carry around four devices that do these four things very well.
