Ok. Mea culpa. Just reading on CNET how a CEO has taken away all of his employees laptops and replaced them with “smart” handhelds. What does this mean? It means that to get work done—work obviously consisting of playing solitaire and replying to emails—all the average knowledge worker needs is a nice Blackberry. But wait a second—a Blackberry (or any other phone with PIM capability) in the grand scheme of things, is not a PDA. It’s a smartphone. So maybe CNET needs to rethink its thesis. Generally, this story is saying that the smartphone is replacing the laptop, not the PDA, which I’ve always thought to be true. However, they make it sound like the PDA is replacing the laptop, which is untrue. The PDA is replacing that block of wood you put under the picnic table leg to stop it from wobbling.
In all fairness, they use the word “handheld,” which is pretty nebulous. But I rest my case. The unwired PDA is a goner.
