Personal Digital Assistants
From Free Knowledge Base- The DUCK Project: information for everyone
Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are handheld computers that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. PDAs are also known as pocket computers or palmtop computers.
Many PDAs run using a variation of the ARM architecture (usually denoted by the Intel XScale trademark). This encompasses a class of RISC microprocessors that are widely used in mobile devices and embedded systems, and its design was influenced strongly by a popular 1970s/1980s CPU, the MOS Technology 6502.
The currently major PDA operating systems are
- Palm OS - owned by PalmSource
- Windows Mobile (Pocket PC), (based on the Windows CE kernel) - owned by Microsoft
- BlackBerry OS - owned by Research In Motion
- Familiar (comes in three flavours: GPE, Opie and barebone) Linux
- OpenZaurus (for Zaurus PDAs) Linux
- Intimate (for PDAs with lots and lots of memory) Linux
- Symbian OS (formerly EPOC) owned by Ericsson, Motorola, Panasonic, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson
Popular consumer PDAs
- HP iPAQ
- Psion
- Abacus PDA Watch
- Acer N Series
- AlphaSmart
- Amida
- BlackBerry
- Casio Pocket Viewer
- Dell Axim
- Fujitsu Siemens Loox
- GMate Yopy
- High Tech Computer Corporation's series of Windows Mobile PDA/phones
- Palm, Inc. (Tungsten E2, TX, Treo and Zire)
- OQO Model 2; the only IBM PC compatible in the form factor of a PDA.
- PocketMail (email PDA with inbuilt acoustic coupler)
- Sharp Wizard and Sharp Zaurus
