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PDAs are a communication tool that works by George Spain Information Services A few years back they were called personal digital assistants (PDAs) and they helped us keep track of our calendars and contacts. They’ve come a long way in a few years and are now known as wireless handhelds. While many people still don’t have one, many others can’t live without one.   Today’s handhelds sync to desktop computers and maintain live connections to network servers, handling phone calls, e-mail messages, calendaring, web browsing, and a variety of other tasks that some users find useful. Efficiency should increase when Information Services completes the e-mail system switch to Exchange servers this year.   Yet ubiquitous around MUSC, PDA numbers are growing daily. Although most handhelds offer similar services, some styles attract a loyal following that are loath to switch brands. Some departments encourage handhelds, but few centrally purchase or manage them.   Styling is an important factor considering the size of the screen and the speed of the network. While some offer a QWERTY 35-key standard keyboard (like on a normal typewriter), others opt for the cell phone-like “punch-three-times-for-an-’S’ layout.” Whatever the key style, be prepared to thumb through your replies. While teens seem to have little trouble with “texting” friends, most adults find the process vexing.   The fact that services are similar doesn’t mean lack of variety. There’s probably more variety in handhelds than in desktop computers. There are BlackBerrys, Treos, Cingulars, HPs, etc. In addition, several flavors of operating system software are available. BlackBerry, a Canadian firm, has its own operating system (OS), while other brands offer either a Palm OS or a Windows OS. Each has its own followers, features and limitations. These products are not cheap. Expect to spend $250 or more for the gadget itself plus more for the monthly service, which are available through many wireless providers. BlackBerry users on campus incur a one-time, $100-setup fee.   BlackBerrys require e-mails to make a roundtrip connection to network operation centers (NOC) located in Canada. In April, a glitch at a NOC blacked out communications across the Western hemisphere.   Treos are handheld devices that can run one of two different operating systems: the Palm OS or Windows OS. Palm was first out of the gate when wireless OS caught on, and it has its supporters.   Generally, the choice of device and OS is up to the user. However, if you ask Information Services folks, they would probably tell you to get a Windows OS version, because the upcoming conversion to Exchange e-mail will make adding wireless connections a snap.   If you have a specific question about Exchange or your brand of PDA, send an e-mail to exchproj@musc.edu.   The thing to keep in mind is this: while IS offers servers for handheld devices, it doesn’t offer centrally-managed services. Most departments also offer no purchase or support for handhelds for most employees.   For example, “UMA does not have the resources to support such a handheld device. These devices are not ‘LYNX’d’ and would require manual intervention to support them. …We do not have the FTE budget,” said Kristen Weisenberger, with UMA systems.   Anesthesia & Perioperative Medicine has taken a different approach. All its approximately 30 staff members were offered a choice of handheld devices. While more than half chose to remain with a standard cell phone, the rest opted for a variety of PDAs.   “Some wanted BlackBerry, while others wanted Treos with Palm OS, and still others chose Treos with Windows OS,” said administrator Brenda Dorman. “We left the choice entirely up to the individual.”   For one device there was unanimous agreement. That strange combination of cell phone and “walkie-talkie” that was popular a few years back? The staff hated them, and the gadgets wound up sitting in office desks drawers.   “It was the younger staff members who made the push for newer handhelds,” said Dorman. “However, one senior doctor sent more than 900 text messages. I was surprised.”   Including discounts and package deals, Dorman figures the department spent about $6,000 on the handhelds themselves. She said that voice and data packages, purchased from the cell phone providers, would cost about $30,000 per year.   The biggest advantage Dorman sees to the handhelds is organization. “Calendars are kept up to date, e-mails are answered in a timely manner, and notes and memos are all in one place where they can be easily reached,” she said.   Most of the department already has made the switch to the Exchange server so that administrative assistants can be “delegated” to read and respond to e-mail and adjust the calendars of department senior staff. All GroupWise users and many IMAP users are now on the Exchange system.   Departments that depend heavily on travel and fundraising also make extensive use of handhelds.   “We currently support about 75 users of both Treos and BlackBerrys in our departments,” said Jay Crawford, an ITC for Development, Alumni Affairs, and the MUSC Foundation. He notes that employees who started out in other companies prefer BlackBerrys and most had come from companies that used Microsoft Exchange with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).   “Given the option of BB or Treo, they opted for BB in hopes that IS would bring up a BES,” said Crawford.   IS recently set up a working BES and currently is integrating it into work- and-  mailflows.   James Jones went another way: “We use Treos for everybody in the CHP dean’s office. We use the Palm OS with Verizon. We use them for e-mail, text messages, tasks, and contacts. We do have some important Word documents stored on handhelds.”   Larry Owens, a longtime handheld advocate, said he’s been using Treos since “before BlackBerry.” Owens, director of communications for education and student support, admitted he’s not using all the features available to him. But, what he does use is phone, calendar, and tasks lists, “where I concentrate my time.”   IS’s Kim Duncan said she checks her calendar, notes, directions, to-do lists, and contacts.   Another early adopter of handheld technology, Lawrence Afrin, M.D., uses his Palm Vx for calendaring, e-mail, and he also has made use of medical reference data. “I kept Epocrates drug reference and journal summaries on my Palm for awhile, but the syncs to my desktop computer began to take up too much time keeping all those big databases up to date. …So I either deleted them or turned off their sync.”   The Center for Drug and Alcohol Programs (CDAP) uses about a dozen handhelds, including a mixture of several brands and various OS, said Evans Jenkins, IT manager for Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences.   “I recommend Palm OS (Treo and Palm), but I also have two BlackBerry users and a couple of Windows CE users,” said Jenkins He recommends Palm, because, “It was supported on both Macintosh and Windows for a long time, and I recommend products that are cross platform.” Small frustrations Some common complaints about handhelds include the “all thumbs” tiny keyboards, small screens, sometimes-slow network response, problems with synching to desktop computers, and some key layouts that make pocket storage tricky.   Aside from Afrin’s experience with long sync delays, he also has misgivings about battery life: “It’s been a few years now since I could get the thing to charge in its cradle. I’ve had to use the travel charger, which for some reason is still making adequate contact. And to get it to sync via the cradle, I have to position the device in the cradle ‘just so’.”   “I don’t like it when my phone rings and I reach into my pocket and, of course, accidentally press the ‘touch screen’ and hang up,” said Kurt Nendorf, Infrastructure Services director, of his Treo 650. “I’m considering a Motorola without a touch screen.”   Other complaints include, “Not that great a web browser. …Not fully linked to SunOne Calendaring system…Poor vendor support.”   But the one comment that probably addresses how many would-be users feel? Research associate Adrian Michael Nida said, the “biggest complaint is that I don’t have one.”     Friday, June 15, 2007 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.