Dell's for hospital rotations

[Japheth]

I am a medical student about to start rotations in the hospital and I need a PDA that can handle an @$# load of material. I need something with wi-fi and can run 5 or more programs that are pretty hefty. Medical programs that are about the size of bibles. I need the PDA to be fast and versitile. I'm new to the market and I am not sure what I need, but the dell X50 line looks promising. Any help would be appreciated.

[cemuller]

You've probably thought of this already, but make sure that the medical programs you want to run were designed for PocketPC, and preferably to run under WinMobile 2003 SE. (There are many programs specifically made for the Palm operating system.)

That said, I can't say enough for the Axim X50 for features/price. The top end (X50 mid and X50v) both have wifi and fast processors. If you can use a PocketPC for your programs, you won't be able to do much better than one of these.

Good luck!

[Japheth]

Would you advise putting the programs on a SD or other type of card to free up space on the PDA itself?

[cemuller]

I run all my programs from main memory, but I know that most programs (unless they specifically state that they must run from RAM) run fine, with no noticeable difference in speed just because they are running from either Secure Digital or Compact Flash (CF seems to be cheaper) removable storage.

Minor cosmetic note: If you buy CF card, try to get a Type II, which is slightly thicker...it fills the card slot completely, where the Type I I have is thinner- works fine, but leaves a narrow opening at the top of your device.- Again, no affect on function or performance.

[pharmboyrx]

I actually have a similar question. I'm a pharmacy student and would be using the pda for the same thing. Dell told me that if I wanted to install programs on the x30 or x50 I would have to get a memory card but from what I read on this board that isn't true.

How much memory is available for programs on the x30 and x50?

[Japheth]

It looks like we are in a similar situation. The programs I want to run will be along the same line as the ones you want to run. I think Charlie is right about being able to run most of our programs from main memory. I plan on using the SD or CF cards for music and video/pictures, and probably hefty word/power point docs for lecture notes that I'll use on occasion during rotations. Hope this helps.

[pharmboyrx]

Yeah it does help. I'm tryin to get a number though. Everyone here seems rather knowledgable and Dell can't answer questions about their own product. So...

ttt for a number.

[AnswerDude]

X30: 32 megs of RAM on basic model. 64 megs of RAM and 30 megs of ROM available for storage only on wireless models

X50: 64 megs of RAM available, and 91 megs of ROM available as storage only.

The OS will use about 10-15% of RAM when running.