Nonetheless, today's cell phones are usurping many of the functions of PDAs. Although I don't use my cell phone for these things, it offers a date book, to do list, and voice memo functions--sound familiar? Problem is, it won't sync up with anything else I have, so what good is it? And, if the battery runs out, I'd say goodbye to my data, unless it's stored in the SIM card. I admit, I don't know where it goes. There are no sync cables or software available for it, so I bought a SIM card reader from ThinkGeek just in case.

I think we're starting to see the long, slow death of the PDA as a separate device. In a few years, I believe most of us will be carrying around mobiles with an operating system that'll handle all of the functionality of our PDAs, and all of the telephony services of our mobile phones. This is what the network bidding battles were about in Europe; this is what the phones and networks do today in Japan. So why buy a PDA? I don't think I can answer that question today.

Dr. Humayun Bakht completed his Ph.D at the School of Computing and Mathematics in Liverpool at John Moores University. Prior to his current course of studies, he has successfully completed his MSc Software Engineering and BSc Electronics Engineering from University of Liverpool UK and Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi, Pakistan. Humayun's research interest is mobile ad-hoc networks, in particular, the development of a new routing algorithm for this type of networking. He can be reached at humayunbakht@yahoo.co.uk and you can visit his Web site at http://www.geocities.com/humayunbakht/.