PDA Progress - in some areas yes - others no

It looks like Sprint Nextel will be carrying the Pre from Palm. AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said in a WSJ article yesterday that AT&T would likely carry the Pre after the exclusivity period with Sprint ends. In the article Stephenson was defending the AT&T Network, although anyone that uses a smartphone or a 3G wireless for their PC in a major metropolitan area during the day realize that the smartphones are crushing the network.


Earlier today I was talking with Jim Driscoll of CTC. We were lamenting the fact that we could actually take notes and accomplish quite a bit more PDA functions with our old Palm IIIs and Vs than we can with the new generation of PDAs, the whiz bang Apple iPhone included in this list.


Do these devices have some interesting features, sure. But we really lost some usability along the way when we moved away from the Graffiti interface.