What PDA to choose?

Blackberrys, Treo, Palm, iPAQ, iPhone..there are so many choices out there for a PDA, and today of course, cellphones do pretty much everything PDA's do..so what do you choose?

Of course, the most popular today is certainly the Blackberry. A combination cell phone/PDA that was probably the first to include a full keyboard in its design. Blackberries are developed by RIM, a Canadian company, and are distributed among most wireless providers (unlike iPhone which i believe is still limited to AT&T unless you have an unlocked one)

It causes me to wonder, did Blackberry gain the popularity simply due to being "first to market" is this an example of the early bird cathing the worm? They released a cell phone with a full keyboard and the ability to do send/recieve email messages over any cell phone network.

The device appealed to many business people, and the word spreak, and they sort of became a 'leader' in this niche market they created.

I remember around the same time, Palm released the Trio. The Trio also had a full keyboard and email ability. It also featured a camera, bluetooth,Wifi (or an addon for Wifi), and the price was very comparable to that of the Blackberry.

Yet, most people went with Blackberries? I suspect most of this was word of mouth networking. One collegue saw another's blackberry and thought it was cool and wanted one too. It seemed to be this is how it went where I used to work. I still think the Trio was the better device all around, but the blackberry was the "buzz" it was the thing to buy, and everyone did.

Reminds me of back in high school, you just had to have the same jacket, boots, or haircut as the popular kids, never mind if it cost umpteen dollars, and wasn't the most 'pratical' piece of clothes..is this a good example of consumerism at work...I think not.

I don't have a Trio or a Blackberry, I had an ipaq for a while but it broke, luckly I was still able to sell it on ebay for like $10, and the warranty paid me back a good percentage of it.

So the new "hit" product is of couse, the iPhone. Will you buy it because it's popular?, or will it be because it's a good PDA?..I wonder