Executives stay organized, entertained by new wave of mobile hand-held PDAs

Business Report Correspondent

BOULDER — High-tech executives can load almost anything into their personal digital assistants these days, and there’s no shortage of people and places offering competing versions of everything from spreadsheets to global positioning systems.

“I’ve had a Palm Pilot for about five years now,´ said Steve Levin, vice president of marketing at Anark Corp., a streaming media production company in Boulder. “Like a lot of people, I’d be lost without it.”

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Not only does Levin keep his daily schedule of meetings, appointments and phone calls on his new Palm V, but more and more, he said, he and other executives in the computer and financial industries are establishing secure areas with passwords for storage of their most sensitive data.

Such shareware applications as security utilities are more available all the time on Web sites such as Palm.com, he said. In addition to protecting against such a potentially disastrous crisis as misplacing one’s PDA, Levin said there is an ever growing line of software that protects against new hackers and viruses. “If you can imagine it, someone’s probably written it,” he said. “There is this whole kind of Palm community that is really kind of rampant out there offering new software applications for free or a nominal one-time fee.”

Applications such as infra-red faxing capability and conduits to Lotus, Oracle and other data bases are being added almost daily to the standard applications like contact phone lists and expense reports. “I do have some games on there, but I never get to play them,” Levin said.

Dixie Randall, a sales associate at Circuit City in Boulder, said quite a few are purchased every day. “There seems to be a lot more need for them than there was even just a few years ago,” she said.

Randall said she finds young executives often interested in getting a PDA for its standard daily organizer functions. They also are excited about the wide variety of other perks it may add to their hectic and stressful lifestyles. “You can plug it into a modem and check your e-mail,” she said. “And you can go to MP3 and download some music that you like. ? It’s like a notebook in the palm of your hand, or even like a small computer for the ones that have Windows.”

While the Palm Pilot uses it own operating system, the Casio and Hewlett-Packard’s Jornada use Windows. “The reason people like the ones offering Windows is because they use Windows every day and know exactly what to expect,” she said. “If they’re at the airport, it can be a life-saver.”

While all the bells and whistles may or may not be deemed essential by all executives, it seems the Palm Pilot has something for almost everyone. Alan Mole is a technical engineer with a variety of areas of expertise and experience. He said he is just as happy to keep his phone numbers and daily schedules on paper, but he is captivated by the global positioning system (GPS) that he can apply with the Palm Pilot. For one thing, he said, at around $400 it’s less expensive to buy the Palm Pilot and the global positioning CD (for about $100) than it is to buy the stand-alone GPS unit that fits in the car. “If you’re traveling on business and you don’t have the luxury of getting lost, this is 100 percent accurate, it just solves the problem, turn right on Mariposa,” he said. “I don’t own a cell phone. I don’t own an organizer. The GPS capability is the only feature that I lust after.” Then, after thinking about it for a minute, Mole said he wouldn’t mind having a library of great books to read while standing in line at an airline-ticket window.

In addition to Palm.com, AvantGo is another popular Web site for Palm Pilot aficionados, according to Levin. He said AvantGo offers such services as sports scores, news articles, stock information and wines of the week. “You can pick a ZIP code and a specific distance radius, choose Italian restaurants and get all the Italian restaurants in a five-mile radius,” he said. “Or you can choose all restaurants — it can be very valuable when you’re in an unfamiliar city entertaining a client.” Mostly, Levin uses his Palm Pilot for work and related matters. He said it has become indispensable for taking notes during business meetings. It really cuts down on the amount of paper you have to keep track of, he said. And when you’re out of the office and have a great idea, it’s very quick and easy just to jot it down and save it digitally. “Some people I know have converted their Palm into a remote control for all their digital appliances in the house,” he said. “Like stuff you would have six different remotes for? It’s a universal remote.”