A Palm PDA is a hand-held Personal Digital Assistant or a small computer that has many features to help a business person or anyone else who wants to organize appointments and find other information quickly. Palm PDAs were first called Palm-Pilots, and many models later they emerged to be the highly technical devices that they are today. Palm PDAs have had to catch up with other competing companies because telecommunication vendors are finding it easier to sell iPhone and Blackberry models over the Palm based phones because these other devices often have more capabilities that make life easier for the end user. Whether true or not Palm's competitors undoubtedly have bigger advertising budgets to spread that message.

Today’s Palm PDAs can access computer hard drives with a USB cable and they have a mobile phone, SMS, instant messaging, and email. Other options are available such as a camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and MP3 players. Many applications, commonly referred to as apps, are free to download, or they can be purchased. One of these is a fitness app that provides exercise and diet information. With it, you can quickly look up the number of calories in a dessert that you are about to order or find out how long you will have to walk on the treadmill to walk off that piece of chocolate cake.

Doctors and nurses can find over 38,000 medical terms when they use the medical app, and there is a drug reference with possible drug interactions, antibiotic recommendations, and immunization guide. The medical app also has a variety of calculators to find lipid levels, over 1,000 diagnoses if the doctor is not sure which one applies to you, growth charts, breast cancer risk predictor, and much more. With the special flight app, you will know which gate to rush to in order to board your plane on time, and the app can help you slow down if your plane has a delay.

Many other apps are available for today’s PDAs, and more are being created all of the time. An RSS reader that allows PDA users to access news quickly is the Resco Neeews! for Palm OS. This app has 500 feeds and supports podcasts with its own player. You must have the Internet to use it, however. Top Story is another app that allows the PDA owner to choose news and headline sites and customize them to give you exactly the information that you want. Microsoft Office is a very helpful app for a PDA. With it, you can view, edit, and create files on your PDA. Documents to Go Premium Edition is required for this app to work. Sales people and others who rely on a large amount of contact information can benefit from Key Contacts, an app that helps organize contacts and adds Outlook-compatible features. It is a replacement for the Palm OS address book.

Of course, many people play games with their PDAs while waiting at the doctor’s office or at the airport. Some of the most popular games are Bubble Breaker, Solitaire, and Cherry Chaser Slots that makes your PDA a mini slot machine.

There are several models of Palm PDAs that are popular today. The HP iPAQ210 has a four inch screen and the fastest processor of any model along with a lot of memory capability. In addition, the battery life is the longest of any current PDA or cell phone battery. It also has Word, Excel, and Power Point unlike competing smartphones. This PDA has the most wireless features available, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Palm TX has Wi-Fi and other multimedia features and is also a popular model PDA. Because it has Wi-Fi, it can connect to wireless networks, and that makes it very convenient. The Palm TX has a screen with more pixels than any other Palm PDA in its price range, and it comes with a Palm Blazer web browser.

Another popular Palm PDA is the Palm Tungsten 2. This excellent organizer has its positive points, but it is not able to connect to the Internet. Its smaller memory of only 32 MB will not hold much material, but it is possible to add more storage to it. The Palm Tungsten 2 has a very good battery life and the capacity to play MP3s, videos, and photos, buts its slower processor may cause problems at times.

It will be interesting to watch and see what Palm's next smart phone device will bring to the market. New 4G Phones are starting to sell like hotcakes as the population tires of slower 3G download speeds as they stream more bandwidth intensive data like video from Netflix and Hulu.