PDA for Mac

Why not just an iPod touch or iPhone? I think there are a number of apps out there that allow for MS Office read/write.

 

Mark/Space allows you to sync virtually any PDA/Smartphone with the Mac and is well worth the price.

 

Agreed. My wife uses Mark Space to sync a Blackberry Pearl with our mac and it works great.

 

Also agreed, re: Markspace being the way to go.

The problem you'll have, however, is the extent to which PDAs are a dying phenomenon.

If you need a PDA that is not a phone, I personally would recommend seeing if you can find a used Dell Axim x51v or something of that ilk, with WM5 or WM6. It's a VGA Windows Mobile PDA. I don't even think there are devices like this on the market anymore. But WM will give you the best interoperability with the kind of documents you want, and most of these devices can store gigs of documents on a cheap SD or SDHC card.

 

I think, a generation ago, this was very true (i.e. around... 2005. But at that time, sales of smartphones climbed so quickly, and PDAs fell off so quickly, that a lot of development of dedicated PDAs died off. If you look at that market... how many new models has Palm released since around 2005 or 2006? And who is releasing WM non-phone PDAs anymore?

I think the net result was that, while a dedicated PDA today might be better than its phone counterparts, the differential development of the phone market has caused the phone tech to surge ahead.

That being said, if you're open to a phone, that opens up lots of good touchscreen WM devices that have come out in the last 12-18 months. Few of them come with the kind of storage space an iPhone has, but most of them have SDHC or Micro-SD slots that can let you upgrade their memory capacity. Those devices are going to handle docs the best. So if that's your biggest priority, it's probably the place to go. As for Palm... I guess, you have to go on your own feel. I have not been able to stand their products anytime recently, although once upon a time, years ago, I liked them. If they work for you, though, why not? They tend to have smaller, lower quality screens, though. And actually, some of their newest devices run WM anyways (e.g. Treo Pro).

 

I have Nokia E71 and I can sync with no issues whatsoever.

 

My vote is for the nokia e71. Fantastic device. Works perfect with iSync.

 

One thing I don't know anything about at all are the document capabilities of the e71 (and no one who has plugged it so far in the thread, that I can see, has even mentioned this, in spite of it seeming to be the central issue).

The docs software on it appears to be called QuickOffice... most of the reviews I've seen of the device only mention how it is in passing, though:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E71.php