PDA with a hard disk

Has anyone seen a PDA with a hard disk? I can’t find one and I think I’d like one. (no I couldn’t afford one anyway).

I think there a couple of reasons I can’t find one. The first is that hard disks probably aren’t brilliantly suited to being bounced around in your pocket in the way people are used to handling PDAs. But hey, the iRiver iHP-140 and the iPod seem OK!

I don’t think size is really a problem any more, the hard disk music players mentioned above are tiny and I believe you can even get 1″ hard disks with a 4Gb capacity!

My guess is that the real problem lies with battery life. Even with power saving features, a battery small enough to power a PDA is likely to have problems keeping a magnetic disk ticking over. I’ve read about the problems that battery life is causing in computing. I’d like to think the solution lies in a complete alternative to batteries in the form of a portable renewable energy source, but now I’m probably asking for too much!

The reason I thought of a PDA with a hard disk was the recent release of media players trying to rival the iPod, including video playback. I wondered if the iPod/iRiver products are merely briding the gap until PDAs can handle better sound quality and much bigger storage. Having an fully fledged operating system (like GNU/Linux :P) running on your portable device has got to be more flexible than firmware upgrades. Why have a separate pocket computer and media player and mobile phone etc. Just a thought.

Talking of renewable energy sources I actually followed a link on a banner ad today which pointed at this page [npower]. I wonder if “Juice – Brought to you by npower and Greenpeace for a renewable future.” would actually be worthwhile signing up to, or if it’s a marketing gimic.

I spent the weekend at lauperr‘s house and we went to wonchop‘s 18th (lurvely pizza :P) and Kes’s little party.

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