[Indy]

I was silly and bought a MP3 player. I already have a phone. Now I want a PDA. No, I don't want 'em all in one device, because I would break it for sure. I am really interested in the palm Z22 because it's around $100. Memory is my problem with this thing. ALL I want from the thing is to be able to look stuff up in it, drugs, labs, etc.

I've used taber's in book form maybe once a month so far. I can't decide if I want that or not, and it looks like it would use most of the memory available in a Z22. It took me an hour online to finally figure out there are no expansion slots for extra memory in a Z22. So 32 mb is what you get and what you are stuck with.

Questions:
1. Can you delete things out of the z22 that you don't use, that come with it, in order to use more memory for your other stuff?
2. Is it possible to get a good working suite of books in this thing for 20 mb or less? For example, I've applied to an ER position. Except for taber's, I see probably 12-15 mb of stuff I'd like just from Davis's website.
3. Free trial downloads. Are they worth it or should I just buy the products?

[Indy]

Well I went ahead and bought a Z22, after all it's $100 so might as well experiment.

1. Yes deleting stuff is ridiculously easy, just have to be careful what I delete. Crazydaisy gone bybye, as did splash and solitaire (no idea how it got there though).

2. It's possible to fit nursing central or epocrates essentials onto it, although nursing central will be a pretty tight fit. I liked epocrates so much that I deleted Davis drug guide and bought epocrates rx pro. Very nice addons they have there!

3. Well for Davis the trial downloads are worthless except to show you some idea of how the product functions, but most of the stuff is not usable at all on the trial. Epocrates free stuff actually works. I'd have kept their free thing except that the IV drug compatibility checker is part of the paid-for product, and I need that.

By the way, the palmgear site, while having so much nice freeware to offer, has the most frustrating way of going about getting it that I've ever seen. You gotta make an account, ok so far so good. Get your emailed password and sign in, 6 times, because of the space in there that screws it up. Change your password to something sane. There is no "download" button. No, stick stuff to your watchlist and then "choose action" to download. Then, of course, comes the fun of watching my machine do backflips trying to figure out what to do with the formats it downloads, and if I don't download it to palm desktop, it lacks a "browse" feature to find the file and attempt to get it to the palm. Grr! Luckily, there's only about 2 things I want now, and for those two I may just pay to get something that works.

[Melina]

You can always download trials and freeware from PalmGear as a guest at the log in screen.

~Mel'

[Indy]

Thanks Melina, it took me a bit but I figured it out. I really like the ABG decoder thing! So far the amount of room on this thing is wonderful. I don't actually need tabers right now, because that is the only book that never gets lost; I can't find a drug book to save my life but there's a taber's on every unit countertop.

So far, so good. I've got an aluminum case and have used it every time I brought it to work.